User:Russ Woodroofe/marusic

Dragan Marušič (born 1953, Koper, Slovenia) is a Slovene mathematician, notable for his work in symmetries of graphs. Marušič was the third rector of the University of Primorska.

Education and early career
Marušič was born and grew up in Koper, Slovenia. He obtained his BSc in technical mathematics from the University of Ljubljana in 1976, and his PhD from the University of Reading in 1981 under the supervision of Crispin Nash-Williams. His thesis title was On Vertex Symmetric Digraphs.

After the PhD, Marušič spent a year each in mandatory military service, in a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Reading, and teaching high school mathematics in Koper. He then worked for one year at the University of Minnesota Duluth as an assistant professor in 1984—1985, and three years as an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1985—1988. In 1988, he returned to Slovenia to work at the University of Ljubljana. He was promoted to full professor in 1994.

***include ULj admin role

University of Primorska
***role in founding the university

Shortly after the 2004 founding of the University of Primorska, Marušič moved as a full professor to that university, although he has also held onto the professor title at the University of Ljubljana. He helped in establishing the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Science, and Information Technology at the new university, and served as dean of that faculty from 2007 until 2011.

In 2011, Marušič was elected as the third rector of the university, a position that he held until 2019. He was succeeded by his former PhD student, Klavdija Kutnar.

*** what happened while he was rector?

Research
In his research, Marušič focuses on actions of finite groups on graphs and other combinatorial objects. Some of his major contributions have been on the topics of the existence of semiregular automorphisms (see group action for an explanation of this) of vertex-transitive graphs, the existence of Hamiltonian paths and cycles in vertex-transitive graphs, and the structures of semi-symmetric graphs and half-transitive graphs. With co-authors, he proved that the Gray graph on 54 vertices is the smallest cubic semi-symmetric graph.

*** link to Lovász conjecture

Marušič is regarded as the founder of a Slovenian school of research in algebraic graph theory and permutation groups. He has over 200 mathematical publications, has advised seven PhD students, and has supervised or co-supervised six post-doctoral fellows.

Awards and honors
In 2002, Marušič received the Žiga Zois award, the highest scientific award in Slovenia, for his achievements in the field of graph theory and algebra. Since 2010, he has been a member of the committee that selects the Žiga Zois award recipients, as well as the recipients of other scientific honours from the government of Slovenia.

Personal life
Marušič's brother, Dorijan Marušič was the Minister of Health for Slovenia. ***give years