Matej Kristan is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science , University of Ljubljana, where he serves as Vice Chair of the Department of Artificial Intelligence . He leads the Visual Object Tracking (VOT) Initiative , presides over the IAPR Slovenian Pattern Recognition Society , and acts as Associate Editor for IJCV . PhD from Faculty of Electrical Engineering, UL (2008) Co-organized 13+ workshops/conferences Research Interests focus on: Visual Object Tracking : Long-term re-detection, transparent object tracking, segmentation-based methods Autonomous Boats : Obstacle detection, sensor fusion, maritime navigation Physics-Informed Deep Learning : Sea level forecasting (HIDRA models), climate prediction Surface Defect Detection : Real-time deep architectures for cracks/dents Scientific Excellence : 26 Research Excellence Awards (Slovenian Research Agency) 10 Teaching Excellence Awards (UL/FRI) Best Paper Awards: ISPA2015, BMVC2022, Pattern Recognition Journal 2024 Student Mentorship : Supervised 8 PhD students including Alan Lukežič (summa cum laude 2021), Domen Tabernik , and Peter Uršič . His students have won 23 awards including multiple Prešeren Awards and Uroš Seljak distinctions. Laboratory Involvement : Key member of the Visual Cognitive Systems Laboratory , contributing to multimodal perception systems for maritime robotics, educational robotics platforms, and advanced deep learning architectures.