Unska 3, 10000 Zagreb, CROATIA
tel. +385 1 6129999
fax. +385 1 6170007
e-mail: fer@fer.hr
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GENERAL OUTLINES
By decision of the Parliament of the People's Republic of Croatia of 26 April 1956, the former College of Engineering of the University of Zagreb was divided into four new faculties, one of them becoming Faculty of Electrical Engineering, which started its independent existence on July 1, 1956.
This was the start of the third, modern stage in the development of electrical engineering in Croatia, characterised by a turbulent development in electronics, electrical power engineering, electrical industry plants, automation, communications and computing.
The Faculty of Electrical Engineering (ETF - Elektrotehnički fakultet, in Croatian) existed under this name until 7 February 1995 when it was renamed the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing.
Under this new name the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER - Fakultet elektrotehnike i računarstva, in Croatian) continued its development philosophy with a commitment to the permanent updating of its curriculum. The development of modern engineering is based on fundamental research and new technologies. Therefore, the concept of technics (tehne, in old Greek = creation skill) has been replaced by the more adequate word technology (logos, in old Greek = reason, idea) as a scientifically accepted technique unifying scientific theory and engineering design as achieved in new products, instruments and systems. In order to meet these basic educational targets required by the development of science and technology, from 1956 till today, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing changed its curriculum five times. Today, both undergraduate (B.Sc.) and graduate studies (M.Sc, Ph.D.) are organised and carried out acording to the curriculum FER1/97. In the field of electrical engineering (Study of Electrical Engineering), students can choose one of six branches:
- Electrical Power Engineering,
- Electrical Machines and Control of Electric Drives,
- Automatics,
- Industrial Electronics,
- Radiocommunications and Professional Electronics,
- Telecommunications and Informatics.
In the field of computing (Study of Computing) only a slight profiling is done through elective, i.e. optional subjects. Both studies last nine semesters. During the last semester, the student prepares his graduation thesis.
The Faculty buildings ("A","B" and "C") at the present location (Unska 3, HR-10000 Zagreb) were completed and equipped in 1963. They allowed the organisation of scientific, educational and professional work in the same place and were optimal for the education of graduate engineers, as required by the economy and society of that period. With the support of the industry and government, in 1989, the new ("D") building was built and inaugurated and today the Faculty offers important educational and R&D facilities (brutto 43308 sqm, netto 38600 sqm), including a Congress centre, Teleeducation classroom, Library, a restaurant, sport and recreation facilities.
From 1956 to the academic year 1999/2000, 11238 engineers were awarded a degree. Postgraduate studies are organised in seven branches. By the academic year 1999/2000, 1546 candidates were awarded a Master of Science degree and 426 were awarded a Doctor of Science degree.
Today the Faculty employs 102 lecturers (42 full professors, 22 associate professors, 34 assistant professors and 4 other lecturers), 55 assistants and 58 junior research associates and 50 other researchers. Educational, scientific and R&D activities in electrical engineering and computing are organised with an average number of 3300 undergraduate students per annum in different departments within for Faculty (in academic year 1997/98: 3305 students; in academic year 1998/99: 3293 students). Graduate study for Master of Science degree was enrolled by 115 students in academic year 1997/98 and by 96 students in academic year 1998/99. Graduate study for Doctor of Science degree was enrolled by 17 students in academic year 1997/98 and by 16 students in academic year 1998/99.
The Faculty is organised in 12 departments, which are the cores of educational, research and scientific work in particular fields and branches (the year in brackets indicates when a particular department was established):
- Department of Applied Physics (1945)
- Department of Applied Mathematics (1919)
- Department of Applied Computing (2005)
- Department of Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and Measurements (1924)
- Department of Electric Machines, Drives and Automation (1925)
- Department of Power Systems (1934)
- Department of Telecommunications (1951)
- Department of Electronic Systems and Information Processing (1942)
- Department of Control and Computer Engineering (1954)
- Department of Electroacoustics (1954)
- Department of Electronics, Microelectronics, Computer and Intelligent Systems (1943)
- Department of Wireless Communications (1954).
In the last twenty five years, scientific and professional work at the Faculty has been done on projects promoted and founded by the Ministry of Science and Technology in the fields of applied physics and mathematics and in the fields of electrical engineering and computing. The Faculty has developed valuable international cooperation with various scientific institutions in the world, either directly or through interuniversity co-operation. The Faculty has a large central library and departmental libraries with about 60 000 titles and is subscribed to 400 foreign and 50 domestic magazines. The Computing Support Centre provides computing and communication facilities for education, research and development.
At the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, all major courses connected to computers were introduced already in the mid-sixties and those were the first steps in university education in the field of computing in Croatia. In 1968, an IBM 1130 computer was installed at the Faculty, and it became the backbone of lecturing and research in the field. It is still alive, but only as an exhibit of the Technical Museum in Zagreb. From the very beginnings the Faculty promoted the application of new technology, particularly in system design and supervision and process control, in co-operation with the electronic and power supply industry throughout the country. The pioneers of computing were professors Stanko Turk and Božidar Stefanini.
By decision of the University of Zagreb, in 1970, Computer Sciences were introduced as a new field in the area of technical sciences. In 1981, Computing was introduced as a separate branch in the last two years of study. In the eighties, the concept of distributed computer equipment became stronger and stronger. At that time, when the Ethernet network and Unix operating system came into broader use, the computer system of the Faculty was based on VAX-785 mainframe computer and few microVAX II computers. The computer equipment of the Faculty in the nineties may be briefly described as a complex distributed computing system, consisting of more than sixty servers and more than 300 clients, connected to 12 LANs and the Faculty WAN. Faculty WAN is connected to the Croatian Academic and Research Network - CARNet and through it to the Internet. Today, the Faculty network is based on ATM (Asynhronous Transfer Mode), which accelerates data transfer capabilities and thus provides multimedia communication.
