Soljacic, a Croatian physicist and electrical engineer, has decided to set up this award fund in order to additionally motivate Croatian secondary school students to prepare themselves for mathematics and physics graduate exams.
The first award-ceremony is set for 31 July this year, and Smoljacic himself and Education Minister Vedran Mornar will award the best students at the ceremony which will take place in the Croatian education ministry.
The ministry has stated that the award fund has been established thanks to the financial donation by this successful Croatian researcher and the award will be given in the coming years, too.
After graduating from XV Gymnasium (MIOC) in Zagreb, Smoljacic attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he got his BSc in physics and electrical engineering in 1996. In 1998 he got his MSc from Princeton University and in 2000 he got his PhD in Physics. In 2005 he became a professor of Physics at MIT in Boston.