President of the United States of America Barrack Obama announced last month the names of 105 young scientists who were to receive the “Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers”, among whom is also Ervin Sejdić, born in Gradačac in 1979.
Sejdić says that the path towards the award was very interesting and that being a professor at USA universities quite differs from being a professor at universities in BiH.
“The difference is in the fact that here we have to provide funds for our research by ourselves. For example, if I want to have my own research team comprised of doctoral students, masters students, technicians, I have to provide money to pay their wages, tuition fees, taxes and everything else. Being a professor at technical faculties, which is my case, is similar to having a small enterprise which you have to manage and provide money for,” Sejdić says.
Ervin Sejdić says that the first thing he did when he became an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh was to apply for funds from the US government, especially the National Institute of Health, which is also the largest financier of health research in the USA.
“After I managed to get one of their largest grants several years ago, I have proven to be a hard working person so they decided to nominate me on behalf of the Agency as one of their researchers. The entire process took around two years, since the day I found out that they were interested in nominating me to the very nomination in the White House, which was held last summer, and until two-three weeks ago when I was declared as one of the recipients of the award,” Sejdić said.
Sejdić said that hard work underlies everything, as well as many scientific works, many patents. The Presidential Award is the biggest recognition of the US government for early career scientists.
“The award is, of course, culmination of my previous research work, but it definitely marks only the beginning of hard work that is yet to come. I believe this award will open some doors to me in terms of research work, but only if I maintain this pace,” Sejdić said.
Sejdić says that this path has been unreal for many other people, including his family.
“Since the earliest time, my parents insisted on education and schooling. While other children did not have to attend school, I was lucky to have parents who enrolled me in school and everything was about that. We even did not want to move until the academic year is finished. I have not missed a single day in school. It all followed a somehow logical pattern. I inished two elementary schools in BiH and Croatia, a part of high school in Hungary and a part in Canada, I got into university, completed my PhD studies, continued with necessary specializations. It was all somehow normal, as if I was born here, Elvir says.
Sejdić’s PhD was in digital data processing. He is an IT expert and deals the most with bioinformatics, analysis and processing of medical data, i.e. he deals with examining the process of swallowing in humans. This is one of his larger projects.
(Source: klix.ba)
