SHORT SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC LIFE
Živko Južnič-Zonta(Koper-Capodistria, Slovenia, 1981) is an environmental engineer (Politecnico di Milano, 2008) and PhD in Enviormental Technology (UPC) with the thesis entitled “”Modelling biotechnological processes under uncertainty. Anaerobic digestionas case study”” awarded with Cum Laude. He was visiting during half year the Institut "Jozef Stefan" (Ljubljana, Slovenia) in order to develop a model predictive control strategy for complex dynamic bio-processes under uncertainty. He has a post-graduate education in industrial automation for PLC and industrial communications (2014) at Fundació CIM (UPC). Apart of the formal education, after his PhD he worked for 4 years in two private engineering companies. He was a bio-process engineer for ProCycla S.L. (Spain) for 2 years, working on the construction of bio-gas plants. He achieved to design and build a fully automated biogas pilot plant (4 reactors of 150 L) for an innovative low-cost plug flow digester that was patented. Moreover, he was responsible of the experiment design, operation and numerical modelling of this pilot plant. In 2015 he moved to BioEnTech SAS (France) as a bio-process engineer where he developed numerical bio-process models, diagnosis systems and control routines for biogas plants (UASB reactors, WWTP digesters, municipal solid waste digesters and agro-farm digesters).
Živko’s current research interests are:
- Modelling of anaerobic and activated sludge processes.
- Decision support systems and superstructure plant optimization under uncertainty.
- Predictive model control and state estimation under uncertainty.
- Statistics tools for sensitivity analysis, parameter inference and complex system emulation.
- Software development for “real-time” process diagnosis and control.
- Reactor scale-up design and operation.
TOP PUBLICATIONS
- Juznic-Zonta Z., Flotats X., Magrí A. (2014). Estimation of parameter uncertainty for an activated sludge model using Bayesian inference: a comparison with the frequentist method. Environmental Technology 35 (13), 1618-1629.
- Juznic-Zonta Z., Kocjian J., Flotats X., Vrecko D. (2012). Multi-criteria analyses of wastewater treatment bio-processes under an uncertainty and a multiplicity of steady states. Water Research 46 (18), 6121-6131.
- Juznic-Zonta Z., Palatsi J., Alvarez M. M., Flotats X. (2013). Modelling inhibitory effects of long chain fatty acids in the anaerobic digestion process. Water Research 45 (3), 1369-1380.
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