Women in Science Profiles
Dr. Melita Hajdinjak
If you had asked me after my graduation what my goals were for the future, I would have told you that I wanted to get a BSc degree in Mathematics, form the basis for good life quality and be happy with my life. I have never taken big steps forward, I have never been too self-confident or goal-oriented. While some of my fellow students talked about MSc and PhD degrees already in the first year, I did not dear to think about postgraduate studies before the end of the fourth year. Nevertheless, I had indomitable will, a reasonable amount of stubbornness and a lot of energy. All of this guided me step by step to the world of science.
After I had finished my BSc degree in Mathematics, I started working in the Laboratory of Artificial Perception, Systems and Cybernetics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. My desire to acquire new knowledge and to use as well as to upgrade what I had already learnt was very strong. However, since I have never been satisfied with decisions offering only limited choices, I decided to continue my studies at two faculties – at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. Just in case, one could say. In 2006 I finished a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering and I started working as an Assistant in Mathematics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Ljubljana.
My research work is related to the interdisciplinary field of speech technologies and is focused on speech interfaces or spoken-language dialogue systems. The emphasis of my work lies on the human-computer dialogue management, on the knowledge representation in information systems and on the performance evaluation of speech interfaces. Besides research in electrical engineering, mathematics and computer science there are so many other things that I like to do and so much more knowledge that I would like to acquire. I love sport, I like to travel and learn foreign languages, I am interested in astronomy, psychology, medicine and history.
I cannot really say what the future will bring. I rarely plan ahead for more than one year.