Nikša Burum was born in 1963 in Dubrovnik, where he completed primary school and secondary school with a profile in mathematics and computer science. Due to his excellent grades, he did not have to take the State Matura exam. In 1982, he passed the entrance exam at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Zagreb. In 1983, he started studying there after having first completed the then compulsory military service. On 15 December 1987, he defended his graduation thesis at the Department for Radio Communications and High Frequency Electronics of the mentioned Faculty under the title ‘Coverage zones in mobile radio communications’.
Immediately upon his graduation, he was employed at the Dubrovnik Electronic and Computing Centre where he worked until the beginning of 1989. Alongside working in the centre, he taught computer science at various secondary schools in Dubrovnik as an external associate. From January 1989 to June 1990 he was employed at Croatian Telecommunications and Post (HTP) in Dubrovnik as a system engineer, where he established one of the biggest computer centres in the former state.
In 1990, together with several of his colleagues, he founded an IT company that has been successfully operating on the domestic and foreign market for 30 years. Since its foundation, the company has always had 20 to 35 highly educated employees at a time. A dozen of students who had graduated from the study programme of Applied Computing of the University of Dubrovnik found a job there. He was head of development in this company, and participated in a number of expert projects. In this period he worked on the introduction of new communication and software technologies in big corporations in the Republic of Croatia and abroad, for which the company received a number of awards and recognitions.
Alongside pursuing his business career he also continued his further education. In 1989, he was enrolled on the postgraduate programme of Radiocommunications and Professional Electronics of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Zagreb. He temporarily discontinued his studies because he had joined the Croatian defence forces as a volunteer in the Croatian War of Independence. In 1997, he continued his master’s study, and on 14 June 1999 he defended his master’s thesis ‘The analysis of waveguide structures by using finite difference time domain method’. After obtaining his master’s degree, he continued engaging in scientific work. In 2002, he participated as a researcher in the international project Analysis of Curved Microstrip Antennas, commissioned by the Office of Aerospace Research and Development, USA Airforce Research Laboratory. Due to his notable scientific results he was permitted to earn his doctorate degree outside a doctoral study programme. On 5 May 2004, he defended his doctoral dissertation under the title ‘Modelling of microstrip antennas on spherical structures’ under the mentorship of Professor Zvonimir Šipuš, PhD.
From 1997 to 2003 he had worked as an external associate of the Polytechnic of Dubrovnik. As of 1 September 2003 he has been permanently employed, first at the Polytechnic of Dubrovnik and then at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computing of the University of Dubrovnik. In February 2006 he became assistant professor, in December 2009 associate professor, in July 2013 full professor, and in March 2019 full professor with tenure at the University of Dubrovnik.
During the writing of his master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation, he had participated in the following projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology: 036028 – Antennas and Propagation in Communication and Radio Systems, 0036043 – Applied Electromagnetism in Communication Technologies, and in the project Analysis of Curved Microstrip Antennas commissioned by the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development, USA Airforce Research Laboratory.
After earning his doctoral degree, he participated as a researcher in the international EURECA project LAFMOT – Luneberg Antenna for Multimedia on Train – and was the project lead for 275-0361566-3136 project Radio and Fibre Optics Sensory Communication Networks, financed by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport of the Republic of Croatia. He still closely cooperates with his colleagues from the Department of Radiocommunications of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing of the University of Zagreb. He is a member of the international association IEEE (Institute of Electrical Engineering and Computing).
He is also member of the organising committee of the scientific conference International Conference on Applied Electromagnetics and Communications, ICECOM, under the auspices of IEEE. He was Vice President of the Croatian section of IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society in two terms. From 2008 to 2011 he was a member of the international conference paper review board of the international ELMAR conference. As of 2017 he has been an associate of the Croatian Academy of Engineering in the Communications Systems Section. He has been the Rector of the University of Dubrovnik from 2016, while from 1 October 2019 to 1 October 2021 he was serving as the is President of the Rectors’ Conference of the Republic of Croatia. He is married and is father of two children.
