Professor Mladen Petrovecki, MD, PhD (1960 – 2016)

IN MEMORIAM / ACTA INFORM MED. 2017 MAR; 25(1): 60-60 Professor Mladen Petrovecki died on August 30th in 2016. He was born in Zagreb in 1960. Mladen graduated from high school in 1979 in Zagreb, Croatia, and enrolled the School of Medicine at University of Zagreb (1). Professor Petrovecki was dedicated to clinical and academic work. As a doctor of medicine, laboratory immunology specialist, he worked at the Clinical department of Laboratory Diagnostics at the Clinical Hospital Center Dubrava in Zagreb. He authored and co-authored numerous scientific articles, professional papers and educational publications from his field of laboratory immunology. Those that had the luck to meet him in the academic environment surely recognized his passion towards numbers, data and their systematization.Mladen Petrovecki was confirmed in 2011 as full professor of Medical informatics at the Department of Medical Informatics at School of Medicine University of Rijeka, where he was also head of the department. Graduate and postgraduate students of School of Pharmacy and Biochemistry and School of Dental Medicine in Zagreb, as well as students of Schools of Medicine in Rijeka, Split and Osijek, attended Professor Petrovecki’s lectures in Biostatistics, Medical informatics, Methodology of scientific research and Health information systems. Mladen’s passion was equal when speaking either about his reviewing work, or editorial work. For a number of years he was the statistical editor in Croatian Medical Journal, Medix, Biochemia Medica, as well as an irreplaceable member of the editorial board of Acta Stomatologica Croatica. His competence was finally confirmed when he was elected statistical reviewer in Lancet in 2008. His main scientific research domain in last two decades covers research integrity. He went the extra mile to bring some of the most complicated mathematical topics closer by publishing his lectures, textbooks and internet content. His work showed that the knowledge is not to be known, but to be given. His dedication towards colleagues and students lost in the labyrinth of statistical unknown did not remain unrecognized. It must be said that the knowledge Professor Petrovecki so selflessly shared with us never was only statistical, theoretical. His method of teaching made numerous excellent students, researchers and doctors and has sown the seed of excellence for future generations of lecturers that had made him their inspiration and role model. During 2004–2006 he was Assistant Minister for Science at the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia, and during 2005–2013 he was heading Working Group for Science and Research Chapter in the negotiating team for the Accession of the Republic of Croatia to the European Union. REFERENCES 1. Masic I. Biographical Lexicon of Medical Informatics. Avicena. Sarajevo, 2016: 366. ISBN 978-9958-720-62-8. Professor Mladen Petrovecki, MD, PhD (1960 – 2016)