I was born and raised in
Pula, Croatia. There I finished my primary education and started my
High School education in the
"Gymnasium of Mathematics and Natural Sciences".
In the summer of 1995, I came to Iowa for a semester of High School exchange through a scholarship awarded by the Soros foundation. Two days before I left Iowa, I accidentally developed an amorous relationship with my host family sister, Annika.
I eventually came back to Iowa to see Annika, and ended up staying. We then got married, soon after which I began studying at Iowa State University. I started a B.S. in Computer Science, added Mathematics as a second major, started an M.S. in Computer Science, broke up with Annika, finished my B.S., got divorced, and finally finished my M.S. Somewhere along the line I also developed a passion for dance and performing.
I then came to Arizona State University to join the Arts, Media and Engineering program, trying to fuse my technical background with the tendency to devote most of my time to dance. I eventually got accepted into the Dance M.F.A. program as well, and will start in Fall 2006.
I am currently spending the summer at home in Croatia, and getting to enjoy my new Mac laptop. In general, I like to keep myself busy taking interesting classes at the university, doing research with the Arts, Media and Engineering program, dancing with anyone who can tolerate me, and sometimes doing things like sleeping, eating, and cooking.
Stjepan is a trained computer scientist, talented programmer,
striving choreographer, and undeterrable dancer. He is also
happily divorced, and enjoys long flights to Croatia,
playing lollipops, and avoiding involuntary insanity by
voluntarily losing his mind.
His inability to break the dance addiction lead him to pursue further education with the Arts, Media, and Engineering program at Arizona State University, where he could do research while wearing unitards, and dance while thinking about the finer points of probability theory.
His research accomplishments span the fields of robotics, computational biology, and, more recently, motion analysis. Stjepan has presented his work at international conferences, and published in various research journals. Well, two research journals.
His artistic accpomlishments include a dance that was chosen by ISU to be presented at the American College Dance Festival, and some recent work in interactive dance and dance/technology.
On occasion, Stjepan also manages to midly amuse an audience here (Arizona) and there (Iowa). He is currently a Dance M.F.A. student in the ASU dance department. In the past he has also performed with with Scorpius Dance Theatre in Phoenix, Orchesis Dance Company (I and II) at Iowa State University, and Co'Motion Dance Theater.
He has also dabbled in teaching people a thing or two, of which the most notable examples were being an instructor for a beginning C++ programming class, and a faculty advisor for a National Youth Leadership Forum TECH conference.
As I have time, I'll be writing a somewhat detailed retelling of
my life. It's more for me than for anyone else - I tend to forget about
things that happen to me so I should write them down as soon as I get
a chance.