At the solemn inauguration of full professors of the University of Primorska, which took place today at the Praetorian Palace in Koper, the vice-rector prof. dr. Štefko Miklavič, with Deans of UP, handed over the decisions on the election to the title of new full professors of the University of Primorska.

Among them is also Dr. Andraž Legat which has been appointed Full Professor in the field of Built Environment.

In his inaugural lecture, “Complex corrosion processes”, he presented the significance of corrosion phenomena in modern technologies, with a focus on pitting corrosion, stress-corrosion cracking, tribo-corrosion, and corrosion in concrete. The lecture highlighted key research findings from the past two decades and outlined directions for future studies.

Image: UP

Biography

Dr. Andraž Legat graduated in 1983 in Technical Physics from the University of Ljubljana. For his diploma thesis he received the Iskra company Award. From 1983 to 1988, he was employed at company Iskra Kranj, where in 1987 he was named Innovator of the Year of the Municipality of Kranj. Between 1988 and 1994, he worked as a Young Researcher at the Jožef Stefan Institute. He obtained his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1991 from the University of Ljubljana and earned his PhD in Chemical Technology in 1995 from the University of Maribor. In 1996, he became Head of the Department of Materials at the Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG). From 2005 to 2019, he was Director of ZAG. In years 2008-2019 he was a member of High Level Group ECTP (European Construction Technology Platform). Between 2009 and 2012, he was also President of ENBRI (European Network of Building Research Institutes). In 2024, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from ZAG.

In 2003, Dr. Legat was appointed Assistant Professor in Technical Chemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Maribor. From 2009 to 2025, he served as Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering at the same faculty. He has supervised five young researchers and co-supervised seven doctoral dissertations. He is the coordinator of the course Construction Materials at FAMNIT, University of Primorska.

His scientific research focuses primarily on the durability of constructionn materials and structures, the development of new materials, the measurement and characterization of corrosion processes, and the development of corrosion monitoring methods. Since 1999, he is the Coordinator of the Programme Research Group at ARIS Building Structures and Materials. He has led and participated in numerous national and international projects, including Teaming CoE InnoRenew and Teaming CoE GreenHER. He is the Coordinator of the ERA-Chair project FRISSBE: Fire-Safe Sustainable Built Environment.

To date, Dr. Legat has published 83 original scientific articles, as sole author or co-author, indexed in the SCI database. Based on data from Elsevier and Stanford University, he was ranked among the Top 2% of scientists worldwide for the period 2021–2025.