Graduation Ceremony of the Class of 2025 Graduates from Croatia and Serbia

On Friday, 9 January 2026, a formal graduation ceremony of DOBA University of Applied Sciences was held in Zagreb for graduates from Croatia and Serbia. The ceremony celebrated the knowledge, effort and perseverance of graduates who, by successfully completing their studies, achieved an important personal and professional milestone.

As part of the event, we awarded degrees to 279 graduates—212 graduates of undergraduate programmes and 67 graduates of Master’s programmes. We also presented awards for the top graduate and for the best Master’s thesis in the 2024/2025 academic year. These ceremonial moments brought together graduates, their loved ones, and the lecturers and professional staff who encouraged, guided and supported them throughout their studies on the path to achieving their goals.

The title of Top graduate in undergraduate programmes for the 2024/2025 academic year was awarded to Tea Starčević, a graduate of the undergraduate programme Marketing, Social Media and Public Relations. She passed all exams at the first sitting and achieved an outstanding average grade of 9.9. Her journey is particularly inspiring, as she successfully balanced her studies with two jobs, independent projects in digital marketing, and family responsibilities as a mother of two young children. Through her organisation, discipline and perseverance, she proved that motivation and a clear goal are the key to exceptional achievements.

The title of Top graduate in Master’s programmes for the 2024/2025 academic year was awarded to Doris Celent Ćućić, a graduate of the Master’s programme Marketing and Sales. She completed her Master’s studies with excellent results and an average grade of 9.7, while receiving a grade of 10 for her Master’s thesis. Alongside her studies, she worked as a marketing and sales specialist in an international corporation, where she independently managed various marketing campaigns. In doing so, she applied the knowledge and competences gained through her studies in practice on a daily basis, demonstrating an exceptional ability to connect theory with the real-world challenges of the modern business environment.

We also presented the award for the best Master’s thesis in 2025, which was received by Marcel Piskač for the thesis entitled Praktična primjena konvolucijskih neuronskih mreža u prognoziranju kratkoročnih kretanja financijskih tržišta, prepared under the supervision of Asst. Prof. Dr Darko Golec. This year, eight theses were shortlisted, from which the expert committee selected the best. The award-winning work stands out as a highly topical research contribution at the intersection of finance and artificial intelligence, as it examines the effectiveness of convolutional neural networks in forecasting short-term financial market movements and compares their performance with traditional ARIMA and GARCH models.

We extend our sincere congratulations to all of our graduates and Master’s graduates and wish them every success in their future professional and personal journey.

You will soon be able to view a photo gallery from the graduation ceremony on our Croatian Facebook page.