From 1968 to 1972 Marušič attended gymnasium in Koper. He studied undergraduate mathematics at the University of Ljubljana, graduating in 1976. He completed his PhD in 1981 in England, at the University of Reading under the supervision of Crispin Nash-Williams. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Reading in 1983, Marušič spent a year teaching high school mathematics in Koper. He worked for one year at the University of Minnesota Duluth as an assistant professor, and then spent three years at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1985-1988. In 1988, he returned to Slovenia to work at the University of Ljubljana, where he rose quickly through the ranks, becoming a full professor in 1994. He also held the post of vice-rector of student affairs there from 1989-1991. In 1991-92 he spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Marušič maintains his post at the University of Ljubljana, although he has also held an appointment at the University of Primorska since 2004, shortly after its founding. He has increasingly devoted his time to the newer university, where he established the Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Information Technologies. He served as the dean of that faculty from 2007-2011. He was elected in 2011 as the third rector of the University of Primorska, a position which he held until 2019. Marušič has supervised seven PhD students, and has supervised or co-supervised six post-doctoral fellows, in addition to numerous master's and honours students. He is one of the two founding editors and editors-in-chief of the journal Ars MathematicaContemporanea.
Achievements and honours
Marušič is regarded as the founder of the Slovenian school of research in algebraic graph theory and permutation groups. In 2002 he received the Zois Award, the highest scientific award in Slovenia, for his achievements in the field of graph theory and algebra. Since 2010, he has been a member of the committee that selects the Zois Award recipients, as well as the recipients of other scientific honours from the government of Slovenia.
Research
In his research, Marušič has focused on the actions of permutation groups on graphs. Some of his major contributions have been on the topics of the existence of semiregular automorphisms of vertex-transitive graphs, the existence of Hamiltonian paths and cycles in vertex-transitive graphs, and the structures of semi-symmetric graphs and half-transitive graphs. With co-authors, he proved that the Gray graph on 54 vertices is the smallest cubic semi-symmetric graph. He has well over 100 publications.
