Professor emeritus at the Ljubljana Faculty of Law, Šelih has been one of the foremost criminology experts in Slovenia for five decades and has lead more than twenty studies that are considered as groundbreaking in the field.

Her guiding principle is "how to regulate the state's repressive reaction to deviant behaviour so that criminal law is an internally balanced, just, rational and efficient system", according to the award jury.

Globevnik, retired professor at the Ljubljana Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, was long the leading Slovenian expert on complex analysis, a special branch of mathematics.

He formed a research group for complex analysis that "remains the central group on mathematical analysis in Slovenia", the jury said about his work, which it described as pioneering.

Globevnik's work also had a strong international dimension. He published more than 115 scientific papers, many in elite mathematical journals, and "helped open doors into the world for young mathematicians" with recommendations for study at elite foreign universities.

The Puch Prize for lifetime achievements that have contributed to economic development went to Marko Jagodič, an electrical engineer who has been described as "one of the leading personalities in the development of telecommunications in Slovenia".

He used to work at Iskratel, at a time when it was one of the leading telecommunications companies in the world in the 1980s, and later continued in business and academia.

A recognition called Ambassador of Science of the Republic of Slovenia was also conferred. It went to Marc L. Greenberg, a University of Kansas professor of Slavic languages and literature.

He is the author of a monograph on Slovenian historical phonetics and a compact grammar of the Slovenian language, as well as a co-founder of the journal Slovenski Jezik/Slovene Linguistic Studies.

The Zois Prizes, the highest government accolades for science, are named after Baron Žiga Zois (1747-1819) and have been presented annually since 1998 on the day this patron of arts and science was born.