Ziga was born among the vineyards of the Maribor wine road in Slovenia. The machinery used to transform grapes into wine first sparked his interest in process engineering, which he pursued at the University of Maribor, where he obtained his MSc. Research exchange visits in Japan, the USA, and Germany deepened his fascination with materials science and atomistic modeling, ultimately leading him to pursue a PhD. He completed his PhD at EPFL in Switzerland, where he used atomistic modeling to investigate the structure of calcium silicate hydrate, the main binding phase of concrete. Following this, he was awarded the SNSF Postdoc Mobility grant to continue his research on calcium silicate hydrate. As part of this fellowship, he spent one year at Durham University (UK) with Prof. Greenwell and another year at Princeton University (USA) with Prof. Bourg, where he further refined his expertise in simulating phenomena at water–solid interfaces. He now leads the Cement subgroup in the group of Prof. De Roo, focusing on the synthesis and characterization of cement phases.

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