Reports

Under the leadership of Ing. Jan Šedivý from CIIRC, students of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering Long Hoang Nguyen, Jan Pichl, Martin Matulik, Jakub Konrad, Petr Marek and Ondra Pech made it to the Alexa Prize finals. They competed who can develop the best chatbot working with the Amazon Echo smart device. The announcement of the best of the top three competing teams was held on 28 November at Amazon’s traditional technical conference re:INVENT in Las Vegas. The Czech team will bring home the second prize and financial award of $ 100,000.

The CTU Academic Orchestra performed with the Collegium Musicum RWTH Aachen University in Couvenhalle in Aachen, Germany on 25 November.

CTU in Prague and British Aerospace (BAE) will work closely in the field of science and research. On 24 November 2017, a joint agreement on confidentiality (Non-disclosure agreement) was signed by CTU Rector Prof. Petr Konvalinka, and president of BAE Systems Hagglunds Tomy Gustafsson Rusk on the occasion of the Conference of cooperation between the academic, private and public sector in the field of defence industry, which took place in the Wallenstein Palace of the Senate of the Czech Parliament.

In recent months, the Multi-robotic systems group of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, led by Dr. Martin Saska, has focused on sensing the interiors of historical objects with drones. The most interesting objects that are already documented include the Grotta in the Polish Gorzanowě, or the church in Libavé, which was marked by influence of Soviet army. Last year, the experts succeeded in using the drones formation to successfully document the Church of St. Mikuláš on Old Town square in Prague. This activity was followed by the mapping of other monuments.

On Wednesday, 22 November, a unique publication was baptized at Masaryk Dormitory atrium - Anatomy of the Child - Nipioanatomy, the author of which is prof. MUDr. Ivan Dylevský, DrSc., a leading Czech morphologist and Dean of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, CTU.

The award ceremony of “The School recommended by the employer 2017” was held on 8 November in the Bethlehem Chapel. In the poll, which can be attended by any company with more than 10 employees, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University confirmed the last year´s 2nd place. In the sum of all the faculties, the Czech Technical University won with great advantage.

Professor Stefan W. Hell, holder of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2014, visited the students and professors at the Czech Technical University in Prague on 8 November. This was the fifth meeting of top international scientists at CTU held by Honeywell (NYSE: HON) under the Honeywell Initiative for Science & Engineering (HISE) program. The program is funded by Honeywell as part of its Honeywell Hometown Solutions Corporate Responsibility Initiative. HISE aims to encourage students to pursue their own activities in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The program has already inspired thousands of students and educators around the world.

Yet again, CTU representatives won the first place in the competition for the best stand at the european fair of lifelong learning, Gaudeamus Brno 2017, held from 31 October to 3 November. The victory was more valuable because the stands were rated by high school students themselves. CTU has been at the top of this competition since 2010.

On the occasion of the national holiday of the Czechoslovak Republic independence day on 28 October, president Miloš Zeman decorated 39 notable personalities wit h state awards. Prof. Vladimír Mařík, founder and director of the Czech Institute of Computer Science, Robotics and Cybernetics, and prof. Jaroslav Pollert, Head of the Water Management Experimental Center, Faculty of Civil Engineering, were also among them. Both were awarded the Medal of Merit I. class in Science.

A prestigious Adobe MAX 2017 conference was held in Las Vegas from 18 to 20 October. , The Puppetron project, created in cooperation with the Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, CTU and Adobe, was presented there. The revolutionary algorithm allows you to transfer an art style from hand-drawn artwork to portrait photography to faithfully preserve both identity of the stylized person and basic characteristics of the art media used. This is how the platform differs from applications based on the use of neural networks such as Prisma or DeepArt.