The awardees included the following students of Czech Technical University in Prague:
Ing. Tomáš Dejmek, Faculty of Civil Engineering
Ing.Tomáš Dejmek is currently a PhD student in Civil Engineering, Construction and Transportation Engineering at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, CTU. He achieved excellent academic results during his Bachelor and Master studies, both of which he completed with honors. His master thesis, Analysis of the Causes of Failure of a Suspension Road Bridge, was based on an actual contract for the Road and Motorway Directorate of the Czech Republic. The thesis was researched in cooperation with the Department of Steel and Timber Structures and the Department of Mechanics of CTU‘s Faculty of Civil Engineering. An advanced computational model was developed and extensive experimental field measurements including dynamic and static load tests were carried out. The student was awarded the František Faltus Prize and the Professor Bechyně Prize for the best diploma thesis in the category of Engineering Structures and Bridges. Since his bachelor's studies, Tomáš Dejmek has been involved in the activities and projects of the Department of Steel and Timber Structures of CTU‘s Faculty of Civil Engineering , where he is mainly engaged in diagnostics and inspections of bridges. His most significant contribution is the development of a diagnostic method based on magnetic memory of the material, which he already covered in his bachelor thesis. The development of the diagnostic method is funded from a NAKI grant provided by the Ministry of Culture. Currently, this diagnostic method is used in long-term monitoring for the detection of fatigue damage of the railway bridge in Vyšehrad. Furthermore, Tomáš Dejmek is a researcher of the Ministry of Transport TAČR grant under the Transport 2020+ programme focused on evaluation of the noise level of bridge joints after their installation, which is also the topic of his dissertation.
Ing. Václav Voráček, Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Ing.Václav Voráček graduated in computer vision from the Open Computer Science program and is currently enrolled in PhD studies. During his previous studies he accomplished excellent results in teaching and especially in scientific work. He completed his bachelor's degree with an average grade of 1.06, the best out of 254 students in his class. In master's studies he averaged grade 1. He is favorably rated by both students and cooperating teachers, for which he received the Dean's Award in 2021. His undergraduate thesis Graph Theory and Quantum Structures resulted in two publications in impacted journals and received, among other prizes, the Dean's Award. His Master's thesis Combinatorial Methods in the Study of Quantum Structures has similar ambitions, with one result in preparation for submission, and the other already published. It discusses an open mathematical problem that is older than the student himself. The supervisor of the thesis has nominated it for another award in his review. In addition, Václav Voráček has succeeded in another journal publication in a different field and presented several conference papers. He came second in the 2019 Rector's Competition, but as an undergraduate student in the category announced for master's programs students. He has been involved in the GA CR grant projects: Evolution of the Sequence and Structure Space of Terrestrial Proteins, Learning Models for the Task of Finding Dense Correspondences in Images, Hierarchical Architectures for Recognition, Orthomodularity from Different Perspectives, and a project of the Centre for Advanced Applied Science. In addition, he has engaged in work of other research teams.
Ing. Ondřej Ficker, Faculty of Nuclear and Physical Engineering
Ing. Ondřej Ficker has achieved excellent original scientific results in the field of thermonuclear fusion during his PhD studies at CTU’s Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering (FNSPE) and eagerly participates in related academic work. He passed the state doctoral examination on 23 November 2018 with an excellent result. Since then, he has been actively involved in experiment preparation and data processing on the European tokamaks COMPASS, JET, ASDEX-Upgrade and TCV. Within the European research consortium EUROfusion, he works as one of the Scientific Coordinators in the field of electron escape, and in this role is one of the youngest ever experts in Europe. At the Joint European Torus (JET) he participates in the operation of the tokamak during shifts in the control room as Diagnostics Coordinator and has been involved in providing shifts covering advanced plasma parameter feedback. At JET, he has succeeded in identifying the synchrotron radiation of the escaping electrons using existing diagnostic equipment and comparing the observed structure with relevant models. Also at the JET, he performed soft X-ray tomography for the analysis of heavy impurities in the plasma and, for the ITER tokamak, he verified by using tomography the appropriate distribution of the radial neutron camera measuring lines. Ing. Ondřej Ficker is also involved in the design of the new Czech tokamak COMPASS-Upgrade for the Institute of Plasma Physics of the CAS, especially in the modelling of the tokamak coil structure and in the preparation of neutron and hard X-ray diagnostics. Within the framework of the above tasks, he is consistently learning about team projects supported by the GA CR and OP. In the framework of the European Fusion Education Consortium FuseNet, Ing. Ondřej Ficker has been a member (2018-2021) of the Student Council, which, for example, co-organizes events for high school teachers (European Fusion Teacher Day) or events for PhD students (FuseNet PhD event) and, in addition, provides feedback for the work of European universities from the students' point of view. At the Faculty, he leads tutorials for the Introduction to Fusion course and participates in the preparation or one-off lectures in other courses, Plasma Physics Seminar and Thermonuclear Device Technology. Ondřej Ficker's most important achievements have been published in major journals and were mainly devoted to the latest results achieved on European tokamaks in the field of diagnostics of escaping electrons and their mitigation, but they also document the PhD student's broader aptitude for independent work.
Ing. arch. Jan Tomandl, Faculty of Architecture
Ing. arch. Jan Tomandl has long focused in his research work on the issue of accessibility of the environment for people with specific needs with the aim of introducing architecture as one of the important tools for the creation of the built environment and to demonstrate to what extent architecture influences the condition of those who are exposed to its influence. His work centers, in particular, on the needs of people with Parkinson's disease, which until now have been perceived only from a medical point of view. As part of his research, he has initiated collaborations between architects and the medical profession. One of the results of this cooperation was his success in a grant competition and the award of a three-year GAČR project,Principles of Creating an Environment for People with Parkinson's Disease, which Jan Tomandl led and which was implemented in cooperation with the Neurological Clinic and the Centre of Clinical Neurosciences of the 1st Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Prague. The research started with an analysis of the key symptoms of Parkinson's disease and defining the possibilities of their conscious influence by the design of the surrounding environment. It was proved that in the case of episodic gait disturbances (freezing of gait), it is possible to use the possibility of stimulus strategies, spatial or temporal stimuli to influence movement. Based on the results of the research, the publication "Principles of Design of Space for People with Parkinson's Disease" and its English version "Design of Space for People with Parkinson's Disease" were published. The publication is accompanied by illustrative video materials presenting selected manifestations of typical symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Interest in the results of the research has been expressed mainly by physicians and other professionals involved in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease. This is evidenced by the fact that the article "Pavement Patterns Can Be Designed to Improve Gait in Parkinson's Disease Patients", co-authored by Jan Tomandl, was published in the journal Movement Disorders. Movement Disorders is the highly referenced official scientific journal of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society, covering all topics in the field – both clinical and basic science research. Jan Tomandl applies his knowledge and skills not only in practice in cooperation with organizations dealing with disability issues, but also in other grant projects. For example, in the TAČR Beta 2 project "Search for new methods to support the implementation of the principle of universal design in housing investment support", in which one of the results is a certified methodology for the application of the principles of universal design and lifelong living in residential housing.
Petr Štěpánek, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering
Petr Štěpánek is an exceptionally talented, active and hard-working student, whom a teacher encounters only a few times in his life, if he is lucky. Both the breadth and quality of his activities are admirable. In addition to semestral projects within the project-based learning of the Information and Communication Technologies in Medicine, Biomedical and Clinical Technology degree program, for which he regularly receives the "Best Semestral Project of the Year" award, he is engaged in a number of other activities, which are specifically presented on his website. Peter applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but unfortunately MIT did not permit any transfers this year due to the pandemic.
Ing. arch. Bc. Aneta Závodná, Masaryk Institute of Higher Studies
Ing. arch. Bc. Aneta Závodná is a graduate of the bachelor's degree program Specialization in Pedagogy, majoring in Teaching of Vocational Subjects. She defended her final thesis on 16 June 2021 and the committee proposed to the Director of the MUSS to award a commendation for the excellent preparation of her bachelor's thesis, which dealt with the issue of cheating. The author managed to prepare and conduct a quantitative empirical survey during the pandemic-related closures of universities, reaching out to students of public institutions across the country (646 respondents). The qualifying work of Aneta Závodná demonstrates a high didactic level of the theoretical section, compactness, a high-quality professional concept of the experimental section, and it presents highly interesting and practically applicable findings, the implementation of which can help reduce the rate of student cheating. Of particular interest is the analysis of teachers' attitudes towards the problem of cheating and the outline of specific recommendations for teachers in real situations. Aneta Závodná passed with distinction, with a weighted average of 1.23 for the whole study.
Ing. Antonín Krpenský, a PhD student at the Department of Physics of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University, was also awarded on the same occasion with the Electrotechnical Award of Prof. Ing. Daniel Mayer, DrSc., which is awarded to the best student of the Czech Electrical Engineering Faculties.
Ing. Antonín Krpenský graduated with honours from the Bachelor's and Master's degree programmes in Open Electronic Systems (in the field of High Frequency and Digital Technology) at the FEL CTU. He was ranked third in the list of all graduates of the FEL CTU Master's degree programme for the year 2020. He is currently studying the 2nd year of the PhD programme in Acoustics at the Department of Physics of FEL CTU, fulfilling the terms of his individual study programme and has an excellent grade (ø 1,0). He received the Dean's Prize for his bachelor thesis "Propagation of one-dimensional waves through locally periodic media" in 2018 and subsequently in 2020 for his master thesis "Description and analysis of elastic Love waves in an inhomogeneous isotropic layer". Antonín Krpenský is actively involved in teaching at the Department of Physics, FEL CTU, with positive evaluations in the student survey and besides that he teaches physics at the Gymnasium, Prague 9, Chodovická 2250. Among his research activities, he was a member of the team of the project GAČR 18-24954S "Propagation of acoustic waves by phononic materials and structures". He was the first author to prepare two scientific publications for reputable impacted journals during the first year of his PhD studies, demonstrating exceptional ability and creative thinking in the field of electrical engineering.
Photo, source: Josef, Marie and Zdeňka Hlávkas’ Talent
