Immediately after his election, the new 97th rector of CTU, Michal Pěchouček, stated: "CTU has everything it needs to succeed in tough international competition."
He considers the basic prerequisites for success to be a university built on talented and successful people, innovative use of AI and new technologies, the credibility of the school, stable economic development in dynamic times, and responsible management and development of entrusted assets. The new rector also considers it essential to increase the number of scientific citations and high-quality publications and to intensify scientific work in general.
According to him, CTU should be a place that attracts the most talented students and where the best students receive the highest quality and most relevant education. He also considers the development of infrastructure, decent student housing, and campus development to be important. He wants to lead the university in such a way that each future generation of CTU students can be more successful than the previous one.
Prof. Michal Pěchouček is a graduate of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at CTU, where he has been working as an academic since 1998. In 2000, he founded the Center for Artificial Intelligence, which he still leads today. He gained international academic experience in California, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has been a member of the senior management of several major multinational technology companies, but also has experience in technology transfer and start-up founding, as well as from his position as an investor. He boasts a high number of citations (h-index 41 in Google Scholar) and is a philanthropist, sponsoring, among other things, the People in Need educational program One World in Schools. In 2023, he received the Karel Kramář Medal from the Prime Minister for his lifetime achievements in research and science.
In February next year, Pěchouček will replace Vice-Rector Zbyněk Škvor, who is currently in charge of CTU after the CTU Academic Senate dismissed the previous rector, Vojtěch Petráček, in May this year. However, he will immediately begin working with him on the handover of all university affairs, which comprise eight faculties and six institutes and which is the largest and most prestigious technical university in the country.
The election of the new rector took place on the duly announced date (in accordance with the resolution of the Academic Senate from its 22nd meeting in December 2024), as the second term of the dismissed rector Petráček was ending in January 2026.
Translated with DeepL.com