The Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering has elected its dean for another four years. Doc. Ing. Václav Čuba, Ph.D., will once again head the faculty for the 2026–2030 term. The election took place on December 8 at a meeting of the Academic Community, where all sixteen senators present voted for the candidate.
"I am extremely honored to have been elected for my second term, and I appreciate the trust of the Academic Senate and the entire Academic Community of FJFI. I will continue the work I started four years ago," said Václav Čuba after his election.
Since its inception, FJFI has been the guarantor of nuclear engineer education in Czechia and, as a leading educational and scientific institution, ranks among the best in Europe. The faculty prides itself on its family environment and high ratio of academic and scientific staff to students, whom it actively involves in research work. "Only a small number of students graduate from our faculty each year, but they find employment in a wide range of fields and areas of human activity," added Čuba.
In his second term, he wants to continue developing the faculty and the work he has begun in recent years. "We have managed to fulfill a significant part of the program from the previous term. However, this does not mean that there is no need to continue working on them," he explained. Under his leadership, for example, the second VR-2 school nuclear reactor was put into operation in 2023, new master's programs in teaching were opened, and the school also celebrated its 70th anniversary this year.
The main priorities of the newly elected dean include further strengthening science and research as key areas of the faculty. He is building on the excellent evaluation of the scientific and research activities of the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering by the International Evaluation Panel and wants to systematically support areas in which the school has long demonstrated a high level of excellence, particularly nuclear disciplines and quantum sciences and technologies. At the same time, he will focus on areas where reserves have been identified, such as obtaining prestigious grants or transferring research results into practice. He wants to support the development of new interdisciplinary topics, such as medical engineering, detector development, and quantum imaging, and strengthen cooperation between departments and with domestic and foreign partners.
An important part of the program is also the area of teaching and personnel policy. The management wants to focus on new accreditations of study programs, clarifying their structure, and more efficient organization of teaching, including more intensive use of electronic tools. It wants to support study in English and newly opened teacher training programs.
In the area of human resources, the program focuses on transparent career development for employees, support for young academics and talented students, improving salary conditions, and better work-life balance. "I consider adequate wage growth to be the most important issue in the coming years, especially in the categories of assistant professors and junior researchers (doctoral students). I will also strive for wage cohesion across the departments and workplaces of our faculty," he added.
He also wants to strengthen the infrastructure, for example by providing relaxation rooms for parents with children, shared teaching and laboratory spaces, modernizing equipment, completing the construction of the computing cluster in Děčín, and purchasing new fuel for VR-1.
Václav Čuba graduated from FJFI, where he has also been teaching for more than twenty years. Since 2011, he has headed the Center for Radiochemistry and Radiation Chemistry at FJFI. In 2014, he became vice-dean for development, and in 2022, he took the position of dean of the faculty. He has devoted most of his scientific career to basic and applied research in the fields of radiation chemistry, photochemistry, and nanotechnology. He has co-authored more than 90 scientific articles, eight national patents, and four book chapters. He gained international experience, for example, through his collaboration with CERN on the development of scintillators for modern detectors in medicine and high-energy physics, and with Université Grenoble Alpes on the preclinical testing of special nanomedicines.
At Jaderka, he is the guarantor of the master's program in Nuclear Chemistry and, in addition to three lectures, he also supervises a number of bachelor's and master's theses.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)