Reports

The opening ceremony of the new CTU - CIIRC building was held on 2 May. This important event was attended by CTU rector Petr Konvalinka, the director of the Institute, Vladimír Mařík, the President of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman, the Prime Minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, HOCHTIEF CZ Board member Tomas Koranda, VCES General Director Zdeněk Pokorný, and also robots used by CTU for scientific and research purposes.

Commencing 26 April, CTU students and employees have the opportunity to use a new information system, the CTU Portal. It was created within the framework of one of the partial aims of CTU information strategy by the Department of Information Systems at the rectorate.

The Hall of the Year Akademik 2017 competition was held on 20 April by the Faculty of Civil Engineering, CTU. The task was to create a model of the building from designated materials and to subject the model to a demanding load test. The victory criterion was the efficiency of the model, the ratio between the bearing capacity and the weight of the model. The design of the winning team, the students of Helena Cuřínová from the Faculty of Architecture and Jan Mládek from the Faculty of Civil Engineering, weighed only 139 grams and carried a load of 42,454 kilograms.

Thanks to the long-term development at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering´s Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction, Naviterier, a unique navigation application for the blind, was created. Its main authors are Zdeněk Míkovec and Jan Balata. The navigation uses the accurately mapped documentation of the ROUTE4ALL project. The blind is informed, for example, about the shapes of the corners of the streets or the slope and width of the pavement. The application will be available for download in the summer of 2017, but can now be pre-ordered on the web. Those who register before the end of April will have Naviterier free for half a year.

In the week of April 3 to 7, with significant expert contribution of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics at Czech Technical University, a robotic mission to Japan was held. Its aim was to expand scientific cooperation under the Industry 4.0 to establish closer contacts with similar Japanese initiative, Robotic Revolution Initiative.

The European Commission and Europa Nostra introduced winners of the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards 2017 on 5 April. Among them is the “Advanced Masters in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions” (SAHC) degree course which is an advanced master's degree in engineering analysis of historical monuments and structures.

Czech Science Institute of Robotics and Cybernetics, together with other important partners - CEITEC-VUT, DFKI and ZeMa, successfully passed the first round of the H2020 call of the Teaming Program. Thanks to this, it receives a grant of € 400,000 for development of Czech-German Industry 4.0 research center. In the second round, the consortium will seek grants totaling up to € 30 mil. for the center operations and related investments.

Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a consulting company, updated the sectoral rankings of universities for the year 2017. They show that in the Czech Republic, the Czech Technical University in Prague have been evaluated as the best institution in five fields. The survey included 4,438 universities around the world. CTU in Prague is now among the best universities in the world in seven of the 46 branches and two thematic areas.

Czech Technical University in Prague, along with a dozen foreign partners become part of the European project DA-SPACE. It secures conditions for implementin of new ideas and innovation. The aim of the DA-SPACE project (Open Innovation to Raise Entrepreneurship Skills and Public Private Partnership in the Danube Region), namely the Danube Transnational Interreg Program, is the creation of open innovation labs to support young innovators and their ideas set within the Danube river region.

Despite the adverse weather conditions on Saturday, 18 March, the Fík 2 stratospheric balloon was successfully launched at the Dlouha Lhota airport Příbram, carrying a new dosimetry system for research of cosmic radiation in the upper atmosphere in its gondola. The mechanical components of the new dosimeter were printed on a 3D printer developed by the Department of Radiation Dosimetry Institute of Nuclear Physics at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Students from the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering were also involved in its development, led by the department staff. They worked on programming of the measuring device, the detector response to neutron field modeling, modelling of the balloon suspension filled with helium, practiced searching for the system in the field and also on the technical background of the project.