Reports

From July 8 to 14, government representative Tomáš Kopečný traveled to Ukraine with an accompanying business delegation. The Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics of the Czech Technical University was represented here by the scientist and initiator of institute’s assistance with the reconstruction of Ukraine, Kryštof Šulc.

On 20 July 2023, CTU Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering hosted a delegation of MEPs headed by Alexander Vondra, Member of the European Parliament. The visitors were welcomed by the Dean of the faculty doc. Václav Čuba directly at the reactor hall in the building at V Holešovičách street .The MEPs then visited the school's VR-1 reactor and the youngest nuclear reactor in the Czech Republic, VR-2, launched on 6 June 2023.

Our CTU CarTech student team has won the Formula Student event at Assen, in the Netherlands. With its improved hybrid drive, the team team triumphed in seven of the eight disciplines and came second in the remaining discipline. FS.15, the first monocoque in the world with a hybrid drive, also took first place in the overall assessment. We congratulate the construction team on their great success!

Information technology is no longer just a male domain. Even recent graduates of the IT Summer School have experienced this for themselves. Girls from high school tried out basics of many areas of IT during a week-long course organized by Czechitas in cooperation with Faculty of Information Technology of the Czech Technical University in Prague (FIT CTU). They then put their knowledge of programming, vector graphics, robotics or project management to good use in the creation of their final projects. Their presentations and demonstrations took place at the gala evening in front of the expert jury.

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The expected press release from Amazon has delighted not only the students who are developing the Alquist conversational bot at CTU Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics as part of the fifth annual Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge (SGC5), but also all their fans who follow the competition closely this year. Chatbot Alquist is once again one of the finalists, and in early August we will find out if the team, which has been participating in the competition since its inception, will defend last year's victory.

Experts from Faculty of Electrical Engineering, in cooperation with scientists from the Czech Academy of Sciences, managed to capture a lightning bolt whose size exceeded the boundary of a larger size county and which lasted several seconds. Research into the complexity and duration of natural discharges has confirmed that lightning bolts are significantly larger and last much longer than previously thought. They can also be detected much more frequently than was possible with existing conventional methods, thanks to the new ground-based measurement method.

Agrovoltaics is looking forward to better times. It will be laid down in law and farmers will no longer have to choose whether to use their land for growing crops or generating electricity. The amendment to the Act on the Protection of the Agricultural Land Fund, prepared by the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic (MEP), provides for this. It will not only contribute to its own energy independence, but will also increase the usability of agricultural land. The problem remains the relationship between agrovoltaics and spatial planning, which is the responsibility of the Ministry of Regional Development of the Czech Republic (MMR).

The European university alliance EuroTeQ can continue its joint training of engineers. The EU has extended funding for the successful program until 2027. Under the leadership of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), EuroTeQ is dedicated to expand the cooperation between eight universities in the future, in the areas of study, teaching, research and lifelong learning.

The Thai ambassador to the Czech Republic, J. E. Phasporn Sangasubana today visited the Czech Technical University in Prague and had a meeting with CTU rector Vojtěch Petráček.