Reports

One of the biggest scientific and popular events in the Czech Republic, the Night of Scientists, took place on Friday 24 September. CTU offered its visitors interesting demonstrations at several of its faculties and university institutes, and the rich programme is still available online.

The Kaplicky Internship 2021 architecture competition has published its results. The jury was won by Valerie Heyworth, a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University, with her project Czech House in Taiwan. The winner will spend three months on a fully-funded internship at the leading London studio Amanda Levete Architects.

How to predict the weather with the greatest accuracy just 24 hours in advance? Cooperating with the meteorological company Meteopress, scientists from the Faculty of Information Technology of the Czech Technical University in Prague (FIT CTU) are looking for an answer. They are using the capabilities of artificial intelligence to speed up and refine the forecast. Until now, a huge number of computers have been used for forecasting, which can now be greatly simplified thanks to artificial intelligence. This can also be used for sudden meteorological events, such as the tornado in Moravia.

The final round of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge organized by the US Department of Defense earned the Czech team performing under the CTU-CRAS-NORLAB banner a podium position in the robot battle in a virtual environment - in a robotic simulator. Among the ten best robotic teams in the world, the team took second place, for which it was awarded $500,000. The results were announced by DARPA on Friday 24 September at a ceremony in Louisville, Kentucky, United States.

During the World Speed Canoe Championships in Montemor, Portugal, kayaker Anežka Paloudová finished second in the kilometre race. In the final she was only beaten by Hungary's Emese Kohalmi.

The Faculty of Civil Engineering opened its two largest lecture halls after their complete reconstruction on Tuesday, 21 September. The ribbon cutting ceremony was attended by the Rector of CTU in Prague doc. Vojtěch Petráček, Dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering prof. Jiří Máca and Director of the Investment Department of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic Ing. Yveta Kurfürstová. The reconstruction started in June 2020 and was completed in March this year. The auditorium can now seat up to 540 students.

The winners of the 9th annual student competition Buildings with the smell of wood 2021, organized by the Wood for Life Foundation, were announced at the Autoclub of the Czech Republic in Prague on Thursday 16 September 2021. Total of 65 Czech-Slovak students from 9 Czech and 7 foreign faculties (from Slovakia, Denmark and Italy) took part in the competition focused on wooden construction in the Czech Republic and produced 57 entries. The expert jury, the public and the partners of the competition selected 8 winners, who shared the prizes worth 200 000 CZK. This year the students competed in two categories: wooden buildings - small and wooden buildings - large.

Initial experiments in the new lab show that mobile networks of the future will allow significantly more devices to communicate with each other than existing 5G networks. Solutions based on deep neural networks to control communication in 6G networks can contribute to, among other things, improved safety in automotive and rail transport, more efficient emergency services and the further development of 'smart cities'.

The Memorandum of Cooperation was concluded between the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC CTU) and the Prague Innovation Institute (Pii) in January 2021. Now the cooperation has materialized several times on specific projects that bring added value to the residents of Prague. The first project will help schools to develop support programmes for teachers in the field of polytechnic education. The second aims to create a tool for early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.

The 11th annual University Eights, which took place on 17 September on Prague's Rašínovo nábřeží embankment, was won by Charles University among students. In neither of the final races was the winner completely unambiguous, especially for the men it was a drama until the last metres. Only after the finishing straight could the students of Karlovy Vary University raise their hands in relief.