News

From June 9 to August 1, 2025, the Faculty of Information Technology of Brno University of Technology will serve as the venue for the gathering of dozens of leading global experts in the field of speech and language technologies. The 32nd edition of the prestigious Jelinek Summer Workshop on Speech and Language Technology (JSALT) is organized by Johns Hopkins University (Maryland, USA), this year in cooperation with partners of the European ESPERANTO project. This edition is co-organized by FIT BUT and the company Phonexia, with the support of OP JAK (Operational Programme Johannes Amos Comenius) and under the patronage of the City of Brno and the South Moravian Region. For our faculty, this is a major recognition, closely related to the long-term and internationally highly successful work of the BUT Speech@FIT research group.

The workshop itself will be preceded by a summer school from June 9 to June 20, offering lectures on topics related to speech technologies and natural language processing filled with practical sessions and hand-on. The lectures will be also available to the broader public interested in the field as video-stream on YouTube. The content of the summer school will be presented by the senior participants of the workshop and invited experts.

The six-week research workshop itself (June 23 – August 1) will host more than 100 researchers from around the world, including prominent figures such as Ricard Marxer (University of Toulon), Ramani Duraiswami (University of Maryland), Samuele Cornell (Carnegie Mellon University), Yannick Estève (Laboratoire d'Informatique d'Avignon) and Fethi Bougares (Elyadata). Participants are divided into four teams, each focusing on a selected research topic. Two of the teams are led by researchers from FIT BUT: Assoc. Prof. Lukáš Burget and Dr. Santosh Kesiraju. For this year’s edition, the following core topics have been selected by community and sponsors:

• Play your Part: Towards LLM role-playing agents that stick to their role
• Advancing Expert-Level Reasoning and Understanding in Large Audio Language Models
• End to End Multi-Channel Multi-Talker ASR, EMMA
• TTS4ALL: TTS in Low Resource Scenarios – Data Management, Methodology, Models, Evaluation

The workshop’s goal is not only to push the boundaries of research once again, but also to foster international scientific collaboration and involve students at all levels. Each team includes senior researchers, PhD students, and undergraduate students, providing an exceptional opportunity for expert mentoring. A key criterion for workshop outcomes is also the openness of results, particularly in terms of open-source contributions.

The workshop is named after Bedřich/Frederick Jelinek (1932–2010), a Czech-American scientist from Kladno and a pioneer in speech recognition research, who for many years led the Center for Language and Speech Processing at Johns Hopkins University. It is therefore symbolic that this event bearing his name will be held at FIT BUT, a faculty that – thanks to the contributions of figures such as Hynek Heřmanský, Jan Černocký, and Lukáš Burget – has become one of the world's leading centers in AI and machine learning for speech data mining.

The three largest universities in Brno invite those interested in space technologies to the third edition of the Brno Space Student Conference, which they are jointly organizing on Wednesday, April 16, at the rectorate of Brno University of Technology. The one-day event's program will feature lectures on systems engineering, satellite payloads, company presentations, a poster session, and networking. Admission is free for students. Registration is required here.

The field of space technologies is one of the fastest-growing industrial sectors in the Czech Republic. Since 2008, when the country became a member of the European Space Agency (ESA), Czech companies have been increasingly involved in European projects, particularly in the development of satellite subsystems and small satellites.

With the growth of the Czech space industry, the demand for qualified professionals is rising. One response to this is the Space Applications study program at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication (FEKT) at BUT. Promising developments include the growing community of student space associations and the involvement of students in the space industry through internships. Additionally, crucial STEM promotion activities are being carried out at the elementary and high school levels. Another major motivator is the upcoming space mission featuring a Czech astronaut.

This is just a small sample of activities linked to the Czech space ecosystem, which is on the rise. For #brnoregion, home to many specialized companies and universities offering related education, this is even more significant. It is therefore natural that BUT, MUNI, and MENDELU continue to organize the Brno student conference on space activities in collaboration with the Brno Space Cluster and other partners.

The goal of the conference is to develop a platform for networking, discussions, and collaboration—not only among university student teams but also between universities, the commercial sector, and other partners utilizing space applications in various ways. The event will showcase current and upcoming projects in space engineering, technology, and research. More about the program

Who is welcome? The event is especially aimed at bachelor's, master's, and doctoral students, academic and research staff from universities and research institutes, representatives of industry-related companies, as well as other interested individuals, including high school graduates. Don't forget to register or submit your poster! (by April 4)

Brno Space Student Conference 2025 (event website)

For the 16th time, the city of Brno has awarded young scientists from Brno universities. At a festive meeting on Wednesday 19 March at Brno's New Town Hall, they received cheques for the further development of their research. Among the 25 awardees are Michala Hečka and David Chocholatý from the Department of Intelligent Systems.

Improving software with logic is Michal Hečka's motto. Logic and its use in formal verification, which he is involved in, is an area of theoretical computer science with important practical implications. "When the cost of computer error is high, we turn to formal verification to mathematically prove that the software behaves as we expect. However, the foundations of formal verification logic and decision procedures are fraught with scalability problems, causing huge increases in computation time and inefficiencies in the algorithms used for real-world applications. My project addresses these problems with the aim of paving the way to safe and robust software," explains Michal, adding: "I see living in safety and comfort as a privilege and believe that I should spend my time responsibly by using my curiosity and thirst for knowledge to try to move our society forward."

David Chocholatý focuses on developing methods for systematically discovering bugs in web applications. Together with his colleagues, he uses tools from automata theory, which is also part of theoretical computer science. "Our approach is the fastest in the world, which gives us a unique opportunity to overcome current obstacles and uncover many vulnerabilities. In addition, the project will also help in the areas of verification of control systems for the aerospace industry or in setting access rights to cloud solutions," David explains his research, adding his motivation, "Curiosity and the desire to understand the world around us is what advances us as humanity, and I am happy to be part of this progress."