The Rector's Award was presented at the ceremonial academic assembly of the Brno University of Technology: Our faculty celebrates extraordinary success

On Thursday, September 18, the Ceremonial Academic Assembly of BUT was held in the Rector's Hall – one day before the 126th anniversary of the founding of our university. The meeting was attended by members of the academic community, university staff, representatives of university organizations, and invited guests. VUT Rector Ladislav Janíček evaluated the past academic year and focused in particular on the concept of excellence: "I am convinced that excellence must be sought above all in our people, both employees and students. They are the essence and source of excellence at universities, because it is our people who achieve excellent results, and their talent and abilities are what fill the concept of university excellence with concrete content and determine its level of competitiveness."

The rector then presented awards to prominent figures who have contributed to the development of the University of Technology. And it is in the field of awards that the Faculty of Information Technology has achieved extraordinary success this year. Three Rector's Awards for outstanding scientific and artistic achievements went to our researchers, which, together with the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), is the best result within the university.

The award for Outstanding Conference Contribution with a Significant Impact on the Community was received by the co-authors of the article "Decentralized Planning Using Probabilistic Hyperproperties. 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS'25)" Associate Professor Milan Češka, Filip Macák, and Roman Andriushchenko. This contribution was awarded the Best Student Paper prize at the AAMAS 2025 conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems. You can find out more about the article and the background to its creation in our earlier article.

The award for Result with Exceptional Media Coverage went to Professor Jiří Jaroš, who led a research team that, in collaboration with University College London (UCL), contributed to the development of a groundbreaking diagnostic technology: an optical 3D photoacoustic scanner. This technology opens up new possibilities in the non-invasive diagnosis of vascular diseases, inflammatory skin conditions, and rheumatoid arthritis. More information on Professor Jaroš's work can be found here.

The third success, Award for significant results not covered by other awards, went to the team consisting of Vladimír Veselý, Daniel Dolejška, and Matěj Grégr for their project BAZAR: Building a community around the issue of cashless dark markets. The project, which focused on obtaining non-trivial information about the operation of dark markets and sharing this information among leading experts within Czech and European security forces, received the Minister of the Interior's Award for exceptional results in the field of security research, experimental development, and innovation at the end of last year.

The Rector of BUT also awarded seven gold, ten silver, and seven commemorative medals. Silver medals were awarded to the following members of the Faculty of Information Technology: Associate Professor Dušan Kolář for outstanding achievements in the fields of education, research, development, and innovation, and Associate Professor Kamil Malinka for the Security@FIT research team for outstanding achievements that contributed to the promotion of BUT in the fields of research, development, and innovation. The BUT commemorative medal for many years of professional, dedicated work in technical and organizational support at FIT BUT was presented by the rector to Mr. Zdeněk Juříček.

At the academic community meeting, the Rector's Awards were also presented to BUT students and graduates. Anton Firc received the award for outstanding results in scientific training in the form of doctoral studies; Adam Valík received the award for outstanding results during his bachelor's studies, and David Mihola received the award for outstanding results during his master's studies. Finally, Miroslav Šafář received the Award for a BUT graduate for outstanding results in master's studies.

We congratulate all the award winners and thank them for representing our faculty!

More information about the ceremony and the award winners can be found in an article on the BUT website by Petr Kubíček.