The Faculty of Information Technology will offer seventeen new specialisations. By doing so it reacts to the needs of the market

In the future, the Faculty of Information Technology of BUT wishes to accommodate the needs of the fastest-developing field. As from the next academic year, the faculty plans to prepare seventeen new specialisations for students who wish to earn the Ing. academic degree from a follow-up Master's programme. The faculty has already applied for the relevant accreditation. It also aims to prepare its graduates for new trends that will emerge in this field in the future.

Today, information technology is a very sought-after field, but it is also very specific in terms of the speed of its development. New technologies and related professions and specialisations are emerging at a very rapid pace. "It seems that programmers with knowledge of current technology will experience no shortage of work opportunities in the coming years. Nevertheless, this might not be enough. In order for IT professionals to retain the ability to react to new or even currently unknown trends which emerge all the time in this field, they need a broader and more general set of knowledge and skills that will enable them to keep up with technological developments," said Pavel Zemčík, the Dean of FIT BUT.

Keeping up with technological development at any point of their careers

The students should acquire such skills in the Master's programme which is currently being prepared and which will offer seventeen specialisations. The aim of the programme is to provide a solid set of general skills and knowledge, allow the students to specialise and, at the same time, to react to current trends in the fields of information technology and artificial intelligence. This allows graduates to acquire deep knowledge in the given specialisations but also provides them with general skills, competences and way of thinking that will stand the test of time. "Thanks to this, the graduates will be able to keep up with technological development and to find jobs in creative positions at any point of their careers and anywhere in the world," added Pavel Zemčík, the Dean of FIT BUT.

Newly prepared specialisations of the IT and AI Master's programme

•          Bioinformatics and Biocomputing
•          Information Systems and Databases
•          Intelligent Systems
•          Intelligent Devices
•          Cyberphysical Systems
•          Cybersecurity
•          Mathematical Methods
•          Computer Graphics and Interactions
•          Computer Networks
•          Computer Vision
•          Software Engineering
•          Machine Learning
•          High Performance Computing
•          Software Verification and Testing
•          Embedded Systems
•          Application Development
•          Speech and Natural Language Processing

Among other things, the faculty prepares various activities to support its students, such as the support of individual creative activities in technical and scientific fields or support of founding start-up companies. For example, all successful solvers of laboratory tasks will receive an embedded computer but students also have access to fully equipped laboratories.

Practical experience

In preparing this change to the study programme, the Faculty of Information Technology also based its work on the experience of a number of its industrial partners with whom it co-operates in the areas of research and development and education. In its application, the faculty utilised the institutional accreditation of BUT The Brno University of Technology acquired the institutional accreditation in 2019 as the first technology-oriented higher education institution in the Czech Republic - the accreditation enables it to approve its own study programmes and thus better respond to educational needs and the needs of the labour market.

Applicants for Ing. degree studies may enrol in the Master's programme until 15 April. "As the accreditation process for the new Master's programme is still ongoing, the admission procedure is open for the current Master's programme. Nevertheless, we will allow the newly accepted students to transfer to the new programme as soon as it is approved in the academic year 2019/2020," explained Pavel Zemčík, the Dean of the faculty. New students will have the unique opportunity to choose between the current and the new study programme.

All students of the final year of Bachelor's studies at FIT whose grade-point average from compulsory courses is 2.499 and below will be exempt from admission examination. Others will have to pass a written examination covering the study materials of the Bachelor's study programme held on 7 June 2019. Master's courses passed by students of FIT during their Bachelor's studies beyond the scope of the compulsory 180-credit quota will be recognised.