News

The goal of information exchange between academia and industry is also pursued by the Industry Council at the Faculty of Information Technology. The advisory working group meets at least once a year with the participation of nearly two dozen representatives of the faculty's corporate partners. The most recent meeting took place on Thursday, October 30, 2025, shortly before the start of the important Žijeme IT conference at FIT.

The opening remarks of the meeting between faculty management and representatives of major IT companies were given by the Vice-Dean for Marketing and External Relations, Vítězslav Bran, who emphasized the importance of such meetings. "Of course, as a faculty of a technical university, we need to know where the practice of information technology is. It is important feedback for teaching and research at the faculty," said Beran, summarizing the role of the event. According to him, the essence of partnership with the faculty lies in preparing students for the job market in the best possible way. This goes hand in hand with foreign internships for students, which should also be supported by the companies themselves. The dean of the faculty, Petr Hanáček, followed up with a presentation of the faculty's strategic goals, highlighting two key projects: the development of supercomputing technologies and the Czech AI Factory consortium, in which experts from FIT play a key role; and a fresh major impetus in the form of quantum informatics and the Quantum Innovation Center association, which can be considered a key project for the future of the Czech Republic in the field of quantum computers and post-quantum cryptography, and whose members also include BUT. Quantum computing, quantum communication, and post-quantum encryption are research areas in which FIT definitely has something to say, thanks to the work of researchers such as Ondřej Lengál.

The most significant part of the Industry Council meeting was taken up by a discussion in which representatives of corporate partners took part. Kamila Zahradníčková, CEO of the successful startup Lakmoos, highlighted the support for startups and the transformation of communication with the university environment in general over the last 10 years. She thanked the Faculty of Information Technology for its helpful cooperation and specifically mentioned the high quality of the faculty's graduates, from whom Lakmoos selects candidates for cooperation. Radek Vokál, senior product manager at Red Hat, continued in a similar vein, pointing out the advantage that IT students already know about major employers during their studies and can establish cooperation, for example, on study projects and research topics. More information for industry partners would be welcomed by representatives of this company and others from the faculty's research groups.

The quality and professional preparedness of FIT graduates was praised by the CEO of Phonexia, Mrs. Markéta Lőrinczy, who particularly appreciated the close cooperation with faculty "speech therapists" led by Professor Jan Černocký. An interesting debate ensued after a contribution by Vojtěch Filip from Tescan Group, who highlighted semiconductors as an important area of preparation for future graduates. In response, it was noted that, unfortunately, students generally have less interest in hardware, i.e., the fact that "green boards" do not easily arouse the enthusiasm of students. Dean Petr Hanáček emphasized in his response that although universities abroad often do not offer better departments or laboratories, they are able to generate greater interest in hardware topics. Motivating young men and women to take an interest in semiconductors, for example, could be a joint task for faculties and the private sector.

At the very end, the topic of soft skills of IT graduates was opened. Representatives of Škoda Auto, Markéta Jarošová and Leoš Červený, pointed out the increasing complexity of IT fields and the related fact that practice requires professionals with teamwork and leadership skills. And that it is precisely these prerequisites that university education should develop. It was noted that FIT has projects for teams of several members in a number of compulsory courses, where students gain the aforementioned experience. Although they themselves perceive the importance of teamwork, it is still challenging for a significant number of them. Finally, an interesting observation was made that IT fields in the Netherlands include project work as a matter of course.

Of course, more topics were discussed. Their number alone proves that the Industry Council and other activities aimed at strengthening contacts between industry and the university environment are definitely important.

We would like to thank all participants of Thursday's meeting and look forward to future ones.

For many experts, putting research results into practice is a key goal of their efforts. And rightly so. The most authoritative expert spoke about technology transfer at several public events this week. Associate Professor Jan Kořenek, head of the Accelerated Network Technologies Research Group, described his experiences from long-term cooperation with the CESNET association in the field of cybersecurity for high-speed networks (e.g., the topic of probes operating on external CESNET network links for incident detection). He also presented the case of the extremely successful university spin-off DynaNIC Semiconductors, which has its roots at FIT BUT. This technology company focuses on the development of advanced network solutions based on the use of FPGA technologies, which significantly accelerate network traffic processing by transferring demanding network operations from the processor to programmable network cards with data transfer rates of up to 400 Gb/s. DynaNIC thus offers a possible answer to the challenges associated with the rapid development of AI and the increase in the volume of data transmitted. Last year and this year, the company not only attracted repeated interest from investors, but also won the prestigious Disrupt Awards competition.

Kořenek presented these results of linking academic research and industrial practice at three events held last week in Prague for professionals and the general public. At least one of them brought another great success.

On Monday, October 20, he presented the topic "Czech Network Security Research" at the seventh annual Czechia-Taiwan Technology Days. He described the entire innovation ecosystem of cooperation between universities, CESNET as a unique testing environment, and technology transfer to spin-off companies and technology firms. He also described research outputs linked to universities, not only those from FIT BUT.

Just one day later, he presented the technology startup and BUT spin-off DynaNIC at the ECSO (European Cybersecurity Organisation) Cyber Investor Days 2025. And the result was definitely worth it: based on the presentation, DynaNIC, together with Logmanager, was selected among the finalists of the ECSO European Cybersecurity STARtup Award. The final of the competition is scheduled to take place next year in Brussels. The event has been held since 2020 and focuses on the most promising European startups in the field of cybersecurity with the aim of providing them with opportunities to gain visibility, attract investment, and establish business contacts at the European level.

Finally, on Wednesday, Jan Kořenek took part in a major international investment conference called the Engaged Investments Conference, specifically its panel discussion focused on technology transfer. He was joined by representatives of investment funds David Photien, Miloš Sochor, and Anssi Uimonen in the block "How to Access Deeptech Startups: Venture Capital and Technology Transfer." The conference was attended by 300 investors and people interested in venture capital in Central Europe, with a focus on deep tech, AI, and critical infrastructure.

Technology transfer is an important role of universities. We would like to thank Jan Kořenek for doing his utmost in this regard.

Thanks to the efforts of the Security@FIT research group, and specifically Kamil Malinka, FIT students have been given the opportunity to participate in the CyberHeroes Academy project free of charge. This project has been successfully implemented for some time by the Slovak company Binary Confidence in cooperation with educational institutions in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The event is intended for young talents in the field of IT and cyber security, but does not require any prior in-depth professional knowledge.

The main goal of the project is to offer students real-life experience with cyber defense and attacks in a safe, simulated environment. The organizers aim to increase general cyber vigilance and awareness in society.

How does it all work? The project runs in several phases:

1. Participant registration: students register using the form on the CyberHeroes Academy website. 
2. Qualification phase for registered participants, which takes place online. Qualification can be completed from October 29, 2025, to November 18, 2025 (00:00). Participants earn points for completing tasks. Successful participants then advance to the finals.
3. The finals themselves will take place directly at FIT: three days of competition between teams of attackers and defenders, led by experts, with catering provided on site. When? November 25–27, 2025, starting at 9:00 a.m. each day. The event will also include accompanying lectures on topics such as security incident analysis and cyber threat simulation. The winning team will receive interesting technological prizes. The most valuable player will then have the opportunity to advance to the academy finals with the prospect of an internship at Binary Confidence.

Take advantage of the opportunity to try your hand at defending against cyber attacks in a simulated environment that is both challenging and safe.