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13. Dec. 2023
Each year, the celebration of the International Students’ Day and the commemoration of the Velvet Revolution is preceded by the awarding of the Josef, Marie and Zdeňka Hlávka Foundation Award for talented students under the age of 33. This year's award ceremony took place on 16 November at the Josef Hlávka Chateau in Lužany u Přeštic and the prize associated with a contribution of CZK 25,000 was also awarded to Jakub Vrábel from CEITEC University of Technology.
The Josef, Marie and Zdeňka Hlávka Foundation, commonly known as the Hlávka Foundation, is the oldest existing Czech foundation, founded on 25 January 1904 by the prominent architect and builder Josef Hlávka. After 1953, the foundation could exist only formally by the decision of the communist government. Its activity was fully restored thanks to changes in the society after 1989. The mission of the Foundation is to support the scientific, literary and artistic endeavours of the Czech nation, to contribute to the satisfaction of its cultural needs and to support gifted students of Czech public universities who may be in need of funding, all in accordance with the will of the founder of the Foundation. The Josef Hlávka Prize for the best students and graduates is awarded on the proposal of the rectors to students and graduates of Prague public universities, Brno students of science and technology and young talented staff of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
This year, a total of six students or graduates of the BUT, who are engaged in demanding scientific and technical fields in which they achieve exceptional results, received the award.
Jakub Vrábel is a student of the PhD programme Advanced Nanotechnologies and Microtechnologies at CEITEC BUT, where he works in the Laboratory of Laser Spectroscopy. His research focuses on the connection between physics and machine learning. The goal is to use physics principles and models to interpret artificial neural networks, and also to use information about the physics of the studied problems to improve the algorithms used for scientific data.
"Congratulations to our students and thanks to the Foundation, whose prizes enable us to reward the most talented students who, through their achievements in study or research, I believe, are heading towards becoming future professionals in their respective fields. We are very honoured that Mr Josef Hlávka, this prominent supporter of Czech higher education, in his generous bequest in the Foundation's mission statement, remembered the Brno University of Technology, the then only Czech university in Brno, and made it possible for our students to compete for Foundation awards today along with universities in Prague. I am convinced that after they have graduated and started their professional careers, the awarded students of our technical programmes will become a significant and much-needed contribution to the Czech industry," said Ladislav Janíček, the Rector of the BUT, who also attended the award ceremony.
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