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The new Covid without Barriers web application aims to facilitate vaccination and testing for persons with reduced mobility. The application is the brainchild of two FIT students - Josef Kolář and Peter Uhrín. The app, which was originally developed as a part of the WAP course, allows users to find wheelchair-accessible vaccination and testing sites on an interactive map.

Covid without Barriers is the only application that processes this information. "We need to give the vaccine to as many people as possible. There are a number of apps dealing with pandemic-related data, but when we were researching them, we noticed that none of them made it possible for us to directly display wheel-chair accessible sites," says Josef Kolář, describing how the idea came about.

The app, whose features and name the students discussed with the community of its potential users, accesses publicly available data through an API. The map shows wheelchair-accessible testing and vaccination sites at specific locations, and for each of these sites, a detail can be viewed that includes its address, services provided and references to detailed information in government-run applications. "It is also possible to search for sites based on the user's geographical location or address. The application also provides filters for individual site categories, so it is possible to display only vaccination or testing sites," explains Peter Uhrín.

According to him, the most challenging part was to create a simple and accessible user interface; it also took some time to test and optimise the app for mobile devices. The app is now fully deployed and is being used by dozens of people.

The efforts to minimise bugs in computer programs are a very hot topic. Bugs which are not found and corrected before deployment can cause great economic losses and even loss of life. The interest in automated bug-hunting techniques is therefore growing across industries, incentivising an intensive development of new bug hunting methods and tools. "Verification and bug hunting for advanced software" was also the topic of the ROBUST project led by Tomáš Vojnar from FIT and Jan Kofroň from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University. The project was funded by the Czech Science Foundation, on whose website you can read a recent article (in Czech) about the project. Researchers from FIT and MFF UK will pursue their research in this area further, among others within the follow-up project Snappy, also funded by the Czech Science Foundation.

The Faculty of Information Technology expressed its support for the best business ideas which succeeded in the Booster-Challenge@FIT competition by awarding them with a total of 140 thousand Czech crowns. The committee, which evaluated the start-up projects mainly in terms of the uniqueness of the solution, business potential and social benefit, awarded prizes to three teams. The prize was awarded to four FIT students who created the Discyo app. Their app can give the user advice on what film to watch, what podcast to listen to or what videogame to play. The algorithm can recognise the user's preferences and what he or she might like across various media (this app has already succeeded in the BUT Student Entrepreneurial Spirit Award competition; you can read more about it HERE). The committee also awarded a prize to a project of the team led by Jan Polišenský, who works on a learning portal intended to prepare prospective students for the medical school entrance examination. The Medikem.cz server contains a huge database of test questions focusing on biology, chemistry and physics which cover the knowledge necessary to pass the entrance examination and offer personalized mock tests. The third laureate is Adam Ferencz. His project titled "Learning Triangle" is a platform providing peer tutoring with professional mentors. The competition is a part of the Star(t)up@FIT programme, which now supports further development of the awarded projects.