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On Wednesday, November 19, 2025, the grand finale of the 16th edition of the prestigious international competition IT SPY took place, which selects the best theses in the field of computer science and information technology from leading Czech and Slovak universities. Theses from FIT often participate in the final round and end up at the top of the competition. This was confirmed again this year, when David Mihola, currently a doctoral student at the Institute of Computer Graphics and Multimedia, advanced to the final stage of the competition with his thesis "Smart Camera for Monitoring Objects of Interest." David ultimately placed in a respectable 4th–8th place out of dozens of submitted projects. The overall winner of the competition was Aneta Furmanová from FEL ČVUT with her work "Modeling the properties of the band structure of sonic crystals using machine learning," which focuses on the design of acoustic structures for reducing noise pollution with the help of AI.

David commented on his result and its context for us: "I think the winning project really deserved to win. And, of course, all the others were also very interesting. Unfortunately, my internet connection dropped out during the demo of my prototype. If the presentation had been successful, I believe my thesis would also have made it onto the podium." He had already described the focus of his work for the faculty website: "My thesis shows that even on a small, battery-powered device, it is now possible to solve demanding artificial intelligence tasks – specifically, detecting vehicles and reading their license plates. This paves the way not only for independently functioning smart sensors, but also for devices to become part of larger systems, such as smart city infrastructure."

The IT SPY 2025 ceremony began in the morning with public presentations of the finalists' work and culminated in the evening with the announcement of the winners in the refectory of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University in Prague. The overall winner of the IT SPY competition received a prize of €2,000 from Profinit, which she can use, for example, to further develop her thesis project. The supervisor of the winning project received €200 as a thank you for the excellent preparation of his student.

We believe that FIT's successes in recent years will continue in 2026. Congratulations to David Mihola and sincere thanks for representing the faculty!

On Sunday, November 16, 2025, the Josef, Marie, and Zdeňka Hlávka Foundation awarded the Josef Hlávka Prize. This prize is awarded annually to talented students under the age of 33 who have demonstrated exceptional abilities and creative thinking in their field. This year, the award goes to our faculty – it was personally accepted by Filip Macák from the Department of Intelligent Systems.

Doctoral student Filip Macák has recently been particularly successful with his research work. In May of this year, at the AAMAS 2025 conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems in Detroit, USA, he received the Best Student Paper award for his article "Decentralized Planning Using Probabilistic Hyperproperties" (both articles were co-authored by Roman Andriushchenko, under the supervision of Associate Professor Milan Češka). In September, he received the Rector's Award for an exceptional conference contribution with a significant impact on the community for the same achievement.

Macák specializes in the field of formal verification in probabilistic models working within sequential decision-making with uncertainty. These are used, for example, in the fields of economics, medicine, and today especially in the development of AI (reinforcement learning). He is interested in, for example, the reliability and explainability of AI agents, which raise questions about the appropriateness of the agent's chosen strategies, or, in layman's terms, whether AI agents are doing what is appropriate and desirable in a given situation. Macák then deals with the formal, mathematical verification of systems with the aim of increasing their accountability and credibility – this is one of the major challenges in connection with the current massive development of artificial intelligence. You can find out more about his professional focus and perception of various awards for his work in the press release here.

We wish Filip Macák many more successes and thank him for his excellent representation of FIT BUT.

A new project is coming to the Faculty of Information Technology at Brno University of Technology, bringing with it significant financial support for the research team. Vojtěch Mrázek from the Department of Computer Systems and his team have received support from the Czech Science Foundation in the form of a GA ČR Junior Star grant. This is an extraordinary achievement, as evidenced by the demanding selection process, in which only three teams from the field of technical sciences across the entire country were successful, and only one of them comes from BUT. Thanks to the five-year duration with the possibility of drawing up to CZK 25 million and without the need for additional funding from the parent institution, the researchers have the opportunity to become scientifically independent, establish or support a research team, and bring new research topics to Czech science.

Vojtěch Mrázek himself confirms this: "I really appreciate this project because it allows me to build a team, and without a team, it's impossible today given the complexity of the technology. This is not a job for one person." The research team is therefore professionally complemented by Dr. Marcela Zachariášová and Ing. Martin Hurta.

The winning project, "EvoML-EDA: Synergy of Evolutionary Algorithms and Advanced Machine Learning Algorithms for Digital Circuit Design," aims to combine the advantages of evolutionary electronic circuit design and advanced machine learning methods to improve chip design. Mrázek and his colleagues use evolutionary algorithms that work on the principle of gradual unplanned changes leading to improved functionality to design and optimize circuits. The disadvantage of these algorithms is that they are relatively time-consuming, but the reward is transformations that, when combined with machine learning algorithms, lead to their improvement. The influence of evolutionary algorithms and AI algorithms is mutual – evolutionary design algorithms also improve through interaction. The result is, for example, increased calculation efficiency and a related reduction in the energy consumption of computational operations. Mrázek points out that FIT VUT and the Evolvable Hardware research group are among the top ten in Europe in the field of Electronic Design Automation, as evidenced by the Computer Science Ranking database and cooperation with foreign partners.

More information about Vojtěch Mrázek's project and the circumstances of his grant award can be found in the press release here.