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On Thursday, December 4, this year's AI Awards were presented at Vzlet in Prague. These are the only professional awards in the field of artificial intelligence in the Czech Republic. Professor Hynek Heřmanský, who has close ties to the Faculty of Information Technology at Brno University of Technology and Brno University of Technology in general, received one of the six awards presented this year: Specifically, for his long-term and extraordinary contribution to the development of speech recognition and machine processing, which is a key discipline in today's artificial intelligence. Without exaggeration, we can describe him as a personality who has contributed to shaping the current form of speech recognition and neural networks. Broadly speaking, his research focuses on the detection, identification, classification, and reconstruction of information from sensory signals. Heřmanský's fundamental influence on the field is confirmed by a number of top international awards, including the ISCA Medal (2013), the IEEE Award (2020), and the status of IEEE Life Fellow.

Heřmanský's personal and professional journey is in itself an incredible story of what a Central European with a passion for modern technology has been able to achieve in recent decades. And this despite historical circumstances. He was born in 1946 in Nové Město na Moravě, graduated in electrical engineering from the Brno University of Technology in 1972, and after various vicissitudes, he managed to travel abroad and study for his doctorate at Tokyo University in Japan. In the 1980s, he was already working in the United States in industrial research for companies such as Panasonic Technologies and U.S. West Advanced Technologies. In the first half of the 1990s, he became a professor at the Oregon Graduate Institute in Portland, where many Czech students (especially from Brno) came to study with him at the beginning of the millennium, for whom it was a turning point in their careers. This was also commented on by Professor Honza Černocký, who leads the "speech" research group at FIT and was also a member of the AI Awards expert jury: "Hynka's lifetime achievement award is also a recognition of the fact that at BUT we can do science at a decent level in this field, that we have talented people at the faculty, and that we have international projects and contacts. The period around 2000, when our entire Brno group gradually passed through Hynka's laboratory in Oregon, was a crucial period. We moved from local conditions to the center of world events in speech processing, which is also called artificial intelligence today." Hynek Heřmanský himself approaches the award with unfeigned modesty and perspective: "Honestly, I'm happy about it. But I have no idea how they found me. I absolutely did not expect the invitation. I receive awards abroad, but at home it's a surprise. I don't think many people outside professional circles know about me here. I don't crave fame; in fact, I would actively resist it."

In 2003, Heřmanský moved to Europe when he took up the position of research director at the prestigious IDIAP Research Institute in Martigny, Switzerland. He was also appointed titular professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL in Lausanne. At the end of 2008, he took another major step – he accepted an offer from Johns Hopkins University in the USA and also became head of the prestigious Center for Language and Speech Processing (CLSP). He headed this center for 12 long years. His team at JHU included dozens of experts and students from around the world. Since 2022, Hynek Heřmanský has been a professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University. He continues to maintain close ties with Czechia, which is made easier by the fact that he now spends most of the year in Brno. He works as a researcher in the Brno-based Speech@FIT research group, where he helps lead projects and mentor young scientists. His scientific career has thus symbolically come full circle: after five decades abroad, he has returned to the place where he studied at university. And he continues to pass on his experience to the next generation of Czech researchers. We are grateful to him for that!

It should be added that the AI Awards aim to highlight successful stories, personalities, companies, and organizations that have significantly contributed to the development of artificial intelligence in Czechia. In addition to Hynek Heřmanský, this year's awards went to the EDIH CTU center for creating the ADAM chatbot for the audit body of the Ministry of Finance; the Department of Social Work at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University for the deployment of artificial intelligence to reduce the administrative burden on social workers; the multi-robotic systems team of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University and Fly4Future for their success in the Autonomous Drone Racing League competition; the AI for Children initiative with its artificial intelligence curriculum for primary and secondary schools; and finally, the Czech technology company E2B and its solution for the safe development of AI agents. This year's AI Awards were held under the auspices of Czech President Petr Pavel. The AI Awards are organized by the Czech National AI Platform, and the main partner of the event is the innovation agency JIC.

We will return to the life story and scientific journey of Hynek Heřmanský in a longer article in the coming days.

The Faculty of Information Technology BUTis joining the traditional Brno charity event Christmas Fir Trees in Pots organized by the Veronica Foundation for the first time this year. Students and staff can purchase a small Christmas tree that won’t end up as waste after the holidays — instead, it can be planted back in the forest in spring.

The sale at FIT will take place on Tuesday, 9 December 2025, from 10:00 to 12:00 (or until 14:00 depending on interest) at the entrance to Building A.

The trees are approximately 40 cm tall seedlings of silver fir, grown in the nurseries of the Masarykův les Křtiny. The price is 169 CZK, and each tree comes with care instructions and information about the joint spring planting, which will take place on 21 March 2026 near the Křtiny Arboretum. Payment can be made in cash or via QR code.

By purchasing a tree, you support Brno-based non-profit organizations—for example, the Veronica Foundation donates part of the proceeds to the Together for Nature fund, which supports community environmental projects across Moravia. The project also includes free fir trees for single parents, disadvantaged families, and seniors. Another goal of the initiative is to help return the silver fir back to Czech forests.

The ceremonial confirmation of the fact, known for some time now, that the Faculty of Information Technology has two new associate professors in its ranks, took place on Wednesday, November 26, in the auditorium of the BUT Rector's Office in Brno. Ondřej Lengál and Kamil Malinka, both from the Department of Intelligent Systems, have added the new academic title to their names.

Kamil Malinka's habilitation lecture, "Protection mechanisms against deepfake-based attacks," delivered in June of this year, summarizes Malinka's long-term research activities, which he also develops within the Security@FIT research group. Malinka focuses on the broader context of cybersecurity in AI. His research is not limited to technical solutions – he is also interested in behavioral aspects, such as user behavior when using selected security tools or the education of future IT professionals. He is also interested in the impact of deepfakes on voice and facial biometrics. According to Malinka, the effectiveness of cybersecurity procedures and tools depends heavily on users' understanding of them (or understanding of the consequences of not following them) and on users' willingness to continue to follow them. Malinka himself classifies his research project under the category of usable security and the most general question of "How to design security measures so that they cannot be misused?" When asked where he ranks the title of associate professor in his professional career, he replies: "Associate professorship is a pragmatic personal goal that I value. I have taken over the Security research group, and I need the appropriate academic title to lead the team. Of course, it also gives me the opportunity to continue my research." As for his professional future, Malinka mentions his desire to broaden the scope of AI security. He cites the example of large language models, which pose a number of relatively new security challenges, including prompt injection attacks, data poisoning, and jailbreaking. Taking a longer and bolder view, Malinka mentions the fundamental importance of post-quantum cryptography and the security aspects of hybrid quantum and neural networks as research topics. The number of topics in the field of cyber security will only continue to grow.

The second new associate professor at the Faculty of Information Technology is Ondřej Lengál. His habilitation thesis is entitled "Awesome Automata: Algorithms and Applications," clearly referring to his research focus. Lengál works in a field that many believe will see significant developments in the near future. He is an expert in quantum computing, or, as he himself specifies, in verification within quantum computing with the aim of ensuring that these calculations, and by extension programs, do not contain errors. The main goal of his professional efforts is therefore to provide a framework for the automated formal verification of the correctness of quantum programs, which uses automata and logic for the compact representation of complex sets of quantum states with several dimensions of infinity. As Lengál points out, the creation of quantum programs is an extremely demanding discipline, and verification is a desirable part of the development process and a prerequisite for achieving the necessary accuracy and safety of their operation. Quantum programs are inherently probabilistic—at any given moment of their execution, they are in a superposition of states. The various possible states of the program then have different degrees of probability. This makes it easier for programmers to make mistakes. On the other hand, quantum computers are a real promise. Optimistic scenarios predict a quantum boom within the next 10 years. They are expected to be able to effectively solve problems that are very difficult to solve with classical computers. Quantum algorithms promise significantly higher computing speeds, an example of which is factorization in cryptography. After all, breaking the current RSA encryption of web traffic in connection with the advent of quanta is often mentioned as a key cybersecurity challenge in the coming years. And it is also a professional challenge that Lengál wants to devote himself to in the coming years.

In the future, the greatest benefit of quantum computers could lie in the simulation of quantum systems in drug development, materials research, and experiments in the fields of physics and chemistry in general. For now, this is just a promise. The state known as quantum supremacy, when we will have a real-world case that has been solved much faster with the help of quantum computing than with classical computers, is currently the most discussed goal. Whether we view the current state of quantum computing with hope or slight concern, it is clear that educating future talent for this field will also be a priority for FIT. Ondřej Lengál also sees the importance of his recent associate professorship in this context: "Quantum experts will be needed. That's why I'm happy about my associate professorship, which will allow me to continue my research and educate new talent."

Congratulations, and we look forward to new successes in research and education at FIT.