Times change,
also thanks to FIT BUT -
for 20 years already!

A team of researchers around Jan Černocký is one of the world leaders in the field of speech analysis, language and speaker recognition. Thanks to this, researchers from all over the world are interested in working in his "speech group". There are currently people from 10 different countries on his team. "If you want to be at the top, internationalisation is your only chance," he says. But it's also hard work, he adds.

Although IT is a dynamic field and new technologies are constantly appearing, the fundamentals of teaching remain the same. "We aren't preparing graduates for their first job, but for a 40-year long career. The successes of our graduates can be easily seen. At FIT, we believe that the perspective that their academic education has given them plays a big role in this," says Richard Růžička, Vice-Dean for Educational Activities in Master's Studies.

Nearly nine thousand graduates have an academic title they earned from the Faculty of Information
Technology written in front of or behind their name. More important than the degree, however, is the knowledge they have gained during their studies. They can apply the knowledge in many areas of life - whether in start-ups they establish after school, in development of applications or joining leading global corporations. In a survey conducted by the BUT, 87% of FIT graduates answered that they would not have the professional skills they have today if it were not for their studies at Brno University of Technology.

Today, its speech recognition technology puts BUT among the five most important institutions, alongside Google, Facebook and IBM. It earned its firm place on the world research map in 2006. This was when the newly formed Speech@FIT group won a competitive evaluation organised by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in speaker recognition. Since then, the group has had countless successes at world competitions and a number of successful projects.

The private sector and academic research are not two hermetically separated areas of life. They need each other. The Faculty of Information Technology is a place where they can meet. This is what Vítězslav Beran, Vice-Dean for External Relations, who is in charge of FIT's co-operation with companies, wants to encourage. Companies co-operate with the faculty, for example, in teaching and research.

Although the monks have long since left the compound at Božetěchova, masses are still celebrated in the adjacent Holy Trinity Church. However, in 2005, the former monastery compound of the Faculty of Information Technology also took the opportunity to open its gates to the faithful. Jan Zachoval, a former colleague from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was ordained a priest in Královo Pole and the interest in his First Mass was so huge that all the participants could not fit inside the church. 

Research is one of the pillars of the faculty, its staff and many students. At FIT, research is the responsibility of Tomáš Vojnar, Vice Dean for Science and Research. "Both basic and applied research is cutting edge at FIT and we can foster the transfer of ideas ranging from mathematics to applications developed with companies. That's what I find so great here," he says.

In 2002, when the Faculty of Information Technology was established, it was obvious that the future 2,500 students and their teachers would not fit inside the monastery. The Brno University of Technology had to decide whether to move the faculty to the new campus at pod Palackého vrchem or to stay in the monastery, undergo a demanding reconstruction of the heritage-protected building and try to acquire the former farmyard located on the other side of the street. 

For over 20 years, technology, creativity, education, research and innovations have been inextricably linked with the Faculty of Information Technology. Pavel Zemčík has served as the head of the faculty for the past six years. "20 years is an ideal time to recall the foundations of the faculty and to think about how we can further strengthen them in the future," he says.

The only preserved unaltered charterhouse in the Czech Republic stands in Brno, at Božetěchova. For the last 20 years, it has housed FIT BUT, which may seem like a tiny fraction of its long history dating back to the 14th century, yet it seems as if the compound has been waiting for this period all along. Consider what it had to go through and what it had to endure just to become the backbone of technological progress?

He has been coming to the building at Božetěchova since 1969. When Tomáš Hruška spent days and nights here working with a mainframe computer as a student at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in the 1970s, it probably would not have occurred to him that he would one day be the first Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology to be established here. He still remembers founding of FIT as one of the most enjoyable periods of his long career.