News and events archive

RNDr. Vlasta Šťavová On selected end-user issues in usable security 4. 12. 2019, od 8:30 meeting room B 517 RNDr. Katarína Furmanová Visualization and Visual Analysis of Intermolecular Interactions of Proteins 16. 12. 2019, od 9:30 meeting room B 517 Open for public.

Informatics Colloquium 10.12. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. RNDr. Tomáš Brázdil, Ph.D., FI MU Pushing the limits in automated NMR structure determination Abstract: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is a technique for determining the structural and dynamic properties of molecules. NMR relies on properties of certain atomic nuclei that, when placed in a strong magnetic field, resonate at characteristic frequencies. NMR spectroscopy generates complex data whose analysis is a laborious task and the road to NMR structure is generally a long one. The chief barrier is that existing methodologies require a significant amount of spectrometer time (several weeks), and effort by a trained expert (up to several months). So fully automatic methods for NMR structure determination are in demand. In my talk, I will concentrate on the problem of assigning given resonant frequencies (chemical shifts) from NMR spectra to the nuclei of a protein. Our attempts at solving this demanding problem comprise both machine learning as well as elementary graph theoretic methods. I will start with the machine learning problem of predicting an amino acid type based on a given set of chemical shifts. Consequently, I will show how such a prediction can be incorporated into an algorithm for complete assignment of chemical shifts to atoms in a protein using, among other methods, simple graph algorithms. I will also present open problems and deficiencies of our current method which is still under development.

Where there’s a will there's a way: Blind software programmer Vojtěch Polášek graduated with honors and kick-started his full-time career in Red Hat Vojta was born visually impaired. At the age of 11 he had an accident and through following several years lost his sight almost completely. Against all odds, he graduated with honours at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, got the Dean's award for his Bachelor and Diploma theses. His diploma thesis has even been nominated by the faculty to prestigious Czech and Slovak IT SPY competition evaluating IT diploma theses and was currently selected among 8 best finalists. Recently, Vojta has joined Red Hat and kick-started his career in the Security Compliance team. He's basically living the same kind of life as everyone else. All thanks to his positivity, courage, and enthusiasm. He tries not to ever look back on his blindness and show society and other disabled people that being blind doesn't have to be an obstacle.  In collaboration with Red Hat we had the opportunity to interview him to learn more. Let's start with a warm-up question: When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grow up? [Vojta]: An astronaut, of course! (chuckles). Once upon a time, when I was about 5 years old, my father brought home our first computer and from that moment I knew that I'll devote my career to computers and I haven't stopped hanging around them ever since. Besides, I have  been playing the piano for a long time. During my studies in high school I was also bouncing around ideas to study psychology but eventually computers won. However, I wasn't sure which specific area  I want to focus on so I started experimenting with hacking and that was the moment I decided to go down the ‘security road’. So how did you actually get to the programming? [Vojta]: The first thing I did was my own website. There wasn't such a thing as Wordpress or other content management systems available back then so I started with HTML. The problem is that creating a website goes hand in hand with web design, which was obviously something I was not able to deal with so I started with programming from simple Timer to games for visually impaired people. https://github.com/vojtapolasek/united_guards. When I started university, there wasn't much time left for my own initiatives and experiments as I had to devote most of the time to various projects which were part of my studies. How did your student life differ from other students? [Vojta]: I studied at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University https://www.fi.muni.cz/. As far as my disability is concerned, Masaryk University belongs to the absolute top for students with special needs, especially thanks to the Teiresias support center, https://www.teiresias.muni.cz/ : Their goal is to provide maximum accessibility to all accredited degree programs at the university for students with various types of disabilities. Thanks to them I could study the same program as other ‘normal’ students which is amazing. Teiresias has its own building and classrooms with their own equipment. My studies were different primarily due to length. A good example was math: known as one of the most difficult subjects at FI and it usually consists of seminars and lectures including writing on the whiteboard which is obviously something I am not able to do. So I got an individual study plan, individual lector, modified materials in electronic form and extra lessons. Consequently, what takes ‘normal students’ one semester, I studied for two but in the end, I was able to pass the  exam like anyone else. Was there any subject which you simply couldn't study? [Vojta]: Not really, but if I chose for instance graphic design that would be obviously... nonsense. Anyway, most of the time it‘s more about the will, attitude, and negotiation.  A great example is the Cisco networking course I applied for. The course is optional, but very interesting and not many students apply for it. I was told this course is not really suitable for me but I didn't get discouraged easily: I asked for reasons why not. And then? We found a way eventually! However, the only serious problem I experienced was the lack of lecturers for individual studies. That's amazing! Let‘s stick with your student life for a while: We heard that you received Dean‘s award for both the bachelor degree and also for a diploma thesis. That's pretty impressive! Can you briefly introduce us to the topic of your diploma thesis? [Vojta]: The Deans award? To be honest, that was a surprise even for me. My advisor Milan Brož proposed a nomination for the Dean's award during the defense of the diploma thesis. In simple words, I was dealing with key derivation functions that transform a password into a cryptographic key because ordinary passwords are not always suitable for encryption software. I was analyzing a relatively new function called Argon2 which was designed to make to the process of cracking harder and slower because password cracking has evolved and gotten way faster thanks to the usage of graphic cards and specialized HW. Simply put, this function should force hackers to be able to crack passwords only as fast as common users so they don't have any ‘advantage’ over them. My job was basically to simulate an attack and compare Argon2 with PBKDF2. The attack was devised through CPUs and GPUs using high-performance hardware provided by MetaCentrum VO and I was testing how long  it takes to crack the function. The result of this test was a price model for an attacker using either physical hardware or on-demand allocation of computing resources in the cloud. It turned out that it can easily reach millions or even billions of dollars. What was the most interesting finding from your thesis? [Vojta]: Well, it was quite intriguing that from a long-term perspective it does not really pay to rent space in the cloud in comparison with buying computers directly for hackers. You have also mentioned your advisor Milan Brož who is working for Red Hat and is a kind of ambassador for MUNI. Can you tell us about him in the role of adviser? How was it? [Vojta]: Milan's approach was fantastic. He was absolutely honest with me. He was like: ‘It's your thesis, not mine.’ or ‘It's you who will defend it, not me.’ In my opinion, an advisor should be someone who is providing guidance and advice rather than pushing and urging students. Cooperation with him was based on reciprocity: as long as I was proactive Milan behave the same way and he was very open to my ideas and initiatives. I am aware that a large part of the success of the thesis belongs to him. It was honestly pleasure being led by Milan. What are you currently doing in Red Hat? What is your role? [Vojta]: Roles in our team are not fixed so it‘s hard to predict my future role. Currently I am part of Security compliance team working on OpenSCAP which is upstream tool for maintaining security compliance  for enterprise systems and I'm responsible for creating content for this tool. This role involves an interesting mix between programming and scripting and also a little bit of system administration which I really enjoy. Was there any obstacle you had to face at work? [Vojta]: Coffee machines are tricky! These modern devices have touch screens but that‘s not that big deal indeed. It‘s not that hard to find the way in a building. One just has to learn where meeting rooms are and then it's easy. There are only tiny obstacles like technical issues for example with some software, like Jira. I have mentioned already during my interview that problems like this might occur. It‘s a problem though but luckily I don't need to use it that much. So overall it‘s good. And what about your plans for the future? Do you have any? [Vojta]: One thing is for sure: I would like to stay in the IT field. Ideally in Security and hopefully in Red Hat. And outside of my career life, I would like to start a family at some point, but it's all in the stars.

Informatics Colloquium 3.12. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. Jianxin Yan, Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, Sweden Differential Imaging Forensics Abstract: Given a single photo, is it possible to deduce who was the cameraman? To resolve this problem, I teamed up with Aurélien Bourquard (MIT) for a collaboration, codenamed Project C(razy). Along the way, we have invented some new forensics, which we call Differential Imaging Forensics (DIF). The DIF paradigm has practical applications in crime investigation and surveillance; it also informs intelligence operations. We also identified some unanticipated applications (e.g. deepfake detection), as well as many future research opportunities. (The only prerequisite assumed for this talk, if any, perhaps is a curious mind. No technical prerequisite is required.)

Martin Grohe is a German mathematician and computer scientist. His research interest is in theoretical computer science interpreted broadly, including logic, algorithms and complexity, graph theory, theoretical aspects of machine learning, and database theory. He is a Professor for Theoretical Computer Science at the RWTH Aachen, where he holds the Chair in Logic and the Theory of Discrete Systems. He received his PhD in Mathematics at Freiburg University in 1994 and then spent a year as a visiting scholar at Stanford and the University of California at Santa Cruz. Before joining the Department of Computer Science of RWTH Aachen in 2012, he held positions at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Edinburgh, and the Humboldt University at Berlin. Grohe won the Heinz Maier–Leibnitz Prize awarded by the German Research Foundation in 1999. He was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2018 for "contributions to logic in computer science, database theory, algorithms, and computational complexity". Abstract Symmetry is a fundamental concept in mathematics, the sciences, and beyond. Understanding symmetries is often crucial for understanding structures. In computer science, we are mainly interested in the symmetries of combinatorial structures. Computing the symmetries of such a structure is essentially the same as deciding whether two structures are the same ("isomorphic"). Algorithmically, this is a difficult task that has received a lot of attention since the early days of computing. It is a major open problem in theoretical computer science to determine the precise computational complexity of this "Graph Isomorphism Problem". One of the earliest applications of isomorphism testing was in chemistry, more precisely chemical information systems. Today, applications of isomorphism testing and symmetry detection are ubiquitous in computing. Prominent examples appear in optimisation, malware detection, and machine learning. However, in many of these applications, we only need to decide if two structures are sufficiently similar, rather than exactly the same. It turns out that determining how similar two structures are is an even harder computational problem than deciding whether they are isomorphic. My talk will be an introduction to algorithmic aspects of symmetry and similarity, ranging from the fundamental complexity theoretic "Graph Isomorphism Problem" to applications in optimisation and machine learning. When? 27 November 2019 4:30 PM Where? Governor's Palace, Moravské náměstí 1a, Baroque Hall

Sir Timothy Gowers of the University of Cambridge and Daniel Kráľ, a computer scientist and mathematician at the Faculty of Informatics MU, are seeking to change the current system of publishing scientific results. The traditional route of publishing scientific results in printed journals is funded by subscribers, most of which comprise university libraries. One may access online versions of articles via the web portals of publishers, however, to do so, it is first necessary to purchase a subscription. These considerable subscription fees, which are typically in the range of hundreds of dollars for a single issue of a journal published by a large commercial publisher, generate significant profits for commercial publishers, usually in the range between 20% and 40% of their revenue. Moreover, this model of publishing restricts the access of articles only to those who subscribe to the journal, impeding the free access of information to the wider scientific community. In 2012, Gowers founded the boycott initiative Elsevier, which resulted in a discussion on open access publishing: a model of publishing scientific results in such a way that they are available to the entire scientific community free of charge. However, open access publishing can be done in various ways: the most well-known are the Green and Golden Routes. The Green Route means that authors can store a version of their article in a public repository (in computer science, mathematics and physics, it is standard to use the arXiv repository - https://arxiv.org/).  This version is freely accessible but the published manuscript itself is not. The Green Route is not considered to comply with open access requirements by some funding bodies. The Golden Route means that authors will pay an additional publication fee for making their article freely available in an online version of the journal. These fees, which are in the order of thousands of dollars per article, form another source of income for traditional publishing houses. In 2018, Science Europe, an association of European science foundations, announced the so-called Plan S initiative, that would see most results required to be published in an open-access way. However, the Golden Route would impose additional costs for research institutions in the form of publication fees, while the funding spent on publication fees could be better used for scientific work. It is worth noting that editors and reviewers usually provide their services free of charge to commercial publishers. The Diamond Route of open access publishing is an alternative to the Golden Route promoted by a part of the scientific community, to the displeasure of some commercial publishers.The Diamond Route means that journals do not charge any fees from neither the authors nor the readers, or their fees are merely symbolic (in the order of tens of dollars) in order to cover the necessary costs. In June 2018, Professor Daniel Kráľ from the Faculty of Informatics of Masaryk University, together with Professor Timothy Gowers from Cambridge University founded a new journal, Advances in Combinatorics. The journal should serve as a Diamond Route open-access alternative for top quality research journals in combinatorics (such as Combinatorica), which are currently published by commercial publishers. The first issue of Advances in Combinatorics has just appeared - https://www.advancesincombinatorics.com/articles. The quality of published manuscripts is very high - many deal with well-known and long-standing open problems. The editorial team led by Professors Gowers and Kráľ is looking forward to other similarly high-quality contributions that will appear in the next issue of the journal in the near future. Advances in Combinatorics functions as an overlay journal. All articles submitted to an overlay journal undergo a rigorous review process, and the final version of the accepted publication is stored in a freely accessible repository with a link from the journal website. In the case of Advances in Combinatorics, this repository is arXiv. All journal articles are also assigned DOI, a globally used identifier for digital objects (such as electronic versions of manuscripts). The cost of running the journal, which is in the order of tens of dollars per article, is covered by Queen's University Library. This Canadian university is a long time supporter of open access publishing. The vision of the editors is that other high quality journals could be inspired by the Diamond Route open-access publishing model of Advances in Combinatorics and its sister journal Discrete Analysis. Expanding publishing in the form of a Diamond Route open-access would save high costs related to scientific publishing, with the saved funding directed to scientific work instead.  We are proud that one of  our professors at the Faculty of Informatics of Masaryk University is one of the two managing editors of the journal.

Informatics Colloquium 26.11. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. Kang Zhang, Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, USA Aesthetic Computing and Computational Aesthetics Abstract: In this talk, we will introduce the recently emerging interdisciplinary research topics of computational aesthetics and aesthetic computing, and discuss their difference and complementary roles. As a case study, the theories and practices of abstract painting and their existing and potential applications in information visualization will be presented in the context of aesthetic computing. We discuss the three dimensions of painting, i.e. form, color, and texture, various visual cognition principles, and finally aesthetic compositions used in abstract painting. Our objective is to bridge visual art with information visualization, so that the latter could learn from the former in creating more aesthetic visualizations and thus making the viewers visualizing process a pleasant experience. In the context of computational aesthetics, we provide a classification scheme on the complexity of intelligence in generative art with example of generation approaches. Based on Birkhoff’s work on aesthetic measure, we review several recent attempts in computational approaches to aesthetic measurement and complexity measurement for art works.

Informatics Colloquium 19.11. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. RNDr. Daniel Kráľ, Ph.D., DSc., FI MU Matroid algorithms and integer programming Abstract: While integer programming is computationally hard in general, efficient algorithms exist for various special instances. For example, there exists a fixed parameter algorithm for integer programs where the constraint matrix has bounded dual tree-depth and bounded entries. In this talk, we present a matroid based algorithm for finding an equivalent instance of an integer program where the constraint matrix has small dual tree-depth. The talk will start with a brief introduction to matroids and algorithmic problems concerning matroids. We will particularly focus on width parameters for matroids and algorithms for matroids with small width. One of the results that we will present asserts that the branch-depth of the matroid formed by columns of a matrix is equal to the minimum tree-depth of a row-equivalent matrix, and we will discuss algorithmic corollaries of this result in particular in relation to integer programming. The talk will be self-contained. The results presented in this talk are based on joint work with Timothy Chan, Jacob Cooper, Martin Koutecky and Kristyna Pekarkova.

Informatics Colloquium 12.11. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Mgr. et Mgr. Martin Derka, M.Sc., Ph.D., Senior Software and Research Engineer, Quantstamp, Inc., USA Reflections on Proof-of-Work Blockchain Security and Smart Contract Design Abstract: In this talk, we will present the elementary design blocks of Proof-of-Work blockchains with a focus on smart contracts and their security. We will discuss recent pitfalls, security incidents, possible smart contract attack vectors, and measures that should be taken to protect against those. The Ethereum network will be used as a practical example, but the discussed topics will be generally applicable to any blockchain-based on Proof-of-Work. The talk will build on experiences acquired in practice but will outline possible research questions of both applied and theoretical nature, and the future direction of the field.

The Czech national team has achieved the best position in the European final cyber competition (https://ecsc.eu), held this year in Bucharest from 8. until 11 October 2019. The Czech team consisted of the finalists of the 3rd High School Cyber ​​Security Competition (www.kybersoutez.cz), who were selected at KYPO Summer School from 13 to 15. August in the Cyber ​​Polygon MU. Students of the Faculty of Informatics and members of the CSIRT-MU security team prepared for talented high school students cybersecurity games and practical workshops that helped them acquire the skills needed for the European finals. "The Summer School has received positive responses from the participants. The students appreciated that the tasks were practical and exciting and that there were not dull lectures", added school organizer Jan Vykopal. A summer school would not be possible without financial support of FI MU industrial partners, Flowmon, Red Hat, as well as Avast.

4/11 Update: Unfortunately, Andreas Thom is unable to come due to a very serious family emergency and so the lecture is cancelled. However, he will have pleasure to listen to his talk only in one of the future terms. Abstract of Andeas Thom lecture (German mathematician and a professor of Geometry at TU Dresden): I will discuss the concept of stability in mathematics. If a set of equations is almost satisfied, is it true that a true solution to the equations exists nearby? For example, if two permutations of X commute on most of the points of X, are there permutations of X that agree with the given permutations on most of the points and do commute? If a function on a Banach space is almost linear, is it close to a linear map? These type of questions and some positive answers were first discussed by Stanislaw Ulam in 1940 und the name of „stability“ and come up naturally in a variety of situations ranging from functional analysis, group theory, to computer science. I will explain the background and discuss some recent progress in a variety of circumstances. When? 6 November 2019, 4:30 PM Where? Mendel Museum's Augustinian Abbey Refectory at Mendel Square

Informatics Colloquium 5.11. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 RNDr. Zdeněk Matěj, Ph.D., FI MU Fast digital technology for nuclear facilities Abstract: With the development of digital technologies, there are many possibilities for their application in practice. Combination of fast algorithms together with sufficiently powerful HW based mainly on programmable gate arrays (FPGA) extend existing detection possibilities in the field of nuclear experiments This talk will describe the development of digital devices that primarily help in the field of nuclear experiments and also serve for research in the field of IV. generation of nuclear reactors.

Informatics Colloquium 29.10. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. Mgr. Hana Rudová, Ph.D., FI MU Scheduling of Mobile Robots Abstract: Flexible manufacturing systems consist of several automatic machines, material handling devices such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs) or mobile robots, and a central control computer. Mobile robots, as well as AGVs, can move around their working space to transport components among machines. Mobile robots can also execute various value-added tasks without human intervention, thanks to their manipulation arms. The main novelty of our work is that we allow the scheduling of such robot processing, which makes the problem more complex and computationally expensive. Our work encapsulates robot processing into a job shop scheduling problem with transportation resources. The talk will introduce this scheduling problem as well as various solution approaches for the general audience. We will discuss the exact and heuristic approaches we have proposed to solve this problem. The integer programming model was aimed to model the problem precisely. Heuristic approaches are represented by a hybrid genetic algorithm and adaptive large neighborhood search. Finally, we will present the latest constraint programming approach performing very well, even in contrast to heuristic approaches.

Informatics Colloquium 22.10. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Ing. Martin Střelec, Ph.D., NTIS ZČU Plzeň Ing. Ondřej Mamula, MBA, CIIRC ČVUT Praha Secure integration of demand side flexibility to power systems Abstract: The electricity power domain is facing unprecedented system changes initiated by increasing penetration of novel technologies (e.g. massive installation of renewables, energy storages at various levels) and market arrangements (e.g. market integration, new market entities), which increases the volatility in power system, which needs to be properly managed in order to keep system reliability. On the other hand, traditional resources for power network stabilization are decreasing due change of energy mix. Demand side flexibility stands for a promising mechanism for enhancement of power network stabilization. The contribution will introduce power system flexibility, where main focus will be put on the demand side. The talk will cover description of whole value chain of secure flexibility integration in the context of the SecureFlex project. Different aspects will be presented ranging from the flexibility harvesting on demand side to market product creation with emphasis on cost optimization and maintaining network security and power quality.

The workshop will take place on 23.10.2019 in KYPO. The presentations will be in Czech, but there will be an opportunity to discuss the possibilities of involving students in the activities of several laboratories: Laboratory for Parallel and Distributed Systems (ParaDiSe) Laboratory of Formal Methods, Logic and Algorithms (Formela) Laboratory of Discrete Methods and Algorithms (DIMEA) Systems Biology Laboratory (SYBILA)

Informatics Colloquium 15.10. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D1 Mgr. Marek Sýs, Ph.D., FI MU doc. RNDr. Petr Švenda, Ph.D., FI MU prof. RNDr. Václav Matyáš, M.Sc., Ph.D., FI MU Revisiting statistical tests for random data analysis Abstract: Random data play important role in many areas e.g. gaming, simulation, cryptography, etc. The quality of the data is critical for several areas hence analysis of used generators (true or pseudo random) is crucial there. Multiple incompatible test suites exist, with the tests that analyse different but similar patterns. We created a framework to comfortably run all tests from the commonly used statistical testing batteries (NIST STS, Dieharder, TestU01 and BoolTest). Using this tool, we analyzed the output of 66 cryptographic functions and evaluated the power/uniqueness of individual tests in the domain of cryptographic data. Surprisingly, a subset of only 14 tests would be enough to detect all the biases detected by the whole set -- yet no standard battery contained them all. In the talk, we will discuss the results we obtained in more details. Also, we will introduce our BoolTest battery that outperforms standard batteries when partial bits on fixed positions in data blocks are correlated.

We cordially invite you to meet two legends of Computer Science, professors Donald Ervin Knuth and Dana Stewart Scott, in Brno. Both are holders of ACM Turing prize (1974 resp. 1976), both were professors of the Computer Science at Stanford in late sixties, and both will come to Brno, a place linked to Kurt Gödel or Gregor Johann Mendel, at the same time! Events: Oct 8th, 14:00, Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, lecture hall D1. Q&A session by Donald Knuth: Computer Programming as Art – Views and responses to any related question and comments Oct 9th, 12:30, Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, lecture hall D3+D1. Q&A session by Donald Knuth: Boundless Interests – Computer programming is an art form, like the creation of poetry or music Oct 9th, 16:30, Masaryk University's Mendel Museum, Augustinian Abbey Refectory at Mendel's Square, Brno.Lecture by Dana Stewart Scott: Enumeration Operators, Probability, Type Theory Oct 11th, 19:00, Brno, Jesuit Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Multimedia performance of oratorium Fantasia Apocalyptica. Free admission is for all events, given room capacity. Take your seats well in advance, please.    Do not miss this extraordinary possibility to see and talk to legends of Computer Science!

The Czech première of Knuth's musical opus, with personal presence of the author, first doctor honoris causa of FI MU Donald E. Knuth. Organist Jan Rotrekl will play on new Hermann Mathis pipe organ. Jesuit Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, Brno Facebook event

Lecture by Dana Stewart Scott: Enumeration Operators, Probability, Type Theory. Lecture by the holder of Turing prize ("Nobel Prize for Computer Science") as part of Masaryk University's lecture series in Mathematics, Physics, & Computer Science. Masaryk University's Mendel Museum, Augustinian Abbey Refectory at Mendel's Square Facebook event

Come to the meeting with the first FI MU doctor honoris causa Donald Knuth under the title "Q&A session by Donald Knuth: Boundless Interests – Computer programming is an art form, like the creation of poetry or music". Come with prepared questions not only about Computer Programming for "unprepared" professor Knuth (really All Questions Answered, including music ;-). The meeting will be held at the Faculty of Informatics MU, lecture halls D3+D1.  Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/2244384885670196/

Informatics Colloquium 8.10. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D1 prof. Donald E. Knuth, professor emeritus, Stanford University, USA, and first honorary doctor of FI MU Computer Programming as Art – Views and responses to any related question and comments Abstrakt: Come with prepared questions about Computer Programming for "unprepared" professor Knuth (session inspired by Feynman's "All Questions Answered" talks).

Informatics Colloquium 1.10. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Bartosz Walczak, Department of Theoretical Computer Science, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland Old and new challenges in coloring graphs with geometric representations Abstract: A central problem in graph theory is to compute or estimate the chromatic number of a graph, i.e., the minimum number of colors to be put on the vertices so that no two neighbors receive the same color. Being very hard in general, it has been considered for various restricted classes of graphs, in which the chromatic number remains in a tighter connection to the structure of the graph. This includes, in particular, classes of graphs defined on families of geometric objects: intersection graphs, disjointness graphs, visibility graphs, etc., motivated by various practical applications. In recent years, this area of research has seen remarkable progress which has led to many classical problems being solved and various new problems being raised. I will introduce the audience to these old and new problems, present some of the recent developments, and discuss connections to other areas, such as graph drawing and approximation algorithms.

Informatics Colloquium 24.9. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 RNDr. David Šafránek, Ph.D., FI MU Computer-Aided Systems Biology Abstract: In this lecture, we will introduce a novel paradigm for solving problems in biology. First, we will describe the framework of systems biology. Second, we will present an original approach to systems biology implemented on fundamental principles developed in computer science. Part of the talk will be dedicated to the comprehensive modelling platform we are developing in our research.

Satisfiability of Quantified Bit-Vector Formulas: Theory and Practice RNDr. Martin Jonáš - Wednesday 18. 9. 2019, 4 pm - meeting room B517 Open for public.

Tereza Nečasová FI Ph.D. student, led by David Svoboda, won the third prize in the Joseph Fourier Award in Computer Sciences for her work: Statistical methods for comparison of real and synthetic biomedical image data. She received the award from the Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, 1987, Jean-Marie Lehn. More about Award at https://atos.net/cs/ceska-republika/cena-josepha-fouriera-2018# Foto: Eva Kořínková

Are you a student, a budding scientist or setting up your own business? Do you have a great project in mind and are you able to present it in English within 3 minutes? Sign up for the Falling Walls Lab international competition, win 1,000 € in prize money and proceed to the world finale in Berlin. The application deadline for the Falling Walls Lab Czech Republic is 30 June 2019. You can learn more information about the event at https://www.falling-walls.com/lab/apply or at https://www.facebook.com/FallingWallsLabCR/

Even this year you can look forward to the Schrödinger Grill. Barbecue traditionally starts at the FI MU atrium at 6 pm. What to expect? Pleasant informal discussions with friends and teachers, games, guitars, singing and grilling. Volunteers willing to help with the event are welcome an hour earlier. The event organizer: http://zverinec.fi.muni.cz/gril

The final round of this year's 20th anniversary of the competition of university students in scientific activities (SVOČ) in mathematics and informatics will take place in Brno on June 2—4, 2019. The Faculty of Informatics and the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics of Masaryk University organize the event. The competition itself will take place on Monday, June 3, in the buildings of the Faculty of Informatics. The show of works will take place in sections from morning till early afternoon, and the announcement of the results will follow during the evening banquet. The whole schedule of the event: https://svoc2019.fi.muni.cz/#schedule

RNDr. Filip Nálepa Similarity Search in Stream Processing 29. 5. 2019, 9:00 RNDr. Tomáš Jirsík Cyber Situation Awareness via IP Flow Monitoring 3. 6. 2019, 9:30 Meeting room B517. Open for public.

We cordially invite you to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Faculty of Informatics MU (https://25.fi.muni.cz) together with the 100th anniversary of Masaryk University. FI alumni day will take place at the Faculty of Informatics MU June 15, 9.00–15.00 (registration form at https://muni100.cz/den-absolventu/fakulta-informatiky, in Czech only, free entrance). Come to meet your teachers, schoolmates and colleagues in the field. There will be a chance to remind your days spent at FI, see important moments in projections, visit today's classrooms and laboratories, and enjoy networking or lectures. And of course refreshment :-) Facebook event at https://www.facebook.com/events/2631403047086532/

The Electoral and Mandate Commission has received a single candidacy for the Dean's office; Prof. Jiří Zlatuška. You can find the program statement and other details in the document server: https://is.muni.cz/auth/do/fi/as/35535693/volba_dekana_2019_2/ The candidate will be officially presented at a meeting of the Faculty Senate on May 29th at 4 pm in D2 classroom. You can still discuss with a candidate through an anonymous forum: https://is.muni.cz/auth/discussion/volba_dekana_FI_2019/ The original threads were left in the discussion, referring to the same candidate. The candidate will be elected at a meeting of the Senate on June 18 at 10 am A318 classroom.

Masaryk University Rector's Award for long-time research excellence, Economics, and Informatics: Václav Přenosil, Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University - FI MU, Department of Computer Systems and Communications. Václav Přenosil researches several areas, for example diagnostics of digital systems and spectrometric equipment for the area mixed fields of ionizing radiation. During his successful career led many research and development projects, such as three projects of The Technological Agency of the Czech Republic whose results are published in quality magazines and are protected by two patents. Professor Přenosil has also successfully led many projects for several ministries in the Czech Republic, where he has been involved in, for example, research in the field of driver micro-sleep, predictive interactive simulators or in the area of ​​driver attention. He also developed with his team an excellent digital spectrometric system for processing fields of neutron radiation and gamma, with which it can be more accurately calculated, for example, the lifetime of energy reactor pressure vessels. Václav Přenosil is also a long-time member of several scientific councils, works in a number of expert committees and cooperates with top international scientific institutions.

Informatics Colloquium 21. 5. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. RNDr. Jiří Zlatuška, CSc., FI MU Seeing the invisible (black holes) Abstract: Black holes used to be just an astrophysicsl curiosity representing extremal conditions following from General Ralativity. Until recently, no direct observation would seem feasible. Advanced use of computing allowed spectacular changes in this, resulting especially in the first image of black hole in the center of M87 using a technique resulting in computer-synthesized telescope stretching accross the diameter of the Earth as well as synthesizing a real image of black hole, not just a result of its simulation. In the talk a quite detailed and popular explanation will be provided how this remarkable scientific outcome has been obtained.

Abstract: Introduction to the Seznam.cz fulltext search architecture. The talk covers all basic web search engine blocks: crawling, indexing, query reformulation, and relevance. Explanation of inner parts of the user interface such as: auto completer, suggested searches. Real statistics from Seznam's traffic. As a bonus: Latest Bio: Vladimír Kadlec is currently the head of research team at Seznam.cz. He earned his doctoral degree from FI MU in 2008. All of his research has been related to natural language processing and information retrieval. At Seznam.cz, he designs and improves algorithms for the fulltext search engine. Vladimir loves (almost) all sports from snowboarding to cycling. 9.5.2019, 10:00 Faculty of Informatics MU, lecture room D1 Botanická 68a

Informatics Colloquium 14. 5. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. RNDr. Aleš Horák, Ph.D., prof. PhDr. Karel Pala, CSc., FI MU Karel Pepper, the robot Abstract: In the talk, we will introduce the new social robot by Softbank Robotics denoted as Pepper. We will present the robot hardware capabilities as well as first examples of natural human-machine dialogs in Czech, which are being developed by the team at FI MU. The robot is designed for social interactions with people and it is equipped with an extensive API set to detect faces, mood, or age and to react to their values. We will also sketch our plans to use the robot in both students works and in research with applications oriented to human-machine cooperation.

Informatics Colloquium 30. 4. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Mgr. Alžběta Krausová, LL.M., Ústav státu a práva AV ČR Legal and Ethical Aspects of Developing AI and Its Applications Abstract: AI is a groundbreaking technology that raises a number of serious questions from both ethical and legal point of view. The lecture will introduce the main ethical concerns related to AI development as well as the EU guidelines on how to design intelligent applications in compliance with ethical requirements. Moreover, since ethical approach is conditioned by compliance with laws, the lecture shall also introduce the main legal requirements on AI systems and potential related legal problems including liability for AI, data processing and intellectual property protection. The lecture aims to provide an overall overview of complex legal problems with individual examples in order to highlight what needs to be taken in account while designing, developing, and running smart applications.

Informatics Colloquium 7. 5. 2019, 14:00 posluchárna D2 prof. RNDr. Roman Barták, Ph.D., MFF UK Multi-Agent Path Finding on Real Robots Abstract: Multi-agent path finding (MAPF) deals with the problem of finding a collision-free path for a set of agents (robots). An abstract model with a graph describing the environment and agents moving between the nodes of the graph has been proposed. This model is widely accepted by the MAPF community, and the majority of MAPF algorithms rely on this model. In this talk, we argue that the model may not be appropriate when the plans are to be executed on real robots. We provide some empirical evidence that abstract plans deviate from real plans executed on robots and we compare several variants of abstract models. The talk motivates further research on the abstraction of problems concerning the applicability of solutions in practice.

What our international student Iman Mehmandoust says about his studies at #fimuni? “When I was in Afghanistan, I dreamed about having a successful challenging career in IT community. I tried to think out of the box and find opportunities to study abroad. Finally, I found Service Science Management Engineering, Master study programme at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, which perfectly fits my Bachelor education and working experience. Getting to be enrolled in this master programme was not easy. There were almost 1000 candidates who applied to study in the Czech Republic. My application was one of the 3 applications that were finally accepted. Now I am in the 4th semester of my studies and my dreams are coming true. At the same time, I am working for a big international IT company here. Being an international student at the Faculty of Informatics means to take a responsible approach, on the other side, it is a perfect life in a beautiful city, with amazing teachers and colleagues and in Brno IT community so-called another Silicon Valley. Every day I'm meeting different people from all around the world, travelling to near capitals and other near towns, learning a few Czech words, eating some typical Czech food and getting closer insight to local culture, history of Brno and Masaryk University, celebrating 100th anniversary this year.” More about our study programmes in English here: https://www.fi.muni.cz/admission/index.html.en

Office for International Affairs opens 2nd call for Erasmus+ study in spring semester 2020. Students can apply for universities which have bilateral agreements with FI and which was not filled in the first call. FI students apply through online application in database ISOIS from 22 April to 12 May 2019. All students who would like to study abroad must submit certificate about English knowledge B2 level at least. Certificates from other languages are also welcomed. Students must also upload in e-applicaiton motivation letter (1/2 - 1 A4 page).

The rise of cyberthreats, in both scale and technique, has brought an increased attention to and demand for cybersecurity. However, academia and the publication of academic papers, struggle to keep up with the frequent shifts in trends and methods. Coupled with the fact that many people interested in cybersecurity are working professionals who may not have the time to read more lengthy academic papers, we are seeing more people turn to conference papers and blog posts for this information. Patrik Hudak, a young cybersecurity researcher and developer, has written a master thesis that shines a new light on cybersecurity and introduces new techniques to the academic field. Patrik has also started a blog on this topic, conveying the information he presented in his master thesis in a less formal and more easily accessible way for the masses. All of this, while doing numerous bug bounty programs and running his own company, Aleph Infosec. We met up with Patrik while he was attending BlackHat Asia in Singapore and talked with him about his blog, the most interesting bug bounty programs, and what the cybersecurity industry is like in his home country, Slovakia. SecurityTrails: You are from Slovakia. How is the cybersecurity industry in your country in contrast to America?Patrik Hudak: It’s very poor here. I’m originally from Slovakia, but I studied in Czech Republic, which is a little different in that sense, but not much. Companies in Slovakia and Chech Republic are not at all worried about cybersecurity. I do know some people working for banks and insurance companies here, but they do not have anything like US companies have in terms of cybersecurity. For that reason, I was so lucky to work in Honeywell and see things in action, since that wouldn’t be quite as possible if I was working for any Slovakian company. I’m also very skeptical of any European company being on the same level as a US one. For companies here, it’s buried money — investing in cybersecurity doesn’t bring any profit, and that’s the main goal here. The mentality is different — data breaches don’t happen often, and they don’t get the deserved PR and media coverage when they do. That’s definitely one of the reasons why US companies are more aware and proactive in investigating cybersecurity. Whole interview: https://securitytrails.com/blog/patrik-hudak?fbclid=IwAR2dZmXEuKEkOTOfli6XZJmYG8blOBeKi4aq0bTDKG2Lp1PjA8qEK64zlNs 

He was drawn to computers since young age. Supporting his passion, his parents bought him the Baltík educational programming environment by Bohumír Soukup. Now, he is one of the Brno Ph.D. talents. The Ph.D. student Vít Novotný develops a next-gen search engine in the MIR research group at the Faculty of Informatics, MU. He tackles problems that Google can’t answer. His project is supposed to help researchers all around the globe. Traditional Search Engines Such as Google and Seznam Ignore Mathematics Researchers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields require access to articles full of mathematics. “Traditional search engines are sufficient for ordinary text documents, but they fall short for mathematics. They only allow the user to search using text keywords, not mathematical formulae. If you search for a scientific article using text keywords, and the article does not contain the keywords, then you may not find the article at all,” explains Vít. Mathematical search engines started to appear at the beginning of the 21st century. The Faculty of Informatics participated at the EuDML European project and developed the MIaS mathematical search engine in 2011. However, MIaS does not take advantage of the latest techniques of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Both Mathematical and Text Search Today’s mathematical search engines can search for text keywords and mathematical formulae. However, text and mathematics are represented separately. Using the latest techniques of machine learning and artificial intelligence, hybrid search engines that allow the user to search for mathematics using text keywords and to search for text using mathematical formulae can be developed. We Tested Trains of Thought on the Little Red Riding Hood “We also experiment with representing document by curves. The curves follows the trains of thought in a text document as they change from one paragraph to the next. In our experiments, we used three version of the classic story of the Little Red Riding Hood: the original version from the 17th century, the Grimm version from the 19th century, and the Hoodwinked film from 2005. While the first two versions only differ in their endings, the film only shares the major characters and locations with the classic tale. The keywords were similar in all three versions, but the trains of thought in the film differed significantly from the first two versions,” explains Vít. This novel approach should make it possible to detect plagiarism and to search for semantically similar documents. Brno Ph.D. Talent Award Provides New Opportunities Due to his success in the Brno Ph.D. Award competition, Vít will be awarded 300 thousand Czech crowns over the period of three years. Beside financial support, the South-moravian center for international mobility (JCMM) also organizes seminars for the Brno Ph.D. talents and provides networking opportunities. By creating conditions comparable to top western research institutions, JCMM aims to keep talented young minds in Brno. And what are Vít’s interests besides research? He produces electronic music, sings in an ensemble and co-organizes Animefest, the oldest anime convention in the Czech Republic.

The Academic Senate of the Faculty of Informatics announces the election of a candidate for the post of dean FI MU for the term of office beginning on 1 September 2019 and ending on 31 August 2023. Proposals of candidates for the Dean's office must be delivered on Friday 17 May, 2019 at the latest to 11:00. Election rules and information about submitting proposals for candidates are published in https://is.muni.cz/auth/do/fi/as/35535693/volba_dekana_2019_2/volba-dekana-2019-vyhlaseni-en.pdf

Informatics Colloquium 23. 4. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 RNDr. Vojtěch Řehák, Ph.D., FI MU What is the best timeout? Abstract: We all have some experience with deadlines, and we know how hard it is to deliver results in time, especially when some obstacles with an uncertain solving time may occur. In this talk, we deal with formalisms suitable for modeling and analysis of such systems, i.e., reflecting both timeouts and actions taking stochastic continuous time. We show how this kind of stochastic timed systems can be modeled and what properties can be computed for such models. On surprisingly small examples we also demonstrate some fundamental limits of such models. Then we will consider that some parts of the model are unknown and we take them as parameters that we would like to synthesize automatically. Finally, we will present results allowing for the synthesis of (epsilon)-optimal timeouts in such systems.

16 April 2019, 9:30 a.m. Network-based targeted attacks detection European doctorate Meeting room B517 Open for public.

Informatics Colloquium 16. 4. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Dr. rer. nat. RNDr. Mgr. Bc. Jan Křetínský, Ph.D., Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, FI MU Machine learning in verification Abstract: On the one hand, formal verification methods provide hard guarantees on analysis results, but do not scale well and are often hard to use. On the other hand, machine learning comes with weak or no guarantees, but scales well and can provide more understandable solutions. In this talk, we show several examples how these approaches can be combined and the best of the two worlds achieved. We demonstrate this on controller synthesis and controller representation in the setting of Markov decision processes and games.

Informatics Colloquium 2. 4. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. Mgr. Michal Koucký, Ph.D., MFF UK Approximating edit distance within constant factor in sub-quadratic time Abstract: Edit distance is a measure of similarity of two strings based on the minimum number of character insertions, deletions, and substitutions required to transform one string into the other. It has numerous applications in various fields. The edit distance can be computed exactly using a dynamic programming algorithm that runs in quadratic time. Andoni, Krauthgamer and Onak (2010) gave a nearly linear time algorithm that approximates edit distance within approximation factor poly(\log n). In this talk I will present an algorithm with running time O(n^{2-2/7}) that approximates the edit distance within a constant factor.

Informatics Colloquium 9. 4. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil. Timo Ropinski, Faculty of Engineering, Computer Science and Psychology, Ulm University Interactive Visualization Techniques for Molecular Structures Abstract: Within this talk I will cover our work in the area of molecular visualization, and will present techniques which have been developed with the goal to improve the spatial comprehension of complex molecular structures. First, coverage-based opacity estimation is discussed as a technique to achieve Depth of Field (DoF) effects when visualizing molecular structures. The proposed algorithm is an object-based approach which eliminates many of the shortcomings of state-of-the-art image-based DoF algorithms. Based on observations derived from a physically-correct reference renderer, coverage-based opacity estimation exploits semi-transparency to simulate the blur inherent to DoF effects. Second, I will discuss the integration of diffuse illumination effects into molecular visualization. While current molecular visualization techniques utilize ambient occlusion as a global illumination approximation in order to improve spatial comprehension, interreflections are also known to improve the spatial comprehension of complex geometric structures. To realize these interreflections in real-time, an analytic approach is exploited for capturing interreflections of molecular structures. By exploiting the knowledge of the underlying space filling representations, the required parameters can be reduced and symbolic regression can be applied to obtain an analytical expression for interreflections. I will discuss how to obtain the data required for the symbolic regression analysis, and how to exploit the analytic solution to enhance interactive molecular visualizations. Finally, I will show how this approach can be extended to other molecular representations.

The 13th year of an entertaining competition event with an unconventional program will take place on Saturday 13 April at the Faculty of Informatics and in the Brno parks. 2 to 4 member teams of high school students can take part in the InterSoB to test their rational thinking, teamwork, and communication. There will also be some sporting tasks. Registration deadline: April 8th. https://intersob.math.muni.cz/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=ZeuF0a-bnBM

When choosing his studies abroad, he had been deciding between Prague and Brno. Fairly quickly, he decided for Brno, the capital of IT in the Czech Republic, as he says. International environment, many IT companies and start-ups, opportunity to meet with the community of foreign students and IT gurus in the city, where everything is as a stone's throw away from you. It was a clear choice for Arcadii. He also appreciates university services for incoming students, networking and inclusion to the local community at Masaryk University. Arcadii is a student of the Software Systems and Services Management (SSME), Master degree study programme at the Faculty of Informatics MU taught in English. “Study programme SSME exceeded all my expectations. It is a very well designed multidisciplinary study programme oriented on real problems and projects in companies. It is not just about computer science - what is actually really exciting. It includes marketing, economics, management, teamwork, and soft skills. During the program, we walk the whole path of creating an IT service - from an idea to a final product. It consists of creating a vision, planning, positioning in a market and collaborating with other companies on it. We all work on interim projects in companies. I did mine in Kiwi.com. I strongly recommend these studies to everyone,” says Arcadii. Interested to study SSME? Applications deadline is April 30, 2019. Find out more: https://www.fi.muni.cz/admission/mgr/software-systems-and-services-management-eng.html Note: SSME graduates reach the highest salaries compared to other study programmes at the faculty and also in the Czech IT job market in general. An average fresh SSME graduate salary is 70 000 CZK.

South Moravian Centre for International Mobility offers possiblity to get scholarship for study in technical master degree programmes at universities in Brno. You can use this scholarship to cover your tuition fee also in study programme at the Faculty of Informatics MU. Application deadline for scholarship is April 30, 2019. More information can be found at the webpage: http://www.jcmm.cz/projekt/stipendia_en

Informatics Colloquium 19. 3. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 RNDr. Radek Ošlejšek, Ph.D., FI MU Semantic data modeling – conceptual view Abstract: In this talk, I will explain the principles of semantic modeling. I will briefly compare popular data models, such as rational vs. NoSQL databases. Then, I will focus on graph ontologies. I will describe their features, the problem of abstraction, information levels (e.g., upper vs. domain ontologies), and other aspects that are important for semantic modeling. The discussion will be supported by practical examples that emerged in our research of the semantic modeling of image content. Examples from the cybersecurity domain will, in turn, demonstrate the abilities and limitations of ontologies for detection and mitigation of cyber threats. Possible utilization of ontologies for formal knowledge modeling in hands-on cybersecurity training will be presented as well.

7. 3. 2019, 10:00 - RNDr. Radim Ošťádal - Secrecy amplification in wireless sensor networks 13. 3. 2019, 11:40 - RNDr. Karel Vaculík - Pattern Mining in Dynamic Graphs 15. 3. 2019, 10:00 - Ing. Milan Brož - Authenticated and Resilient Disk Encryption Defences are public and will be held in meeting room B517, FI MU.

More information in Czech, in French.

Informatics Colloquium 12. 3. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Ing. Tomáš Mikolov, Ph.D., Facebook AI Research Recent progress in AI research Abstract: The last decade did bring us many new and improved applications of machine learning. To name a few, we have seen dramatic improvements in web search, user post classification, statistical machine translation, speech recognition, and image classification. But how far are we from the grand goal, which is the development of truly general AI? In this talk, I will present some of the ideas that I find promising for the development of artificial intelligence. These include a discussion about artificial life, dynamical systems, complex adaptive systems, and mathematical models of evolution.

Informatics Colloquium 26. 2. 2019, 14:00 lecture hall D2 RNDr. Kateřina Schindlerová, CSc., Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna Causality in Time Series: A Short Introduction and Current Challenge Abstract: We explain the concept of quantitative causality by various approaches and focus on Granger causality. Causality among a higher number of processes by means of graphical Granger causality will be presented and its applications shown. Current questions and open problems will be sketched from the point of view of heterogeneous and big data.

Vernissage of Helena Lukas' exhibition / I love things, silent comrades. 19/2, 18.00 20/2 — 29/3 2019 Galerie Pitevna, the exhibition room of the MU Archive Brno, Komenského nám. 2 Curators: Petr Kamenický a Markéta Žáčková The exhibition is a part of the project - Ability to imagine - presentation of contemporary art at MU. open Mo–Fri 12–18.00

The International Timetabling Competition 2019 is a scientific competition to solve real-world timetabling problems from universities around the world. Among the organizers is a team from the Faculty of Informatics, led by doc. Hana Rudová. Data from real university timetables that serve as the starting point of the competition are drawn from the UniTime system. There are usually teams of scientists and students in the competitions, but individuals can also be found among the winners. Interestingly, participants are gradually getting new data sets from the organizers with increasing value points. The winner can also be the one who will join later and solve some of the problems. A UniTime-based validator will immediately evaluate the quality of the submitted solution. Since the start of the competition in the summer of 2018, the number of participants has been increasing. New people are still registering, some of them only to access the competition problems. The competition will take place throughout the year until November 2019. The unique UniTime system for university timetabling was created through joint research between Purdue University, Masaryk University, and Charles University. It is a publicly available open source solution that is universally applicable to schools and faculties of various types as well as entire universities. "When we started cooperation with Purdue University on a timetabling system that takes into account student registrations in 2001, we were among the pioneers," says Hana Rudová. From modest beginnings, it has come to the point where the UniTime system is helpful to dozens of institutions for timetabling courses, exams, and events throughout the year.

Prof. Petr Hliněný invites you to one week's workshop in Telč. The workshop focuses on various problems of graph crossing numbers, and more generally with geometric graphs. Date: May 6 - 10 2019

It is a revival of a regular research seminar in the area of discrete algorithms, formal methods and related fields of computer science. The seminar will take place on Monday at 2 pm biweekly during the term. Further information including the list of speakers for the next term can be found on the following webpage. https://www.fi.muni.cz/dfseminar/index.html.en Prof. Dan Král' a deputy of an organizer's team is looking forward to meeting many of you at the seminar talks.

Last year, an excellent scientist and holder of two ERC grants Daniel Kral moved to the Faculty of Informatics. After his arrival at the faculty, he became the head of the laboratory of discrete methods and algorithms DIMEA. Now, the DIMEA laboratory cordially invites to a two-day meeting of Central European scientists and researchers from the field of discrete mathematics and theoretical informatics DIMEA Days. The program will start on Wednesday, June 12 and conclude on Thursday, June 13 Registration ends March 31. Venue: Moravian Museum, Dietrichstein palace, Zelný trh 8, Brno More information: https://www.fi.muni.cz/research/dimea/days19.html.en

Come to taste the atmosphere at the Faculty of Informatics. See the labs to find out what discoveries are coming into the world. Look for top-notch technology, meet with industry experts you can collaborate with during your studies. And also ask current students. You will learn about new study programmes, entrance exams, and how to get to the FI without them. Informatics is not just programming. You can also study graphics, soft skills, help doctors to transmit live operations, guard banking systems or work with nuclear scientists. Program: 9.30, 10.30, 11.30 IQ testing - Mensa ČR 12.30–13.00 Registration 13.00–13.50 Presentation about terms and conditions for study at FI and discussion 14:30–15:30 Introduction to Master study programmes 14.00–16.30 organized excursion to the building of the Faculty of Informatics We are looking forward to seeing you at FI.

For spring term 2019, the Faculty of Informatics prepared three programming courses for high school students. Students will be able to program the game in the Python programming language or in the Android course to create an application for their mobile. The next one is Embedded Systems. Students can program a single-chip processor using C language, and the processor can take home after the course. Enrolling through the registration form - http://bit.ly/PythAndrEmb is possible. Registration is open until morning 15. 1. Details of courses or dates are in the form.

During the last weekend of February (23rd - 24th), it will be held event for high school students interested in studying informatics. Participants can try what it is like to study and live at the Faculty of Informatics. The program will include interesting lectures, games, and workshops from which participants will not only take away knowledge but also something useful with themselves. Throughout the weekend, participants will be accompanied by current students and Faculty staff.

Office for International Affairs opens call for Erasmus+ study in academic year 2019/20. Students can apply for universities which have bilateral agreements with FI. FI students apply through online application in database ISOIS from 28 January to 26 February 2019. All students who would like to study abroad must submit certificate about English knowledge B2 level at least. Certificates from other languages are also welcomed. Students must also upload motivation letter (1/2 - 1 A4 page).

Masaryk University Rector’s Award for Outstanding Teachers - more information can be found here. Other information only in Czech.

It scans documents, marks them and sorts them according to given parameters. When asked, it searches the stored data and invoices - simply tell the machine to do so, and it will find the required information. Welcome to the office of the future. A team of IT experts from the Department of Machine Learning and Data Processing at FI MU is also tackling the task of extracting information from scanned documents which would push today's copying and printing machine closer towards so-called document management systems. https://is.muni.cz/do/fi/napsali_o_fi/rok_2018/2018-02-Informatici-udelaji-skenery-chytrejsi.-Naucili-je-zpracovat-obsah-skenovanych-faktur.Interface.pdf find the interview also in MU newsletter Interface: https://www.ctt.muni.cz/media/3101855/interface_02_18_web.pdf

If you are interested in mathematics, see the lecture of professor Rober Bryant from Duke University. The talk is supposed to be understandable to a wide range of scientists and students. 12 December 2018, 5:00 PM Refectory of Augustinian Abbey at Mendel Square - Mendel Museum About the lecture Much of classical mathematics involves finding a configuration or shape that provides an optimum solution to a problem. For example, it has long been known (though a rigorous proof took quite a while to find) that the surface of least area enclosing a given volume is a round sphere. There are many other ways to measure surfaces, though, and finding 'the' surface that optimizes a given 'measurement' (subject to some given constraints) remains a challenging problem that has motivated some of the deepest recent work in the mathematics of geometric shapes. In this talk, I will explain some of the classic ways to measure shapes of surfaces and relate this to classical problems involving surface area (soap films and bubbles) and total curvature as well to as recent progress by myself and others on these important optimization problems.

Let's celebrate the 85th birthday of Josef Gruska. He was interested in quantum computing in a time when it was considered science fiction. His book Quantum Computing was a first one that described the area. He was inducted in the TV doc series the Gallery of the national elite. Professor Josef Gruska and his work have international importance. He is a pioneer in computer science and an extraordinary human. He has been contributing to the development of theoretical informatics. We cordially invite you to see the presentation of Josef Gruska's work in KYPO, 12/12 - 13/12, 4 - 5:30 PM You can see posters, movies, etc. Moreover his collection of original Indian and Japanese drawings.

Kahin Akram Hassan, Linköping University, Sweden 17. 12. 2018, 13:00, A217 FI MU Visual representations ought to be more than aesthetically pleasing and complex — They have to fulfill a function so that target users can easily understand and use them. Conducting quantitative as well as qualitative evaluations with the user in mind, are important for obtaining concrete evidence of the effectiveness of such visual representations. In this talk, I will present the importance of evaluation in Visualization and my research. Bio: Kahin obtained his bachelor's and master’s degree in media technology and engineering at Linköping University, Sweden and is now a Ph.D. student in Information Visualization at the same department. He mainly focuses on user-centered evaluations of visual representations for temporal multivariate data. For more info please contact doc. Kozlíková (barunka.k@gmail.com).

Informatics Colloquium 11. 12. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. Guido Sanguinetti, Ph.D., School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh A computer scientist in epigenetic-land: some statistical challenges in functional genomic data modelling Abstract: New data gathering technologies such as ChIP-seq and BS-seq are allowing scientists to probe the epigenetic regulation of gene expression at unprecedented resolution. Yet the analysis of such data brings several non-trivial computational challenges. Here, I focus on how we can exploit the spatial correlation information to develop more powerful statistical models. I will briefly describe how we developed non-parametric statistical testing techniques for ChIP and BS-seq data, and discuss how spatial information can be used to extract more informative features from such data.

InterLoS* is the 5hour internet team competition. Teams solve ciphers and logical or programming tasks with various difficulties. When? Sunday 9/12/2018, 3 - 8 PM Registration till 8/12/2018 - https://interlos.fi.muni.cz *The Czech for elk is los :-)

Informatics Colloquium 4. 12. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. Ing. Adam Herout, Ph.D., FIT VUT Fully Automatic Traffic Surveillance Abstract: Traffic surveillance cameras can produce a lot of specific data. We are processing the data with the aim to fully automatically obtain as much useful data as possible: camera calibration, make&model fine-grained recognition, speed measurement, and other things. Some things work, some things might in the future.

We cordially invite you to see the legendary performance from May 1969 S úsměvem idiota (a nikdy jinak) (With a smile of an idiot (and never otherwise). It will take place on 21st of November at 7 PM, lecture hall D1 https://is.muni.cz/imgx/z/h/x/m-4analwgmw-c_of5nwvp/vodnansky-a4-page-001.jpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRBaN-QTpM4

Informatics Colloquium 27. 11. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. Mgr. Radek Pelánek, Ph.D., FI MU Adaptive learning: research, development, and connections Abstract: The goal of adaptive learning is to make learning more efficient and interesting by making it personalized for a particular student. In this talk, I will discuss the experience with the development of practically used adaptive learning systems and the research carried out by Adaptive Learning group at FI. I will also highlight connections of adaptive learning to other research areas, focusing specifically on topics studied at FI: machine learning, program analysis, similarity search, natural language processing, human-computer interaction, games, ...

Informatics Colloquium 20. 11. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. RNDr. Tomáš Brázdil, Ph.D., FI MU Verification of Markov Decision Processes using Learning Algorithms Abstract: I will present an application of machine-learning algorithms in the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of these techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive exploration of the state space. I will concentrate on computation of maximum reachability probabilities in MDPs and present two methods based on a heuristic-driven partial exploration of the model. First, bounded real-time dynamic programming that yields precise lower and upper bounds on the maximum reachability probability. Second, Monte Carlo tree search, a method celebrated in various machine-learning settings, that combines exact computation using search trees with sampling methods. I will demonstrate usefulness of these methods in verification of resource access control protocols.

Informatics Colloquium 13. 11. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. Mgr. Hana Rudová, Ph.D., FI MU University course timetabling and International Timetabling Competition 2019 Abstract: University course timetabling belongs to classical problems which have been studied for many years by many researchers. This talk will outline existing research and emphasize new research directions and challenges in this area. It is clear that the organization of international competitions has the high impact on the timetabling research. We intend to discuss the organization of the new International Timetabling Competition (ITC 2019, https://www.itc2019.org) with the aim to motivate further research on complex university course timetabling problems coming from practice. Our goal is the creation of rich real-world data sets. Thanks to the UniTime timetabling system, we can collect a strong set of data with diverse characteristics which we will discuss in the talk. The key novelty lies in the combination of student sectioning together with standard time and room assignment of events in courses.

Let us invite you to the talk of our special guest Prof. Helwig Hauser from the University of Bergen, which will be held on the 8th of November (Thursday) at 3 PM in the D2 room. From One to Many in Visualization A lot of interesting development has been happening in visualization research in the past 25 years. Certain topics, like medical visualization, flow visualization, tabular data visualization, and network visualization have attracted continued interest over many years and every year fascinating new findings are presented. We focus on the important work of optimizing our solutions and maturing the field. Every now and then, however, we also see promising chances for radical innovation, for new pioneering research in visualization. In this talk, we take a look at one of these chances, i.e., to transition from the visualization of individual datasets to visually studying large sets of datasets, for example from medical cohort studies or from numerical ensemble simulations. It seems that relevant new visualization challenges arise, when hundreds or thousands of datasets are studied simultaneously—in particular, when these are sets of multi-aspect spatiotemporal datasets. This talk brings up some of the related major questions (for example: how to map to the 2D/3D visualization space), together with examples of related work, and hopefully inspires some bright minds to conduct more visualization research on this topic of increasing relevance. Helwig Hauser's Short Bio Helwig Hauser graduated in 1995 from Vienna University of Technology in Austria and in 1998 he finished his PhD project on the visualization of complex dynamical systems (flow visualization). In 2003, he got his Habilitation at TU Wien, entitled ''Generalizing Focus+Context Visualization''—in 2006 this work was awarded with the Heinz-Zemanek Award by OCG. Already in 2004, his work on the interactive visual analysis of simulation data won the IEEE Visualization Contest in Austin. In 2013, Helwig Hauser then received the Dirk Bartz Prize for Visual Computing in Medicine from Eurographics (medical ultrasound data visualization). With >190 refereed publications and >7500 citations (h-index ≈ 50), he is an active and respected member of the international visualization research community. Recently, he chaired/hosted several important visualization conferences, including EuroVis 2011, PacificVis 2012, IEEE InfoVis 2013 & 2014, and VCBM 2016 in Bergen, and he has been serving as associate editor for three of the central journals (including IEEE TVCG, CGF, and C&G). After first working for TU Wien as assistant and later as assistant professor (1994–), he changed to the new VRVis Research Center in 2000 (having been one of the founding team, also). There, he led the basic research group on interactive visualization (until 2003) before he became the scientific director of VRVis (–2007). Since then, he is professor in visualization at the University of Bergen in Norway, where he built up a new research group on visualization.

Informatics Colloquium 6. 11. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Assoc. Prof. Dr. Standa Živný, Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Power of algorithms for homomorphisms and generalisations seen from both sides Abstract: The topic of this talk is the computational complexity of and the power of algorithms for the homomorphism problem between two relational structures, also known as the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). We briefly discuss the known algorithmic and complexity classifications for CSPs parametrised by the source or target structures. We then discuss in more detail a classification of general-valued CSPs parametrised by the source structures. This part of the talk is based on joint work (published in FOCS 2018) with Clement Carbonnel and Miguel Romero.

Informatics Colloquium 30. 10. 2018, 14:00 ledture hall D2 Digitalizace průmyslové výroby Abstract: Digitalizace zásadním způsobem mění svět kolem nás. Mění chování zákazníků, kteří stále častěji požadují výrobky uzpůsobené jejich individuálním požadavkům za nákladových podmínek hromadné výroby. Tím vytváří nové výzvy pro firmy - jejich výroba musí být rychlejší, efektivnější, flexibilnější, dosahovat vysoké úrovně kvality a samozřejmě vysoké úrovně bezpečnosti. Řešení těchto výzev pak přinášejí opět právě digitální technologie, které transformují způsob, jakým jsou výrobky navrhovány, jak jsou vyráběny i jak se dále vyvíjejí. Například tzv. digitální dvojčata, tedy digitální modely výrobků, výrobního zařízení, výrobního procesu i celého výrobního provozu umožňují výrobek i způsob jeho výroby simulovat v softwarovém prostředí. Je tak možné odhalit chyby a vyladit všechny parametry ještě předtím, než je výroba vůbec spuštěna. Zásadní průlom přináší také rozšíření využití aditivní výroby, neboli 3D tisku. Ten umožňuje tvar výrobku lépe uzpůsobit jeho požadovaným vlastnostem a současně zásadním způsobem snížit množství použitého matriálu. Postupující digitalizace rovněž dopadá i na pracoviště. Mění se organizace práce nebo potřebné kompetence zaměstnanců, což se nezbytně promítá do nutných změn ve vzdělávání. Nejen těmto tématům se bude ve své přednášce a následné diskusi s vámi věnovat generální ředitel skupiny Siemens v České republice Ing. Eduard Palíšek, Ph.D., MBA.

Informatics Colloquium 23. 10. 2018, 14:00 ledture hall D2 RNDr. Radim Ošťádal, NBÚ Praha Abstract: Cílem prezentace je základní pochopení činnosti a spolupráce organizací zabývajících se kybernetickou bezpečností v České republice. Hlubší pohled je poskytnut na vládní CERT tým, na jím poskytované služby a na jeho spolupráci s dalšími organizacemi. Na závěr se posluchač seznámí s různými typy kybernetických cvičení.

Informatics Colloquium 16. 10. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. RNDr. Jiří Zlatuška, CSc., FI MU Abstract: Zpracování informací a informační systémy umožňují hromadné zpracování „objektivních dat“ pro potřeby řízení i hodnocení. Má to za následek výraznou změnu kultury institucí a firem z hlediska faktorů, které se pro ně stávají určujícím parametrem řízení. Obecný trend tímto směrem je dlouhodobější, týká se řady oblastí činností a vede k nárůstu byrokratizace spojené s „objektivitou“ takových přístupů, stejně jako k náhradě odborníků v oboru či oblasti generickými managery usměrňujícími práci odborníků tak, aby se vešla do obecných přihrádek těchto managerů. Z hlediska informatiky jako disciplíny, která tyto postupy nástroji, které vytváří, umožňuje, usnadňuje a podporuje, je vhodné mít na zřeteli širší kontext těchto změn i jeho rizika - ať již při vlastním použivání těchto přístupů, tak při výchově studentů, kteří takové nástroje budou v budoucnosti vytvářet a používat.

French Government scholarships These grants are awarded in 2019 by the French Embassy in the Czech Republic. These scholarships are intended for PhD students of Czech universities who wish to achieve, in any field of studies, either: - a co-supervised PhD thesis (“cotutelle“) with a French university - a short stay for a period of one to three months in a French research laboratory The deadline for application is February 1st 2019 and the selection boards will be held at the end of February 2019.

- October 9, 2018 at 4 p.m. - room B517 - Application-Aware Flow Monitoring

About the lecture Population protocols are a mathematical model of distributed computation introduced by Angluin et al. in 2004. The original purpose of Angluin et al. was the theoretical study of systems consisting of identical, cheap mobile devices with tiny computational resources, like sensor networks. However, since its introduction, the model has also been used to analyze the behavior of chemical systems and of people in social networks. Population protocols help us to pose and study many fundamental questions about distributed systems: What can be computed by agents wishing to remain anonymous? Are leader processes necessary for optimal speed? Can macroscopic "phase transitions" be "programmed" at a microscopic level? Is it possible to check automatically that a protocol works correctly? Is it possible to automatically synthesize a protocol for a given task? In the talk, I will introduce the population protocol model with the help of several examples. More precisely, I will present the problem of the Black Ninjas in the Dark, and the different solutions given to it by their Senseis. I will also show animated simulations of some protocols. The lecture will be held at Mendel Museum, Refectory of Augustinian Abbey (Mendlovo nám. 1a, Brno) About speaker Javier Esparza is a full professor at Faculty of Computer Science, Technische Universität München, Germany. The Chair held by Prof. Esparza develops methods, algorithms, and tools to locate and eliminate errors in software systems or verify their correctness.

Informatics Colloquium 9. 10. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. RNDr. Lubomír Popelínský, Ph.D., FI MU Abstract: It is five years when the first monography on Anomaly analysis have been published. We will review new research as well as application direction that newly appeared from that time e.g. anomaly explanation, class-based outliers, graph and sequence outliers, and outliers in text among others.

About the lecture The most famous open problem in theoretical computer science, known as the P vs. NP problem challenges us to prove that for some natural search problems, no efficient algorithm is possible. At the moment, we have no idea how to prove such a statement. In order to make meaningful progress, we can restrict the class of algorithms we consider and show that, within these restrictions, no efficient algorithm exists. In this talk, I consider a natural restriction to symmetric algorithms. I explain how symmetries arise naturally in computational problems and why algorithms that respect these symmetries have inherent limitations. Many of our most powerful algorithmic techniques are symmetry-preserving, while others are not. Exploring these limits offers a rich research agenda combining logic, algebra and combinatorics with algorithms. The lecture will be held at Mendel Museum, Refectory of Augustinian Abbey (Mendlovo nám. 1a, Brno) About the speaker Anuj Dawar is the Professor of Logic and Algorithms at the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute in London.

Informatics Colloquium 2. 10. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. RNDr. Daniel Kráľ, Ph.D., DSc., FI MU Abstract: The theory of combinatorial limits provides analytic tools to study large discrete structures. Such tools have found applications in various areas of computer science and mathematics. In particular, analytic representations of large graphs nourished progress on many difficult problems in extremal graph theory. We will present an introduction to this rapidly developing area of combinatorics and illustrate the range of its applications on several specific problems concerning graphs and permutations. We conclude with some of the future research directions related to the presented concepts.

The gates of Masaryk University and our faculty will open on the 5th of October and let the visitors of Night of Science come inside. Come and see what are we doing and researching.

We cordiallly invite all to the lecture of David Pavlik, Chief Information Officer Kiwi.com. David graduated at Faculty of Informatics, MU in 2001. He then worked in variety of roles, e.g. in Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, SpaceX. He will talk about how to be successful in your career and how important is what he learned at Faculty of Informatics. Title: Learning of first principles matters Abstract: To be really successful in your career not only you need to understand the business context, but you need to understand the fundamentals of the domain you are working in. In this lecture, we are going to walk you through multiple examples of how college education was successfully applied in various disciplines at world’s most successful companies. We will talk about the application of building your own grammar, discuss how deep knowledge of statistics can increase the revenue of your business or save lives, and why you should understand programming language principles. The objective of this lecture is to set the context for why it does matter to spend the next few years in college. Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Botanicka 68a, Brno lecture hall D3, September 20th, 2018, 18:00 About the speaker: David graduated at Faculty of Informatics, MU in 2001. He then worked in variety of roles, ranging from Service Delivery Lead at Microsoft, Technical Program Manager at Amazon.com, Engineering Manager at Netflix or various software roles at SpaceX. Most recently he is back to Brno and enjoying working as Chief Information Officer with an amazing team of Kiwi.com. The lecture will be given in English.

The 16th conference on Computational Methods in Systems Biology (CMSB 2018) takes place on the 12th to 14th September 2018 in Brno, Czech Republic. Its aim is to bring together researchers from across biological, mathematical, computational, and physical sciences who are interested in the study, modelling, simulation, advanced analysis, and design of biological systems. There is no entrance fee for FI students and employees, contact: cmsb2018@fi

The Faculty of Informatics at Botanická Street will offer its hospitality to students and people from abroad with interest in IT Law domain from 5th of August Till 12th of August. The Brno office of The European Law Students' Association organizes the well-established event.

It has been some time since Czechitas, non-government organization with roots at Faculty of Informatics organized the first Summer School on IT for girls. The offer has been still the same. The event has been planned not only for the girls with the interests in informatics and IT but also for the girls, who have not found, what their future domain will be yet. The main aim of the event is to show the IT world in a little bit different angle than usual and to show that there is a place for girls and women in it. The event takes place from 5th till 11th of August at the Faculty of Informatics MUNI in Brno.

Cyber Security team of Masaryk University CSIRT-MU will take place the second year off the KYPO Summer School in 23rd and 24th of August. It is the reward for winners of the high school Cyber Security Competition.

RNDr. Filip Mravec 18. 6. 2018, 14:00, at B517 Numerical Processing of Spectrometric Data RNDr. František Blahoudek 25. 6. 2018, 10:00, at B517 Automata for Formal Methods: Little Steps Towards Perfection

Informatics Colloquium 22. 5. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Mouzhi Ge, Ph.D., FI MU Recommender System Research in E-Commerce Abstract: Over the last decade, recommender systems have been widely applied in e-commerce, for example, video recommendations in Youtube, book recommendation on Amazon, and movie recommendation on Netflix. Recommender systems are developed to help users find relevant products that may interest them. The goal of recommender systems is to reduce the information overload and provide personalized recommendations for users. In this talk, I will discuss the state-of-the-art research of recommender system in E-Commerce, which includes rationale and algorithms inside the recommender black box, important features and evaluations in recommender systems. Finally, a real-world food recommender system project in E-Commerce will be described and demonstrated to show how to construct and evaluate the recommender system in practice, as well as possible challenges that are related to the food recommender systems.

Starting study from Autumn term 2018 Deadline for submission of your e-application is May 25, 2018 All you need to know about admission procedure

We cordially invite you to the annual Film Festival of Faculty of Informatics of Masaryk University. The festival will be held on 18th May 2018. Short films produced by talented students of MUNI will be showcased with this year's motto "Colour yourself". The screening will run simultaneously at the Faculty of Informatics MU with English subtitles, and the University Cinema Scala. When: May 18, 2018 - 19:30 - 22:30 Where: Faculty of Informatics of the Masaryk University (GPS 49.209972, 16.599417) and University Cinema Scala (GPS 49.197361, 16.608361) The festival is organised by the Department of Computer Graphics and Design at Faculty of Informatics, MUNI and students led by doc. RNDr. Petr Sojka, Ph.D. http://festival.fi.muni.cz/eng/index.html

Office for International Affairs FI opened 2nd call for Erasmus+ study during spring semester 2019. Students can apply for universities which have bilateral agreements with FI and are already free. Students FI apply through online application in database ISOIS from 19 April to 8 May 2018. All students who would like to study abroad must submit certificate about English knowledge B2 level at least. Certificates from other languages are also welcomed. Students also upload motivation letter explaining their interest in chosen universities.

Informatics Colloquium 24. 4. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Kateřina Falk, Ph.D., Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Drážďany, Německo Astrophysics and fusion research with high power lasers The most powerful laser systems in the world and their uses Abstract: The talk will be about speaker research on dense plasmas using some of the most powerful lasers in the world. At the first an outline of the field will be given, including an introduction of some of the best laser laboratories and about applications in laboratory astrophysics and fusion technology. Thanks to the development of high power and high energy lasers, scientists are now able to generate extreme states of matter, accelerate particles and simulate many astrophysical phenomena including the interiors of planets, supernova explosions, gigantic astrophysical jets or even create antimatter. By dynamically compressing matter, lasers can create exotic phase transitions like the diamond rain inside Neptune or formation of rare structures like londsdaleite, which is harder than diamond. One of the most important applications of this research is an efficient generation of clean energy using thermonuclear fusion, the same reactions that power all stars including our Sun.

Informatics Colloquium 17. 4. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. Fotios Liarokapis, Ph.D., FI MU Virtual Reality Assessment for Examining Functional Neurological Symptoms Abstract: Functional neurological symptoms (FNS) are somatic symptoms that still remain poorly understood. Their diagnosis is made by exclusion of organic cause and therefore does not provide any specific cues for the subsequent treatment. Virtual reality (VR) seems to be mature enough to be experimentally tested as a potential therapeutic intervention for the functional neurological disorders. Biofeedback is the process of gaining greater awareness of many physiological functions primarily using instruments that provide information on the activity of those same systems, with a goal of being able to manipulate them at will. Some of the processes that can be controlled include brainwaves, muscle tone, skin conductance, heart rate and pain perception. This presentation will evaluate immersive virtual reality as a potential therapeutic tool for a treatment of functional neurological symptoms. The first part will examine the effects of immersive virtual reality intervention on changes in autonomic arousal in FNS (in both healthy subjects and patients) by introducing emotional stress. The effect of immersion manipulation on changes in emotional reactivity to stress inducing stimuli is assessed by measuring skin conductance and heart rate variability. The second part will examine how biofeedback affects immersive virtual reality intervention on effective connectivity patterns in patients with FNS.

Informatics Colloquium 10. 4. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Ing. Leonard Walletzký, Ph.D., FI MU Can Cities be truly Smart? Findings from the Smart Service research group Abstract: Two years ago the Smart Service research group was established at the Faculty of Informatics. During this short period of time, its members have become relevant part of the research community, focusing on new challenges in ICT applications (IoT, Smart Cities, Industry 4) within Service Science. The presentation will outline some of our main findings on the field of Smart City, focused on the comparison of academic approaches with industrial practice.

Informatics colloquium 3. 4. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. JUDr. Radim Polčák, Ph.D., PrF MU Abstract: In my note, I would like to discuss some legal issues related to development and use of autonomous robots. One of obvious problems is liability. Robots do not have legal personalities, so it is questionable who and for what should be liable when a robot causes harm (physical or other - e.g. through discriminatory decisions). In real life, this issue translates mostly to compliance and modelling insurance schemes that technically define basic parameters of respective markets. In addition, I would like to briefly discuss legal barriers to use of different types of data for development or operations of robots. In that regards, we need complex legal solutions (not necessarily legislation - e.g. contractual data trusts) to overcome complicated and differentiated legal obstacles that prevent pooling and use of data from different jurisdictions within the EU and offshore.

Informatics colloquium 27. 3. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Ing. Vlad Popovici, M.Sc., Ph.D., PřF MU Abstract: High throughput genomic revolution started almost twenty years ago with the first in-house printed DNA chips. Since then, various technologies evolved, allowing the interrogation of the whole (human) genome, proteome, metabolome, etc., all producing large amounts of data. Bioinformatics tools and methods evolved to account for all these data modalities with the current bottleneck being the integration of these perspectives into a more comprehensive picture. In parallel and completely independent of bioinformatics, digital pathology also witnessed significant advances fuelled mostly by technological developments: slide scanners and computational infrastructure. However, both “classical” bioinformatics and digital pathology/bioimaging are often used to investigate the same biological phenomenon. It is, therefore, natural to attempt to combine these two seemingly incompatible fields with the hope of unveiling new connections between them. In this talk we will look at three examples of jointly mining the transcriptome and the histopathology images in the context of breast and colon cancers. We will also discuss the computational challenges one faces when working with these data.

The 16th conference on Computational Methods in Systems Biology (CMSB 2018) will take place on the 12th to 14th September 2018 in Brno, Czech Republic. Its aim is to bring together researchers from across biological, mathematical, computational, and physical sciences who are interested in the study, modelling, simulation, advanced analysis, and design of biological systems. https://cmsb2018.fi.muni.cz/important-dates/ https://cmsb2018.fi.muni.cz/

Informatics colloquium 20. 3. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 RNDr. Vladimír Ulman, Ph.D., FI MU Abstract: The present biomedical research increasingly relies on automated processing and analysis of large amount of image data. Two fundamental tasks in this area are automated cell segmentation and tracking. The task of cell segmentation is to split the image into several disjoint regions, each accurately outlining every single cell. The task of cell tracking is to link together the regions that represent the same cell in a time-lapse image sequence. This allows for time-resolved quantitative description of events and changes in displayed cell behaviour. Needless to say, the accuracy of the two tasks influences accuracy of the consequent biological analysis. This talk will be focused on ways to evaluate performance quality of segmentation and tracking algorithms. In particular, I will review the evaluation protocol implemented in the Cell Tracking Challenge, an international benchmarking initiative that FI MU is part of, and identify current challenges in the field. Last but not least, I will give an outlook on a artificial image synthesis, which I see as a prospective way to foster the future development in the field.

Informatics colloquium 13. 3. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Atreyee Sinha, Ph.D., Computing & Information Sciences Department, Edgewood College, Madison, USA Abstract: Image classification is one of the most important Computer Vision problems being addressed by researchers around the world today. Classification is the task of labelling images with different predefined category labels. These category labels may be based on some low-level features such as color, texture or shape, but more often, they are based on high-level features such as semantic description, activity or objects present. In this talk, I will present the different techniques and recent advances in image classification and retrieval with particular examples from different applications.

Informatics colloquium 6. 3. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 RNDr. Robert Ganian, Ph.D., Algorithms and Complexity Group, TU Wien Backdoors to Tractability for Constraint Satisfaction Abstract: Constraint Satisfaction (CSP) is one of the most studied NP-complete problems, with numerous applications in both theory and practice and featuring its own dedicated conference. A significant amount of research has targeted the identification of classes of CSP instances which are polynomially tractable; this has led to celebrated results such as Schaefer's Dichotomy Theorem and Bulatov's recent proof of the Feder-Vardi Dichotomy Conjecture. Such classes of instances are often called "islands of tractability". In this talk, we will present techniques and recent developments on solving CSP instances that lie outside of an island of tractability. In particular, we will use the notion of "backdoors" to capture the distance of an instance from an island of tractability and show how these backdoors can be exploited to obtain algorithms for CSP with good runtime guarantees.

Informatics colloquium 27. 2. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 asst. prof. Dimitris Sacharidis, Ph.D., Institute of Information Systems Engineering, TU Wien Managing and Analyzing Big Geo-Social Data Abstract: The widespread adoption of online social networks and location-aware mobile devices has resulted in a continuously increasing amount of published user-generated, geo-tagged content. Typical examples include tweets, check-ins, photo/video uploads, route posts (e.g., taxi rides, running trails). This big geo-social data essentially captures people's everyday interactions between the physical and digital world, and presents immense opportunities for creating added value to domains such as location-based services, smart cities, tourism. In this talk, we will present methods for efficiently handling and effectively analyzing large amounts of such data.

Informatics colloquium 20. 2. 2018, 14:00 lecture hall D2 ao. Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Renate Motschnig, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna Transforming Communication in Leadership and Teamwork – Why should computer scientists care? Abstract: Numerous sources report that the major reason for ICT-project failure are people- rather than technical issues. Thus, in order to improve project success, the most evident thing to do seems to care about the human factor in ICT projects. This influential “soft”, “fuzzy”, and “complex” factor, however, has tended to be overlooked, such that a number of research gaps at the interface between software engineering and human sciences became apparent and need to be filled. In this talk, my objective is to raise awareness of the salience of communication issues in ICT projects and illustrate, what can be done (or what computer scientists, in particular, can do) scientifically and practically, to fill the research/practice gaps and concurrently improve communication, leadership, and teamwork in ICT projects.

Do not miss the opportunity to hear prof. Král, leading world-wide expert in the field of discrete mathematics and algorithms. We are very pleased to announce that with the support of the MUNI Award in Science and Humanities programme we can welcome prof. Kral on a permanent position at FI MUNI this year. Daniel Král' is a professor of matematics and informatics at University of Warwick. For his work he received many important awards such as European Prize in Combinatorics 2011 or Philip Leverhulme Prize in Mathematics and Statistics in 2014. He is also one of two Czech scientists who received ERC grant more than once. Lecture "Models of large networks" will be given in English. The lecture will take place on Friday, February 16, 2018 at 11 am in the D3 lecture hall.

Do not miss the unique opportunity to hear prof. Král, leading world-wide expert in the field of discrete mathematics and algorithms. Daniel Král' is a professor of matematics and informatics at University of Warwick. For his work he received many important awards such as European Prize in Combinatorics 2011 or Philip Leverhulme Prize in Mathematics and Statistics in 2014. He is also one of two Czech scientists who received ERC grant more than once. Lecture "Models of large networks" will be given in English. The lecture will take place on Friday, February 16, 2018 at 11 am in the D3 lecture hall.

Office for International Affairs opens call for Erasmus+ study in academic year 2018/19. Students can apply for universities which have bilateral agreements with FI. FI students apply through online application in database ISOIS from 29 January to 25 February 2018. All students who would like to study abroad must submit certificate about English knowledge B2 level at least. Certificates from other languages are also welcomed. Students must also upload motivation letter (1/2 - 1 A4 page).

Masaryk University Rector's Award 2018

We wholeheartedly invite all interested students to the Open Day of Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, #fimuni. WHEN: February 16th, 12:30–16:30 (last from 4 days in this academic year). WHERE: Faculty of Informatics, MU, Botanická 68a, Brno, rooms D1, D2 Come to visit us to know the students, atmosphere of our school, to see our laboratories and research being done here. You could cooperate on the research being done in a year's time! For more info: https://www.fi.muni.cz/admission/open-days.html Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1641723945887203/

Petr Eliáš, our PhD student and member of DISA laboratory, attended prestigious conference IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia on Taiwan recently. He has got an award in category The Best Student Paper for his paper A Real-Time Annotation of Motion Data Streams. Petr is primary author, paper is coauthored by Jan Sedmidubský as consultant and Pavel Zezula as his PhD advisor.

Informatics colloquium 19. 12. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. Stefan Bruckner, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Bergen Navigating the Space of Visualizations Anstract: Considering the vast amounts of data involved in many scientific disciplines and industrial applications, it is essential to provide effective and efficient means for forming a mental model of the underlying phenomenon. The term "visualization" refers to the process of extracting meaningful information from data and constructing a visual representation of this information. While the concept of using images to communicate complex phenomena of course predates the development of digital technology by millennia, over the past decades the field of visualization has firmly established itself as an important and constantly expanding discipline within computer science. Computer-based Visualization seeks to provide interactive graphical data representations, taking advantage of the extraordinary capability of the human brain to process visual information. Advanced visualization methods now play an an important role in the exploration, analysis, and presentation of data in many fields such as medicine, biology, geology, or engineering. This development, however, has also lead to the fact that there is now a vast number of often very specialized techniques to visualize different types of data tailored towards specific tasks. For non-experts it becomes non-trivial to choose appropriate methods that will provide the optimal answers to their questions. In this talk, I will discuss previous and ongoing research on how we can explore and navigate the space of visualizations itself. By consider the interplay between data, visualization algorithms, their parameters, perception, and cognition as a complex phenomenon that deserves study in its own right, we are making progress in providing goal-oriented interfaces for visual analysis. For instance, we can make the modification of input parameters of visualization algorithms more intuitive by normalizing their perceived effects over the entire value range, and provide visual guidance about their influence. Furthermore, by incorporating additional knowledge into the visualization process, we can infer information about the goals of a user, and develop smarter systems that automatically suggest appropriate visualization techniques. This line of investigation leads us along the path towards a new type of visual data science, where automated data analysis approaches such as deep learning are tightly coupled with interactive visualization techniques to exploit their complementary advantages for knowledge discovery in data-driven science. Short biography: Stefan Bruckner is professor in visualization at the Department of Informatics of the University of Bergen, Norway. Prior to his appointment in Bergen, he was an assistant professor at the TU Wien, Austria where he also received his habilitation (2012) and PhD (2008). His research focuses on interactive visualization and he has made important contributions to several areas such as illustrative methods, parameter space exploration, feature detection, and knowledge-based interfaces. Prof. Bruckner has successfully led several research projects including industry collaborations with partners such as AGFA HealthCare and GE Healthcare. His results were published in the premier venues for visualization research and have to date received 8 best paper awards and honorable mentions at international events. He won the Karl-Heinz-Höhne Award for Medical Visualization and received the prestigious Eurographics Young Researcher Award. As an active member of the international scientific community, Prof. Bruckner regularly serves on the program committees of the leading conferences in visualization and computer graphics. He was program co-chair of EuroVis, PacificVis, VCBM, and the Eurographics Medical Prize, and currently serves on the editorial board of Computers & Graphics. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society, ACM SIGGRAPH, and Eurographics.

Informatics colloquium 12. 12. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 RNDr. Petr Švenda, Ph.D., FI MU Troubles with RSA cryptographic keypair generation Abstract: The talk will cover our recent work [1] which resulted in the discovery of an algorithmic flaw in the construction of primes for RSA key generation in a widely-used library of a major manufacturer of cryptographic hardware. The primes generated by the library suffer from an entropy loss so severe, that practical factorization of commonly used key lengths up to 2048 bits is possible. Our method based on an extension of Coppersmith’s factorization attack requires no additional information except for the value of the public modulus and does not depend on a weak or a faulty random number generator. The library in question is found in NIST FIPS 140-2 and CC EAL 5+ certified devices used for a wide range of real-world applications, including citizens identity cards, Trusted Platform Modules, secure email, and tokens for authentication or software signing. The findings directly resulted in the revocation of millions of certificates in Estonia, Slovakia, Spain and other countries and major security update rolled by Microsoft, Google, HP, Lenovo, and others. The talk will discuss how the vulnerability was found, what was the root cause for its existence, our experience from the responsible disclosure process and the options how to systematically prevent such a large-scale failure in the future. [1] Matus Nemec, Marek Sys, Petr Svenda, Dusan Klinec and Vashek Matyas: The Return of Coppersmith's Attack: Practical Factorization of Widely Used RSA Moduli, 24th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'2017), 2017.

Informatics colloquium 5. 12. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. RNDr. Tomáš Brázdil, Ph.D., FI MU Mastering games with deep learning Abstract: The main theme of the talk is how much a deep learning agent could learn by playing games against itself. I will start with a historical overview of TD-Gammon, a famous algorithm for playing backgammon at expert level. In the main part I will concentrate on the very recent algorithms for playing Go above master level. I will give an overview of fundamental methods, namely deep reinforcement learning and Monte Carlo tree search. Finally, I will comment on new directions in the area, especially the Starcraft II challenge in which the current algorithms still fail to deliver convincing results.

Informatics colloquium 28. 11. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Uwe Zdun, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna Software Architectures and Techniques for Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Abstract: IT compliance means in general complying to regulations that apply to an IT system. There are many other rules and constraints in a software system that have characteristics similar to IT compliance rules stemming from regulations, including security policies, business rules, QoS rules, deployment rules, and even architecture conformance rules. In this talk, we discuss software architectures and techniques for automated compliance monitoring and enforcement. Goals are to enhance the automation in compliance controls and make compliance controls easier to implement, reuse, and change - and thus less costly. We will discuss different categories of compliance checking techniques, like those that check at design time, runtime, or after runtime, and those that are primarily focussed on structures or behaviors. Further we discuss the need and techniques for involving domain experts more closely, as well as semi-automatic guidance for control definition, monitoring, and enforcement.

Informatics colloquium 21. 11. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 RNDr. Martin Maška, Ph.D., FI MU Segmentation and Tracking of Spiky Cells Abstract: To monitor their surroundings and to promote their movement, motile cells protrude spikes. Although modern fluorescence microscopy allows us to observe spiky cells at unprecedented spatio-temporal resolutions, a fully 3D image analysis approach to automatically quantifying the behavior of spikes is still lacking. In this talk, we briefly explain crucial aspects of such a quantitative task and present our recent advances in the field, demonstrating how convolutional neural networks combined with realistic computer-generated image data help to increase segmentation and tracking performance beyond that of traditional image analysis approaches without machine learning.

Informatics colloquium 14. 11. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 pplk. doc. Ing. Jan Mazal, Ph.D., NATO Modelling & Simulation Centre of Excellence, Rome Military robotics and the Army of the Czech Republic Abstract: The world of information technology and automation passed an unprecedented expansion in the last decade and it affects all areas of our lives today, including the military. As shown in many military operations, for example in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other countries, the results of research and development have played a decisive role, indicating that the high technological approaches in combat has proven itself as a key element of a victory in almost all conducted conflicts. This factor is speeding up the development of selected military-technological areas, which slowly indicate a breakthrough in the ways of the combat operations management in "the depth and width", which the human has not experienced throughout its existence yet. With a high probability it can be said, that we are on the edge of another technological revolution, which certainly will have a serious impact on the global society. It will perhaps surpass all previous milestones of human progress and maybe even some visions from Sci-Fi literature. The impacts of significant advances in the development on the field of artificial intelligence, robotics and industrial automation, can be very difficult to predict, even in the short term. The aim of the presentation is to briefly inform students with a short history of armed conflicts and the impact of technology on command and control, on possible approaches that lately come, also, possible ways, how to implement robotic systems in military operations and the effect of artificial intelligence on the military operations management, how to increase the effectiveness of operational command and control, and briefly summarize research and development in the field of military robotics within the Army of the Czech Republic.

Informatics colloquium 7. 11. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. RNDr. Jan Strejček, Ph.D., FI MU Loop summatization and its applications Abstract:Informatické kolokvium 7. 11. 2017, 14:00 posluchárna D2 doc. RNDr. Jan Strejček, Ph.D., FI MU Loop summatization and its applications Abstrakt: We show a symbolic-execution-based algorithm computing the precise effect of a program cycle on program variables. For a program variable, the algorithm produces an expression representing the variable value after the number of cycle iterations specified by parameters of the expression. The algorithm is partial in the sense that it can fail to find such an expression for some program variables (for example, it fails in cases when the variable value depends on the order of paths in the cycle taken during iterations). We present two applications of this loop summarization procedure. The first is a construction of a nontrivial necessary condition on program input to reach a given program location. The second application is a loop bound detection algorithm, which produces tighter loop bounds than other approaches.

Juraj Hromkovic, professor of Information Technology and Eduation at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich since January 2004. Teaching mathematics and computer science as research instruments Abstract: We view mathematics as a language that was and is developed in order to describe what is describable in an unambiguous way (everybody mastering this language interprets each sentence in the same way) and in order to have a language in which the correctness of each argumentation is verifiable. Together with experiments mathematics became the main research instrument for discovering our world. In this talk we present the history of the development of mathematics and computer science in a concise way and recognize that the main contributions of science are not in discovering facts, but in introducing new concepts that increase the power of our research instruments. Finally, we discuss why and how we have to change our education in mathematics and science that is still living in a more than 100 years old world of technical revolution. The main idea is based on moving from teaching long time optimized and finalized products of scientific work as facts, relationships and methods to teaching the processes of the development of research instruments and of making discoveries. The main goal is to force the intellectual growth of young people, to motivate them to strive to understand and to be creative. Place: Mendelovo muzeum, Mendlovo náměstí 907/1A, Brno

Informatics colloquium 31. 10. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. ing. Jana Košecká, Ph.D., George Mason University, Google Brain, Mountain View, CA, USA Advances in Learning for Robots Perception Abstract: Advancements in robotic navigation, mapping, object search and recognition rest to a large extent on robust, efficient and scalable semantic understanding of the surrounding environment. In recent years we have developed several approaches for capturing geometry and semantics of environment from video, RGB-D data, or just simply a single RGB image, focusing on indoors and outdoors environments elevant for robotics applications. I will demonstrate our work on predicting locations of generic objects in videos acquired by a moving vehicle, for detailed semantic parsing using deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), object detection and object pose recovery from single RGB image. The applicability of the presented techniques for autonomous driving, service robotics, mapping and augmented reality applications will be discussed.

Informatics colloquium 24. 10. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Mouzhi Ge, Ph.D., FI MU Overview and New Trends in Data Quality Research Abstract: Numerous business initiatives have been delayed or even cancelled, citing poor-quality data as the main reason. Data quality has become a critical concern to the success of enterprises. Due to the importance of data quality, the research of data quality and its management strategies can already be traced back to the 90s. Thus, I will firstly provide an overview of the data quality research over the last 20 years and discuss the development of data quality research topics such as data quality assessment, data quality management, and data quality in contexts. I will further refine two state-of-the-art research trends: one is Big Data Quality, which will be explained in the context of smart city. The other is Relative Data Quality, which will be applied in the enriched geospatial applications. Also, the talk will include a short introduction to the data quality research community, the industrial applications, and how to apply data quality research in other research domains.

Informatics colloquium 17. 10. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Dr. rer. nat. Achim Blumensath, FI MU Algorithmic Model Theory Abstract: Tools from logic are used in many areas of contemporary computer science including databases, verification, and algorithms and complexity. The field of algorithmic model theory developed in response to these applications. It studies the various logics used by applications with a focuses on two related aspects: (i) algorithmic questions, in particular algorithms for the model checking problem; and (ii) questions concerning the expressive power of these logics. In this talk I will give an overview over the various aspects of algorithmic model theory and then concentrate on a few selected areas. A recurring topic will be the notion of a compatible operation. We will discuss several applications of such operations throughout algorithmic model theory. As a more detailed example I will present a classification theorem for a particular kind of operations called a transductions.

Informatics colloquium 10. 10. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Doc. RNDr. Gabriel Semanišin, Ph.D., dean of Prírodovedecká fakulta UPJŠ Košice Two challenges in networks communications Abstract: Internet of things and an enormous recent expansion of social networks have brought a lot of new challenges in the areas of secure and efficient communications in networks. In the talk we will discuss two aspect of such communication. We will provide some motivation and background of the treated problems and later we will concentrate on two specific challenges that are related to the creation of the network topologies and afterwards to the monitoring of the communication in the networks. We will briefly demonstrated two graph theory methods based approaches to the above problems. One is related to the Load Balancing Problem and the second on to the k-Path Vertex Cover Problem that provides a generalization of the well-known Minimum Vertex Cover Problem. Finally, we will briefly present goals and outcomes of our two recent international pilot projects in electronic communications at which we have been taking part.

Informatics colloquium 3. 10. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Mgr. Jan Obdržálek, Ph.D., FI MU Digraph Width Measures Abstract: Treewidth, defined by Robertson and Seymour, proved to be an extremely successful graph parameter. Intuitively, it measures how much tree-like a given graph is. Many problems which are NP-hard on general graphs become tractable on graphs of low treewidth. However treewidth quickly hits its limits once we try to apply it to directed graphs. Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), on which many problems have simple efficient algorithms, can have arbitrarily high treewidth. Naturally one can ask whether there is a digraph width measure with all the nice properties of treewidth. In this talk we first quickly survey some of the known digraph width measures, and then try to answer the question whether there indeed is a good directed counterpart to treewidth.

Office for International Affairs opens 3rd call for Erasmus+ study during spring semester 2018. Students can apply for universities which have bilateral agreements with FI and are already free. Students FI apply through online application in database ISOIS from 11 September to 29 September 2017. All students who would like to study abroad must submit certificate about English knowledge B2 level at least. Certificates from other languages are also welcomed. Students also upload motivation letter explaining their interest in chosen universities.

Office for International Cooperation of MU opened online application for MU students for special scholarship for mobility abroad in 2017. Call is for short study or work mobility (to 28 days). Students apply through online application (https://isois.ois.muni.cz/public/application-outgoing) with deadline 31. 8. 2017. More information at OIC webpage or contact Martin Vašek (vasek@czs.muni.cz, http://www.muni.cz/people/53439)

Informatics colloquium 16. 5. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Dr. Eun Jung Kim, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris The "art of trellis decoding" is fixed-parameter tractable Abstract: Given n subspaces of a finite-dimensional vector space over a fixed finite field F, we wish to find a linear layout V1, V2, . . . , Vn of the subspaces such that dim((V1 + V2 +···+Vi)∩(Vi+1 +···+Vn)) ≤ k for all i; such a linear layout is said to have width at most k. When restricted to 1- dimensional subspaces, this problem is equivalent to computing the trellis- width (or minimum trellis state-complexity) of a linear code in coding theory and computing the path-width of an F-represented matroid in matroid theory. We present a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm to construct a linear layout of width at most k, if it exists, for input subspaces of a finite-dimensional vector space over F. As corollaries, we obtain a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm to produce a path- decomposition of width at most k for an input F- represented matroid of path-width at most k, and a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm to find a linear rank-decomposition of width at most k for an input graph of linear rank-width at most k. In both corollaries, no such algorithms were known previously. Our approach is based on dynamic programming combined with the idea developed by Bodlaender and Kloks (1996) for their work on path-width and tree-width of graphs. It was previously known that a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm exists for the decision version of the problem for matroid path-width; a theorem by Geelen, Gerards, and Whittle (2002) implies that for each fixed finite field F, there are finitely many forbidden F-representable minors for the class of matroids of path-width at most k. An algorithm by Hlineny (2006) can detect a minor in an input F-represented matroid of bounded branch-width. However, this indirect approach would not produce an actual path-decomposition. Our algorithm is the first one to construct such a path-decomposition and does not depend on the finiteness of forbidden minors.

Informatics colloquium 9. 5. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. Fotios Liarokapis, Ph.D., FI MU An overview of the H2020 i-MARECULTURE project and some initial results Abstract: The project iMARECULTURE (Advanced VR, iMmersive Serious Games and Augmented REality as Tools to Raise Awareness and Access to European Underwater CULTURal heritage) is focusing in raising European identity awareness using maritime and underwater cultural interaction and exchange in Mediterranean Sea. Commercial ship routes joining Europe with other cultures are vivid examples of cultural interaction, while shipwrecks and submerged sites, unreachable to wide public are excellent samples that can benefit from immersive technologies, augmented and virtual reality. The projects aim to bring inherently unreachable underwater cultural heritage within digital reach of the wide public using virtual visits and immersive technologies. Apart from reusing existing 3D data of underwater shipwrecks and sites, with respect to ethics, rights and licensing, to provide a personalized dry visit to a museum visitor or augmented reality to the diver, it also emphasizes on developing pre- and after- encounter of the digital or physical museum visitor. This presentation will present the architecture and the first results of the Horizon 2020 i-MARECULTURE project that aims to develop and integrate digital technologies for supporting the wide public in acquiring knowledge about UCH. A Virtual Reality (VR) system will be developed to allow users to visit the underwater sites through the use of Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) or digital holographic screens. Two serious games will be implemented for supporting the understanding of the ancient Mediterranean seafaring and the underwater archaeological excavations. An Augmented Reality (AR) system based on an underwater tablet will be developed to serve as virtual guide for divers that visit the underwater archaeological sites. Short biography: Dr. Fotis Liarokapis is an Associate Professor at the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Laboratory, Masaryk University. His research interests include: virtual and augmented reality; procedural modeling, human-machine interaction and serious games. He has contributed to more than 100 refereed publications and has more than 2000 citations (h-index: 22 and i10-index: 38). He has been invited more than 80 times to become member of international conference committees and has chaired 16 sessions in 11 international conferences. Fotis has secured more than €1,000,000 from a number of national and international research projects. He is a member of IEEE, IET, ACM and Eurographics. Moreover, he is the co-founder of VS-Games conference and has organised numerous conferences and journal special issues. For more information visit: http://www.fi.muni.cz/~liarokap/.

Informatics Colloquium 2. 5. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Dr. Jakub Mareček, IBM Ireland Research Laboratory Why should the authorities lie to you Abstract: Many real-world problems in Transportation Engineering are, in effect, control problems with rather limited identifiability of the underlying non-linear problems. Consider, for instance, the problems of information provision: an authority measures the travel times across the network, announces the travel times to the public, who base their route choices on the announced travel times, and are measured, eventually. The relationship between the number of concurrent users of a road-segment and the time they spend traveling across the segment is non-linear; the route choice is not deterministic and one cannot "perfectly excite the system", as in lie to the public, without the public noticing and changing their behaviour. At the same time, it is clear that many approaches currently in use are failing: consider two parallel routes and the authority announcing two distinct travel times (historical, current, or forecast by any method whatsover). Most drivers pick the route announced as faster, thereby congesting it (and invalidating any forecast). Similar issues arise in traffic control systems, which control traffic lights at junctions. In a series of papers, we have developed an approach to closed-loop analyses of such systems and we will present some of the key insights. Short biography: Jakub Marecek is a research staff member at IBM Research. Together with some fabulous colleagues, Jakub develops solvers for optimisation and control problems in IBM's Smarter Cities Technology Centre. His recent work includes polynomial optimisation in power systems, policies for bi-level optimisation, and a stream processing system for urban traffic management (called "Insight"), which has just won the 5th Annual Award for Excellence by ITS Ireland. Jakub is also the principal investigator for VaVeL, an H2020 project within the "Big Data" call, and a programme committee member for AISTATS 2017 and ICAPS 2017. Prior to joining IBM in August 2012, Jakub had worked on distributed solvers for non-smooth convex optimisation problems at the University of Edinburgh and on integer programming at the University of Nottingham. Jakub grew up in Brno, the Czech Republic, where he had worked in two start-up companies before studying for his first two degrees at Masaryk University.

Informatics Colloquium 25. 4. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 doc. RNDr. Vladimír Černý, PhD., Fakulta matematiky, fyziky a informatiky UK Bratislava Ako k nám priletela vesmírom (iná) Pytagorova veta Abstract: Prírodovedecký highlight roka 2016 je asi detekcia gravitačných vĺn v experimente LIGO, na tom sa dosť zhoduje prinajmenej fyzikálna komunita. Nie je celkom triviálne na kolokviálnej úrovni rozumne verne popísať podstatu celej veci. Po Einsteinovi už totiž nevnímame gravitáciu ako silové pôsobenie. Vzniká potom prirodzene zvedavá otázka „Čo vlastne pohlo zrkadlami v experimente LIGO?“ ak nie nejaká sila. Pokúsim sa odpovedať.

Office for International Affairs opens 2nd call for Erasmus+ study in spring 2018. Students can apply for universities which have bilateral agreements with FI and are already free. Students FI apply through online application in database ISOIS from 14 April to 8 May 2017. All students who would like to study abroad must submit certificate about English knowledge B2 level at least. Certificates from other languages are also welcomed. Students also upload motivation letter explaining their interest in chosen universities.

Informatics Colloquium 11. 4. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Ing. Jiří Jaroš, Ph.D., FIT VUT Využití superpočítačů při ultrazvukové léčbě rakoviny Abstract: Realistické simulace šíření ultrazvukových vln v živých tkáních nabízí široký rozsah využití. Velmi slibnou oblastí je fokusovaný ultrazvuk o vysoké intenzitě používaný v neinvazivní chirurgii k léčbě nádorových onemocnění či zastavování vnitřního krvácení. Tato metoda pracuje na principu vysílání svazku soustředěných paprsků ultrazvukových vln do tkáně. Akustická energie dosahuje v místě ohniska takové úrovně, že způsobuje buněčnou nekrózu, zatímco tkáň mimo ohnisko ponechává bez poškození. Pro úspěšnou a šetrnou léčbu je nutné precizně umístit ohnisko ultrazvukových vln. Přesného zacílení je však velmi obtížné dosáhnout vzhledem ke zkreslení ultrazvukové vlny způsobené průchodem tkáněmi o různých vlastnostech (vrstvy tuku, měkké tkáně, chrupavky a kosti). Zde přichází ke slovu počítačové simulace, které poskytnou přesné operační plány pro konkrétního pacienta. Realistické simulace však vyžadují obrovské datovém množiny a výpočetní výkon, který jsou schopny poskytnout pouze superpočítačové systémy. Naše výzkumná skupina pracuje na vývoji akustického toolboxu k-Wave, který se stal de-facto standardem v oblasti ultrazvukových simulací s více než 8.000 registrovanými uživateli. V rámci přednášky se zaměřím na distribuovanou implementaci tohoto toolboxu, představím pokročilé metody dekompozice, které umožňují efektivní výpočet na nejlepších superpočítačích, např. Piz Daint, Salomon, SuperMUC či Archer.

Informatics Colloquium 4. 4. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. DDr. Gerald Quirchmayr, Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia Information Systems Research Group, University of Vienna CERT Communication in the light of GDPR and the NIS Directive Abstract: Computer Emergency Response Teams are an essential component of the European cyber security landscape. With the introduction and passing into effect of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive a new legislative base has been established for protecting privacy and for defending critical information infrastructure components inside the European Union. Starting from research carried out in the Austrian KIRAS (www.kiras.at) security research projects CERT Komm I and II, the talk outlines the critical role of CERTs and their communication. The talk then discusses selected effects that may result from the introduction, respectively translation into national legislation, of GDPR and NIS.

Informatics Colloquium 28. 3. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Mgr. Aleš Chalupa, Ph.D., FF MU GEHIR - spolupráce FF, PřF a FI Abstract: V tomto projektu pracujeme na systematické aplikaci vybraných metod formalizovaného modelování a výpočetních simulací při studiu dynamiky šíření náboženských představ a forem chování. Cílem projektu rozšíření akademického studia náboženství o specifický metodologický rámec. Ten by na jedné straně umožnil nové způsoby studia a vysvětlování konkrétních historických změn, na straně druhé přispěl k řešení obecnějších otázek spjatých s faktory ovlivňujícími dynamiku kulturních systémů. Základem projektu je řešení čtyř případových studií zaměřených na náboženské tradice antického Středomoří (ísidovské kulty, mithraismus a rané křesťanství). Formalizované modelování je v rámci studia historických procesů koncipováno jako inovativní cesta překračující tradiční induktivní analýzu pramenů i deduktivní aplikaci sociálněvědných a kognitivněvědných teorií. Výpočetní modely je možné nahlížet jako formu teoretického experimentu, který umožňuje při vysvětlování náboženství překročit limity dané torzovitostí pramenů i nemožností vystavit sociokulturní a historickou komplexitu tradiční laboratorní redukci.

Informatics Colloquium 21. 3. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Ing. Tomáš Mikolov, Ph.D., Facebook AI Research Neural Networks for Natural Language Processing Abstract: Artificial neural networks are currently very successful in various machine learning tasks that involve natural language. In this talk, I will describe how recurrent neural network language models have been developed, as well as their most frequent applications to speech recognition and machine translation. I will also talk about distributed word representations, their interesting properties, and efficient ways how to compute them. Finally, I will describe our latest efforts to create a novel dataset that could be used to develop machines that can truly communicate with human users in natural language.

Informatics Colloquium 7. 3. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. PhDr. David Šmahel, Ph.D., FSS MU, FI MU ICT Security Research. Usage of social security methodology in Informatics Abstract: We will present results of our interdisciplinary research focused on ICT security which was carried out in cooperation with companies ESET and SODAT SW. We will demonstrate strengths and also problems of such research between informatics, social sciences and commercial subjects. We will emphasize the role of social science methodology in the research in informatics.

Informatics Colloquium 28. 2. 2017, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. RNDr. Jan Slovák, DrSc., PřF MU Hodnocení akademiků v univerzitním prostředí Abstract: Přednáška vyloží východiska hodnocení, které proběhlo na Ústavu matematiky a statistiky Přírodovědecké fakulty MU v roce 2016, jeho průběh a jeho organizační a rozpočtové souvislosti.

Office for International Affairs opens call for Erasmus+ study in academic year 2017/18. Students can apply for universities which have bilateral agreements with FI. Selection criteria: study average language knowledge cover letter in English (1/2 - 1 page A4) statement of departmental coordinator previous study stays abroad Students FI apply through online application in database ISOIS from 31 January to 26 February 2017. All students who would like to study abroad must submit certificate about English knowledge B2 level at least. Certificates from other languages are also welcomed.

Webinar will introduce Computer Science study programmes of the Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia. There will be presented the master and also doctoral degree programmes that are offered to international students in English. You will get info about study courses and also more about living in Brno. During this webinar you will learn Why it is useful to study programme Information Technology Security and which courses it includes. How do we connect academia field with the world of business and create multidisciplinary view on IT field: marketing, finance, law etc. What are Embedded Systems with its hardware orientation and software dependability inside-cyberspace? Which Ph.D. programmes are offered by the Faculty of Informatics, and are these Ph.D. programmes only for perspective academics or also for industrial experts? In which area can graduates find employment with any of these study programmes. Speakers Prof. Václav Matyáš: Information Technology Security. Assoc. Prof. Vlastislav Dohnal and Mgr. Jitka Kitner: Service Science, Management and Engineering. Prof. Václav Přenosil: Embedded Systems. Prof. Petr Hliněný: Ph.D. programmes.    

The Centre for International Cooperation of Masaryk University announces a tender for students alike to apply for both study and research opportunities at more then 20 partner universities around the world (Russia, Israel, Ukraine, Serbia, Canada, Vietnam, USA, etc.). Scholarship is 650 Euro per month. Students file the application electronically via: https://isois.ois.muni.cz/public/application-outgoing/?lang=en Application deadline: February 12, 2017

Programme Participants will be informed about study possibilities, introduced to the forms and contents of all study programmes and fields of study and career openings will also be presented. They can visit research laboratories and companies within CERIT Science Park. 12.30 Distribution of information materials. 13.00 Information about study programmes and admission procedures. Includes a question and answer period. 14.00 Walk through the building including PC labs, HW and SW equipment, Office for Studies and companies within CERIT SP. 16.30 Open Day conclusion.

Staff of MU can travel through programme Erasmus+ World for teaching or training stay to different universities around the world during the next academic year 2017/18. Duration of that stay is 7 - 14 days. Office for international cooperation offers 20 places for academics supported by scholarship 160 Euro/day and covering of travel expenses. Online application must be submitted through ISOIS database: https://isois.ois.muni.cz/application-outgoing. Application deadline is 12 February 2017.

Informatics Colloquium 20. 12. 2016, 14:00 posluchárna D2 prof. Daniel Kráľ, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick Permutations - quasirandomness and property testing Abstract: The theory of combinatorial limits offers analytic tools to represent and analyze large discrete objects. In the talk, we first present a self-contained introduction to the theory and we then focus on three applications concerning large permutations. The first is a characterization of quasirandom permutations by pattern densities, which resolves a question of Graham. The second is the permutation analogue of the result of Erdos, Lovasz and Spencer on the independance of densities of subgraphs. This result is then used in the third application, which concerns property and parameter testing algorithms, i.e., algorithms that provides a correct answer based on a small random sample of their input with high probability.

Informatics Colloquium 13. 12. 2016, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. RNDr. Jaroslav Nešetřil, DrSc., MFF UK LIMITS OF DISCRETE STRUCTURES - AN ALGORITHMIC PERSPECTIVE Abstract: It is an old dream of mathematicians to replace the cumbersome investigation of particular cases by certain limit behaviour which would reflect the finite properties and hopefully would be simpler to handle. In the lecture we survey a particular recent activity which is both analytic and model theoretic and leads to a surprising connection to new techniques in clustering and modeling of sparsity.

Informatics Colloquium 6. 12. 2016, 14:00 lecture hall D2 prof. Francesco Polese, University of Salerno Systems Theories contributes to Service Science Abstract: Service Science is a multicultural scientific domain addressing service systems, their desing, functioning, performance looking for the conditions and enablers of value co-creation in service exchanges. Service Systems are the focus of this research mainstream, indeed related to many other scientific domains such as that of big data analytics, management, engineering, legal sciences, marketing, human behavior, systems thinking. This latter, and in particular the Viable Systems Approach (VSA), supports the understanding of complex phenomena and with its theoretical suggestions, its postulates and fundamental concepts can be very useful to better understand service exchanges. A deepening of the VSA is hence most welcome in order to better manage decision making involving service systems, complex adaptive systems, complex service systems, smart service systems, smart cities and communities, and all topics interested by smarter planet initiative and by the service science community.

Informatics Colloquium 29. 11. 2016, 14:00 posluchárna D2 RNDr. Radka Svobodová Vařeková, Ph.D., Výzkumná skupina Výpočetní chemie, Středoevropský technologický institut Detection, Validation, Visualization and Characterization of Key Patterns in Molecular Data Abstract: Biomacromolecular structural data is one of the most interesting and important results of modern life sciences. Key parts of this data are fragments (patterns) representing biologically important regions of biomacromolecules (active or binding sites, channels, secondary structure elements, etc.). The research of these patterns can provide ground breaking results in the fields of drug discovery, medicinal chemistry, environmental research, biotechnologies etc.. On the other hand, processing of biomacromolecular structural patterns is very challenging from informatics and algorithmic point of view. The talk will describe essential steps of biomacromolecular structural patterns research - their detection, validation, visualization, comparison and characterization. Specifically, we will focus on methodologies and algorithms used in these steps and their IT challenges. Afterwards, selected scientifically interesting results of this research will be shown: a quality comparison of different molecular classes, a structure-based prediction of molecular properties and a discovery of apoptosis (programmed cell death) mechanism.

Informatics Colloquium 22. 11. 2016, 14:00 posluchárna D2 doc. PhDr. Karel Pala, CSc., RNDr. Vojtěch Kovář, Ph.D., FI MU Punctuation Detection and Correction for Czech Abstract: Punctuation detection belongs to important tasks in automatic checking of grammar, especially for the Czech language. However, it is one of the most difficult tasks as well, unlike e.g. correcting simple spelling errors. There are several automatic tools that partly solve the problem: Two commercial grammar checkers for Czech (which also try to correct other types of errors, but we will deal with their punctuation correction features only) and some academic projects, mainly focused on correcting punctuation. The lecture will introduce and thoroughly compare the available tools for this task, including our solution that outperforms the state-of-the-art tools in certain important aspects. We will discuss the accuracy results and the options for further development.

The Centre for International Cooperation of MU announces the call for study stays in the academic year 2017/18 – beginning in at selected partner universities in USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Costa-Rica, Brazil, Israel, Georgia, Japan, South Korea, Russian Federation, Tai-wan, China and many other countries. Conditions: Master-level students can apply, in some cases also PhD students excellent knowledge of English or the language of instruction (Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese) length of stay – one semester or one year students can apply for the scholarship in the amount of 10 000 CZK (per month) Deadline for on-line applications (https://isois.ois.muni.cz/application-outgoing), section Bilateral agreements is on Thursday 15.12. 2016 by 23:59 CET. Please note: the call for applications for partner universities for autumn/fall semester 2017 is only once a year, and it includes both English-speaking and other countries. Deadline in all cases is on 15.12.2016. Applicants must also take an English language test (which must be taken by students who plan to study in English and who do not have one of the recognized certificates). For the test, you must log in (using the same form, section English Test) - see https://isois.ois.muni.cz/application-outgoing . Testing of English possible on: 6 Dec, 12 Dec and 16 Dec. Contact person at CIC MU: Martin Vašek (vasek@czs.muni.cz) More information: http://cic.muni.cz/en//outgoing-mobility/outgoing-student/outgoing-student-studium/outgoing-student-partners

Dear colleagues, in the name of the selection committee I would like to invite all academics to a public presentation of a candidate for an Assistant Professor (OA) position at KTP. The presentation will start right after the Colloquium talk on Tuesday 8.11., from about 15h in D2. Candidate: Frédéric Dupuis, Ph.D. Title: Quantum information Abstract: Quantum information is a relatively new area of research which studies the way information behaves when it is encoded in physical systems small enough to be governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. When this is the case, many surprising phenomena occur: for instance, it is impossible, even in principle, to exactly measure the state of a physical system to which we have access. These phenomena can then be exploited to accomplish tasks that are impossible without quantum mechanics. In this talk, I will present a brief overview of this research area as well as some of my own work.

Informatics Colloquium 8. 11. 2016, 14:00 posluchárna D2 Doc. Mgr. Martin Nečaský, Ph.D., MFF UK Linked Open Data: Current State and Future Trends Abstract: Linked Open Data is a set of simple principles for publishing and accessing structured data on the Web. In this lecture, I will present these principles and show you the motivation for publishing data in this way. There are two interesting research challenges we will discuss in the lecture. First, it is how Linked Open Data should be discovered on the Web by users such as data journalists. Second, how the data published according to these principles should be processed by these users who are not familiar with technologies behind Linked Open Data (such as, e.g., RDF and SPARQL). I will present the state of the art in this area and also research activities of my research group. Besides these research topics, I would like to share with you also our activities in the area of Open Data. Because having Open Data is a necessary predecessor of having Linked Open Data. Therefore, I will walk you through our distressful journey from Open Data ideas to their implementation in Czech legislation.

Admission process into PhD study. Electronic application: 1 July, 2016 - 29 August, 2016. Admission exam: 12 September, 2016. Study starts: 19 September, 2016.

Informatics colloquium 17. 5. 2016, 14:00 posluchárna D2 doc. Mgr. Vít Vondrák, Ph.D., IT4Innovations, VŠB-TUO Highly scalable domain decomposition methods on many-core architectures Abstract: The latest IT4Innovations computing system - Salomon includes significant number of many integrated cores architecture. An efficient use of such architecture needs reviewing of current algorithms and their adapting for such system. The research team at IT4Innovations is focused on development of highly scalable algorithms for solution of linear and non-linear problems by a non-overlapping domain decompositions method called Finite Element Tearing and Interconnecting method. The most efficient variants were adapted to the new MIC architecture and implemented into our in-house software package ESPRESO (ExaScale PaRallel FETI Solver). Its developers focus on highly efficient communication layer on top of pure MPI and efficient use of MIC architectures to improve solvers performance and scalability. Thus ESPRESO uses three levels of parallelization: 1.) message passing on node level, 2) threading inside a node using Cilk++ and 3.) vectorization using Intel MKL library or Cilk++. The experience with running of ESPRESO solvers on Salomon and other world’s top computing systems will be presented.

Informatics Colloquium 10. 5. 2016, 14:00 posluchárna D2 doc. RNDr. Petr Holub, Ph.D., FI MU Scalable Storage and Processing of Privacy-Sensitive Data: More Than Just a Dream? Abstract: Biomedical research is facing tremendous growth of data due to the rapid progression with analytics technologies. Researchers deal with large data sets of genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics data, together with imaging exceeding gigapixels per image and large-scale text mining from the clinical unstructured text records in different languages and information coding systems. Particular for medical research is dealing with resources coming from individual persons, whose privacy needs to be protected and who give their consent for sharing material and data for research purposes. Human-oriented biobanks have become infrastructural hubs for collecting biological samples and the data, analyzing the samples to generate additional data, harmonizing the data and sharing it with biomedical researchers. The talk will address the challenges and possible solutions for storing and processing privacy-sensitive data in a scalable way, which has turned into major collaboration between biomedical researchers and computer scientists as well as IT infrastructures.

Informatics Colloquium 3. 5. 2016, 14:00 posluchárna D2 RNDr. Jan Sedmidubský, Ph.D., FI MU Human Motion Data: Applications, Challenges, and Our Research Abstrakt: The rapid development of motion capturing technologies has caused an explosion in the usage of human motion data in different fields. For example, motion data are analyzed in sports to compare performance aspects of athletes, in security research to identify special-interest persons, in health care to determine the success of rehabilitative treatments, and in computer animation to synthesize realistic motions. In the first part of this presentation, we briefly outline existing motion capturing technologies utilized in the specific sport, medical and military applications. We also introduce the main research challenges, mainly from the perspectives of similarity-based comparison and motion retrieval. In the second part, we present our novel method for effective comparison of complex spatio-temporal motion data. We also show a web demo application for retrieving similar movements in real time.

Informatics Colloquium 26. 4. 2016, 14:00 posluchárna D2 doc. Ing. Martin Čadík, Ph.D., FIT VUT Visual Localization in Natural Environments for Computational Photography Applications Abstract: With the advent of smart cell phones and hand-held devices equipped with integrated cameras, today virtually everyone is a photographer. Every day, we are taking photographs in larger quantities and often of higher technical qualities than ever before. We share photos, edit them, search them, archive them, enhance them, capture them for some specific purpose, or we simply want to make our shots look nice. Current digital cameras do not only capture light, they in fact compute pictures. There is practically no image that would not be computationally processed to some extent today. Nevertheless, images taken by amateur photographers often lack the qualities of professional photos and some image enhancement and/or editing is necessary. Computational photography evolved from computer graphics, image processing, computer vision, and optics to solve these issues and to extend the capabilities of current photography and display technology in general. In this talk, I will introduce the field of computational photography, its elementary principles and applications (e.g. extending limited dynamic range, widening field of view, or extending depth of field). Then, I will focus on our recent work on automatic visual image geo-localization. Our aim is to accurately find the location and orientation of the camera which captured the image. We introduce a system for automatic alignment of the query photo with a geo-referenced 3D terrain model. We propose a new alignment metric to accurately predict the camera orientation succeeding the large-scale visual localization step. Having a sufficiently accurate match between a photograph and a 3D model offers new possibilities for image enhancement. It can be used to transform photographs into a realistic virtual 3D experience, e.g. to automatically highlight elements in the image, such as the travel path taken, names of mountains, or other landmarks. Furthermore, the synthetic depth map, and/or the whole 3D model of the queried photo, can be used for novel view synthesis, image relighting, dehazing or refocusing.

Informatics Colloquium 19. 4. 2016, 14:00 posluchárna D2 doc. RNDr. Jiří Barnat, Ph.D., FI MU 10 let nástroje DIVINE – Co bylo, je a bude Abstrakt: Technika zvaná ověřování modelu (angl. Model Checking) je v centru zájmu komunity vědců zabývající se automatizovanou formální verifikací již déle jak čtvrt století. Přestože za tuto dobu bylo vymyšleno mnoho vylepšení a řada nových technik, které výrazně posouvají možnosti této metody formální verifikace, její penetrace do běžného industriálního informatického života je výrazně menší, než se zpočátku čekalo. Cílem přednášky je shrnout zkušenosti s vývojem a používáním verifikačního nástroje DIVINE, který stojí na metodě enumerativního ověřování modelu. V přednášce krátce zrekapitulujeme výsledky, kterých bylo v souvislosti s vývojem nástrojem DIVINE dosaženo, zhodnotíme jejich silné a slabé stránky a nastíníme směr, kterým se bude vývoj nástroje DIVINE ubírat v blízké budoucnosti.

Informatics Colloquium 12. 4. 2016, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Dr. Christian W. Loesch, IBM former Gen Mgr and Director of Operation for Central and Eastern Europe, GM IBM Academic Initiative We and ICT -- Interaction and Interdependence Abstract: We live immersed in an environment where ICT is all-pervasive, fertilizing and empowering nearly all areas of our life and thus creating interaction and interdependence. This might make it advisable to step back and try to take an unbiased look. We will examine some of the developments, starting with the state of the industry economically and technologically, the transition from mM to MtM and its impacts on us as individual and society. Additionally we will render tribute to the two anniversaries meriting special attention: 50 Years of "Moore’s Law" and 25 Years of Public Internet.

Informatics Colloquium 5. 4. 2016, 14:00 lecture hall D2 assoc. prof. Ing. Jiří Sochor, CSc., FI MU Geometry Analysis of Protein Structures - Ten Years After Abstract: 10 years after introducing the original method Caver 1.0 several tools and methods for geometry analysis of protein structures emerged. These methods gained significant attention in biochemists world and are currently used for de novo design of enzymes. We will survey the Voronoi approaches originating from analysis of atom volumes (1974) that evolved in methods for exploration of protein clefts, pores and cavities. We will describe the development of CAVER 3.0 and compare it with another solutions. We will give several examples of methods aiming at tunnels and pores in protein geometry.

Informatics Colloquium 29. 3. 2016, 14:00 lecture hall D2 Daniel Gorin, Alphary GmbH, Vídeň Exploring the role of lexico-grammar, multi-word expressions and corrective feedback in vocabulary acquisition Abstract: The development of English language corpora has allowed us to gain a better understanding of how language actually works. We now fully recognise the importance of word frequency, collocation and word grammar. In the talk Daniel explores possible applications of these insights to mobile learning.

Informatics Colloquium 8. 3. 2016, 14:00 lecture room D2 Dr. Pekka Ruusuvuori, BioMediTech, University of Tampere Bioimage informatics for prostate cancer research Abstract: In this presentation, an overview on image analysis related research Prostate Cancer Research Center (BioMediTech, University of Tampere/Tampere University of Technology, Tampere Finland) is given. Our emphasis is in the analysis of histological images, and we utilize automated whole slide scanning and stacked sections through the tissue. We develop methods for quantification of tissue properties from digital pathology images, with special focus in automated analysis and numerical description of regions of interest in tissue, and their subsequent analysis using machine learning. Further, we build 3D models of the organ through reconstructing from scanned histology slides, preserving the spatial information in quantitative analysis.

Tuesday 1. 3. 2016, 8:00 lecture room D2, FI MU Vladimír Kadlec, Seznam, a.s. Seznam.cz fulltext architecture Abstract: Introduction to the Seznam.cz fulltext search architecture. The talk covers all basic web search engine blocks: crawling, indexing, query reformulation, relevance. Explanation of inner parts of the user interface such as: auto completer, query corrector, suggested searches. Real statistics from Seznam's traffic. As a bonus: Image/video search. About speaker: Vladimír Kadlec is a senior researcher at Seznam.cz since 2011. He earned his doctoral degree from FI MU in 2008. All of his research has been related to natural language processing or information retrieval. At Seznam.cz he designs and improves algorithms for the fulltext search engine. Vladimir loves (almost) all sports from snowboarding to cycling.

Informatics Colloquim 1. 3. 2016, 14:00 lecture room D2 prof. RNDr. Petr Jančar, CSc., Fakulta elektrotechniky a informatiky, VŠB-TUO On selected verification problems Abstract: The aim of the talk is to give a reflection on some verification problems that are famous for not being fully understood so far and to the research of which the author has also contributed. This includes the reachability problem for Petri nets, and especially the equivalence problem for first-order schemes or deterministic pushdown automata. The talk will highlight several ideas and structures, at a rather non-technical level, that have clarified some complicated issues. These ideas can be viewed as concrete instances of a more general approach to solving open problems, and the message of the talk thus might become wider than restricted just to the discussed verification problems.

Office for International Affairs announces a call for Erasmus+ study in the academic year 2016/17. Erasmus programme allows to FI students to study at some foreign university with which the FI has signed bilateral agreement. The living expenses are covered by student from scholarship provided by the programme. Length of stay abroad is 3-12 months, depending on the particular bilateral agreement. FI evaluates students according to the following criterias: Study results Language skills Cover letter in English (lenght 1/2 - 1 page A4) including courses/areas which you would like to study at host universities Deparmental coordinator assessment Prior study abroad FI students apply through an electronic application in ISOIS database on 1 - 24 February 2016.

Newly, ERASMUS+ enables you to study also outside EU - in Europe and worldwide, mainly at universities that were our partners in previous Erasmus Mundus projects. Call for applications in 2016 MU Centre for International Cooperation has published a call for applications - teachers and students of all levels can apply (however, some universities do not offer all levels of studies for exchange) to stay in Russian Federation, Brasil, China, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Ukraine, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Armenia. List of universities you can find at: http://czs.muni.cz/images/seznam_univerzit_-_mobility_out.xlsx Supported activities: Mobility of studenta for study – 3-12 months Mobility of staff for teaching and training – min. 5 days, max. 2 months Scholarship: Students: 650 EUR/month Staff: 160 EUR/day Contribution to travel expenses according to distance from home university to host university (http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/tools/distance_en.htm). Deadline for an electronic application is: 29 February 2016 (choose programme „Erasmus+ (outside Europe)“). More information at: For students: http://czs.muni.cz/cs/outgoing-mobility/outgoing-student/outgoing-student-studium/erasmus-mimo-eu For administrative staff: http://czs.muni.cz/cs/outgoing-mobility/non-academic-staff/outgoing-nonacademstaff-skoleni/erasmus-mimo-eu For teachers: http://czs.muni.cz/cs/outgoing-mobility/academic-staff/outgoing-ucitel-vyuka/erasmus-mimo-eu

Particular detailed information Spring 2016 Term Application deadline is set on 19 January, 2016 Oral admission procedure is set on 27 January, 2016 and can be done by video conference upon special request. Special Funding Faculty announces some calls for open PhD positions starting in the Spring 2016 term with special funding provided by research projects, industrial projects, and Faculty departments. Autumn 2016 Term Application dates from 6 February, 2016 till 6 June, 2016 Oral admission procedure is set on 21 June, 2016.

The talk by Werner Kuich (Technische Universität Wien, Austria) with title Algebraic Systems and Weighted Pushdown Automata will be held at Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, room C417, on Wednesday December 9 and Thursday December 10, both from 2 p.m.. Abstract: Basics of fixed point theory; algebraic systems as generalization of context – free grammars; normal forms for algebraic systems (canonical two form, Chomsky normal form, operator normal form, Greibach normal form); infinite matrices; automata and linear systems; weighted pushdown automata.

A talk by professor Janne Heikkilä (University of Oulu, Finland) about leading edge research of his group in Computer Vision, with the title: LBP and beyond: computer vision research at the University of Oulu, will be held at Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, room B517, on Tuesday Dec 8th, 4pm. Abstract: Center for Machine Vision Research (CMV) is well-known of its Local Binary Pattern (LBP) methodology, which has been successfully applied in various computer vision problems. In addition, there are many other research topics in CMV including blur insensitive image and texture descriptors, image-based 3D modeling, computational photography, and biomedical image analysis. This talk will give an overview and present some highlights of the recent research activities carried out in CMV. For more info: CMV, Janne Heikkilä.

The habilitation lecture Mgr. Pavel Rychlý, Ph. D. will be held on Tuesday November 3, 2015 from 10:45 in the conference room B517. Lecture title: Why we need even bigger text corpora. Abstract: The first text corpus suitable for a linguistic research was British National Corpus containing around 100 million words. Current costs of creating such corpus is only a fraction of costs at that time. There are corpora containing ones or tens of billions of words for the most-spoken languages. Many text processing tools are not able to process such amount of data effectively, that rise the question: do we really need such big corpora? In the presentation, we are going to show which applications need them. The habilitation lecture RNDr. Jan Bouda, Ph. D. will be held on Tuesday November 10, 2015 from 10:00 in the lecture room A318. Lecture title: Theoretical computer science in quantum world Abstract: Our world is controlled by the laws of quantum physics. Traditional theoretical computer science is based on classical physics, and does not describe our world in full generality. Are the results of theoretical computer science valid in the real world, or just in the Turing machine? Do information theory, computational complexity, automata, and formal languages have any real world relevance? In this talk I will try to persuade the audience that despite the highly restrictive computation and information model traditional theoretical computer science uses, many results are still valid and it is not necessary to completely abandon the research in traditional theoretical computer science The habilitation lecture Fotios Liarokapis, PhD will be held on Tuesday December 1, 2015 from 14:00 in the lecture room D2. Lecture title:Interactive Augmented Reality Environments. Abstract:Augmented reality is considered to be as one of the most promising technologies for the coming years. This talk will present augmented reality technologies for both indoor and outdoor environments. A number of novel augmented reality interfaces will be demonstrated illustrating how these technologies can be used effectively for different application domains such as archaeology, education and navigation.

Proposed by Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University will confer honorary doctorate (Dr.h.c.) to prof. Thomas A. Henzinger on Wednesday, October 14th, 2015. Prof. Henzinger is a president of prestigious Institute of Science and Technology, Austria. He has earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford (1991), and honorary doctorate from Fourier University in Grenoble (2012). His research group invents mathematical methods and develops computational tools for improving the reliability of software in concurrent and embedded systems. He is one of most cited scientist in Computer Science. Impact of his results is indicated by h-index 90 and by more than 42,000 citations. More about his achievements is to be found in his biographical sketch. Due to the importance of this event, the Dean of the Faculty of Informatics announces deans off from 9:00 to 12:00. This timeframe is set so that there is enough time to move to the great hall of MU at the Faculty of Law, Veveří 70, to attend the ceremony. Faculty management heartily invite you for this extraordinary event. Wide attendance is a way how to pay a tribute to prof. Henzinger for his contributions in the field of Informatics. Those interested in the latest research of prof. Henzinger could also attend his talk at Informatics Colloquium at FI MU on October 13th, 15:15 (room D2).

Centre for International Cooperation in Education announces open call for proposals within Norway Grants and EEA Grants. Call for actions: Institutional cooperation projects (EEA Grants) Mobility projects and placements (Norway Grants)- Mobility projects and Individual grants for teachers/academic staff/administrative staff/students Institutional cooperation projects (Norway Grants) Deadline for application submission: October 12, 2015 The text of the call: http://www.dzs.cz/file/2989/call_cz07_eea-ng_call_2015b-pdf/

Office for International Cooperation announces call for practical traineeships in academic year 2015/16. Students can apply through an electronic application in ISOIS database. Deadlines are: 12 March 2015 14 May 2015 16 July 2015 12 November 2015 FI students must find their traineeships themselves.

Office for International Affairs announces a call for Erasmus+ study in the academic year 2015/16. Erasmus programme allows to FI students to study at some foreign university with which the FI has signed bilateral agreement. The living expenses are covered by student from scholarship provided by the programme. Length of stay abroad is 3-12 months, depending on the particular bilateral agreement. FI students can apply through an electronic application in ISOIS database to February 19, 2015. More information on FI web.

Centre for International Cooperation Masaryk University prepared the "Mobility Week" which will be held from 29 September to 3 October 2014. During the week you can take part on several presentations about different mobility programmes, workshops about writting your CV, presentation skills, etc. We cordially invite you to visit: The photo exhibition in the FSS atrium hall on STUDY-ABROAD topic (photos, comics) - from Monday 29 September 15.00 on Presentation of Study-abroad and Work-abroad Options and Scholarships in English - Tue 30 Sept at 13.00 in the room 22 (come, we will be there with CIC colleagues and present all opportunities - 45 min) The Food Fair (CIC MU, ISC MU) in Vinarska canteen - Tue 30 Sept at 19.00 Party in Fleda ... Wed 1 October (playing: Lesní zvěř, Dolls In The Factory + DJ Schafff), prizes of the photo-competition announced, etc. Friday 3 October - Open Day at CIC MU (Komenskeho nam. 2, central IRO of MU:)

The Faculty of Informatics MU organizes under the auspices of EATCS, the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science, the summer school for young researchers on Automata, Logic and Games at the University Centre of Telč from 27 July to 1 August 2014. Program consists of five basic tutorials and eight advanced lectures and is implemented by top international experts.

Position in Computer Networks and Communication Technologies

Open Source Contest - 5 days left! There are still 5 days left for registration and task selection in Open Source Contest Spring 2014! More information about the contest at lasaris.fi.muni.cz or simply register directly at http://goo.gl/QbFK7C

Dear students, We are happy to bring you the third opportunity to challenge your logical circuits and test your knowledge in real-world assignments! Registrations for the contest are now open (until 17th March); the list of tasks will be published on 10th March. You can start with solution right after you chose and register your task (10th - 17th March). You can submit your solution any time during next few weeks but no later than on 5th May. Do not forget that even incomplete solutions may be submitted for the competition. Authors of the best submitted solutions will be invited to the second round of a hiring process for the intern position at Red Hat Czech. The start of the internship is planned on June/July 2014 - perfect timing in case you would like to work for an international company with broad opportunities for your personal and professional development. More information and registrations (with no obligation to participate in the contest later) at lasaris.fi.muni.cz or directly at http://goo.gl/QbFK7C

We are exited to invite to a third presentation at FI MU given by Steve Chin - Java Technology Ambassador at Oracle (USA) - on topic "Java 8 Lambdas and Devices". This event is supported by Platform for Industrial Cooperation (CZ.1.07/2.4.00/17.0041), Embedit (embedit.cz) and Java Users Group Brno (JUG Brno). Date and time: Friday 14th March 2014 ▪ 14.00-16.00 Place: lecture room D2 ▪ FI MU Botanická 68a ▪ 602 00 Brno Speaker: Steve Chin (Oracle), USA More information at http://lasaris.fi.muni.cz/events/upcoming-other/steve-chin-java8-lambdas-and-devices

Dear students, we would like to inform you about an opportunity for an additional enrolment of the course "J001 Website Visibility and Search Engines" in the autumn term of the academic year 2013/2014. The course will be taught by professor Melius Weideman from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (Cape Town, SA). The course will take place in several blocks during a period between 18th and 21st November 2013. For information and timetable regarding the course, please visit catalogue page in IS: https://is.muni.cz/predmet/fi/podzim2013/J001 or web page of the Lasaris lab: http://lasaris.fi.muni.cz/teaching-courses/j001. The course is taught in English. Students are recommended to bring their own laptops. Looking forward to seeing you in the course!

Dear students, We would like to offer you a participation in the first run of the external Mentoring programme as a part of Platform for Industrial Cooperation (CZ.1.07/2.4.00/17.0041). What does it take? Imagine that you have a possibility to cooperate with a specialist from a company or the faculty in area that you are interested in. If you find this idea attractive, join the programme and try mentoring at first hand! It is very simple: 1. Go through the list of possible mentors and choose one: http://lasaris.fi.muni.cz/pps/mentoring; 2. Send your application to bartakov@fi.muni.cz (usually CV + letter of motivation or other documents required by mentor); 3. Wait for a feedback on your application - successful candidates will be invited to a personal interview. For more information please visit http://lasaris.fi.muni.cz/pps/mentoring or contact bartakov@fi.muni.cz.

The Dean of the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, invites applications for positions: Assistant Professor / Associate Professor Positions in Computer Graphics Assistant Professor Position in Embedded Systems Design

The Dean of the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, invites applications for one position of Associate Professor or Assistant Professor for SSME at the Department of Computer Systems and Communications. Position in Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME)

The Dean of the Faculty of Informatics MU invites applications for one position of either Associate Professor (preferred) or Assistant Professor for IS&T at the Department of Computer Systems and Communications. Position in Information Systems and Technologies (IS&T)

Rector Mikuláš Bek announces rector's day off on 16th May 2012.

Rector of the Masaryk University Mikuláš Bek announces on Tuesday, February the 28th, 2012 from 15:30 to 18:00 rector's time off for the participants in the protest march against university reforms.

Position in Service-Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME)

Department Head Positions in Computer Science Position in Computer Graphics & Visualization (CG&V) Professor and Associate Professor at the Department of Information Technologies Position in Information Systems and Technologies (IS&T)

Up to four post-doc positions in computer science are available at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Brno. The positions are initially limited to one year but can be extended to two years based on a successful evaluation after the first 8 months. The gross salary will be 2,000 EUR per month. Anticipated starting date is September 1, 2011 (can be negotiated) and preference will be given to those who can start by Autumn 2011. Applicants should have (by the starting date) a PhD in computer science or a closely related discipline and ideally will have a strong background in one of the research activities carried out at the Faculty of Informatics, namely formal methods, computer graphics and image processing, data management, large scale distributed systems and networks, security and cryptography, embedded systems, enterprise systems and services and natural language processing, for details see: here The willingness to contribute to the teaching programme of the Faculty of Informatics by means of a specialized course is welcome. The applicants should enjoy working in a team and have good communication skills. Fluency in English is required. In order to encourage mobility, the candidate cannot be considered eligible for this position if by the starting date, he or she has already worked or studied at Masaryk University for a total of 6 months or more, during the last 3 years. Candidates who did not graduate from a university in the Czech Republic will be strongly preferred. The positions are open until filled. Interested candidates are invited to apply to: Dana Komárková R&D Office Faculty of Informatics Botanicka 68a 602 00 Brno Czech Republic E-mail: research@fi.muni.cz The application should contain CV, list of publications, cover letter with statement of research interests and names and contact information of three researchers who are familiar with the applicant's work and who could provide recommendation letters if needed. Electronic submissions are highly encouraged.

Dear students and colleagues, we would like to invite you to the Open day of Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME) study programme which will be held on Thursday 24th February 16:00 at Faculty of Informatics. The Open day is intended both for students interested in studying SSME and current SSME students. Programme of the Open day includes presentation of SSME study field and its key part - Interim Project and presentation of SSME partners and their experience with Interim Project. The last part of the Open day is dedicated to student and their presentation regarding their experience from Interim Project and advices for future interns. Agenda of the meeting: 16:00--16:30 - SSME field and Interim Project introduction 16:30--17:20 - SSME partners presentation 17:20--17:40 - Break 17:40--19:00 - Interim Project students presentation

Entrance examination for doctoral studies is held on 15th of June 2010 at 10,00 am. Please come at 9,55 am to the Faculty of Informatics, Botanicka 68a, Brno, room B 410 (building B, 4th floor).

Informative meeting for applicants of PhD studies will be held on thursday 3th of December from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. at lecture room D3.

Computer Systems and Technologies

New bachelor's degree study filed Public Administration Informatics. See these web pages for more details.

Program of the meeting: Habilitation procedure 10,00 - RNDr. Tomáš Pitner, Ph.D. - Web-Based Services For Technology-Enhanced Learning, title of habilitation lecture "Web 2.0 Concepts, Applications, and Open Problems 11.00 - RNDr.. Petr Sojka, Ph.D. - From Pixels to Minds and Back; title of habilitation lecture "From the Minds Pixels and Back." 12.00 - 12.15 break 12.15 - RNDr. Eva Hladká, Ph.D. - Multimedia Data Distribution and Processing; title of habilitation lecture "Active element for data distribution" 13.15 - RNDr. Aleš Horák, Ph.D. - Computer Processing of Czech and Syntax Semantics; title of habilitation lecture "Computer processing of the Czech syntax and semantics " Professorship procedure 14.15 - doc. RNDr. Luděk Matyska, CSc. - title of lecture "Usable Distributed Systems". All are invited.

Detailed information on the teaching fields and scientific programs assigned to each department can be requested from the Dean of the faculty. Applicant can be requested to deliver a speech on a selected topic. Requirements: university degree in relevant field; habilitation award in the field (habilitation in accordance with the Higher Education Act) or comparable foreign qualification; personal qualities and specialist skills for the Department Head post; skills and abilities for the work in the academic area; good knowledge of English. Applicants should submit: a curriculum vitae; education certificates (photocopies); a summary of work experience, publication activities and involvement in research grants; a plan proposal for managing the Department; two references (names and contacts are satisfactory) supporting the candidate’s specialist, professional and language skills and abilities. Written applications should be sent to the following address: Fakulta informatiky MU Personální oddělení Botanická 68a 602 00 Brno