The Czech Technical University in Prague is the oldest and largest technical university in the Czech Republic. It has eight Faculties covering all engineering disciplines and six constituent Institutes and specific Research Centres. As an example, let us mention the recently established Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics whose aim is to integrate research in connection with educating high-quality doctoral students at national level – taking the collaboration among CTU, the institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and other technical universities to a qualitatively higher level by linking them with the infrastructure financed by European Structural Funds (CEITEC, NTIS, IT4Innovations). CTU has more than 1,400 faculty members and around 22,000 students in BSc, MSc and Ph.D. programmes.
To achieve excellence both in education and research, CTU permanently evaluates teaching and research results trying to motivate talented students to participate in research projects. CTU has been successful in gaining international grants to support research and keeps extending the offer of full degree courses taught in English – including double degree and joint degree courses, which brings an increasing numbers of international degree seeking or mobility students coming to CTU on the basis of Erasmus+ and other programmes.
Activities and experience of the partner organisation
Since the defeat of the former communist regime in 1989, CTU has been very active in extending and intensifying its international reach and cooperation both in research and education. Gradually, CTU and its faculties have established extensive and strong links with the international academic community being accepted as a member of 86 international university associations (as e.g. IAU, T.I.M.E., EUA, EAIE, etc.). CTU has also been a coordinator or partner of many project consortia that gained support from virtually all types of EU as well as other types of programmes.
In the previous academic year, there were 15 active double, joint or multiple degree Master study programmes with 133 active studies. Majority of partner and associated partner institutions are from the EU, but there are as well partners from the Far East, Near East, Ukraine, Russia and former Soviet Union Asia, and the USA. Among CTU most remarkable courses, we could mention the following:
• Erasmus Mundus Programme Sustainable Constructions under Natural Hazard and Catastrophic Events (SUSCOS) coordinated by CTU involves leading academics from six European partner universities with a wide-range leadership in steel construction. As a global initiative, the project includes the strong commitment of 10 Associate Member Universities from around the world (Brazil, China, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Ukraine), the world-largest steel producer (ArcelorMittal) and ECCS (European organization for the steelwork industry).
• Erasmus Mundus Master Course in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions (SAHC) co-funded by Erasmus+ Programme received 325 students from 65 countries worldwide during its 10-years’ existence.
• Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Course in Space Science and Technology (SpaceMaster III) is actually the 3rd generation of a very successful programme developed under the coordination of LTU (Sweden) that involves e.g. University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Science (Japan), Honeywell Aerospace or Utah State University Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (USA) in its consortium.
Key Persons
Assoc. Prof. RNDr. Josef Kolar, CSc. (contact person and local coordinator), Vice-Dean for External Affairs of the Faculty of Information Technology, Scientific Coordinator of INTACCOMP project (FP4-INCO), local coordinator of Erasmus Mundus EUBrazil Startup and Sustain-T projects.
Prof. Ing. Petr Kabele, Ph.D., Department of Mechanics, Faculty of Civil Engineering, the guarantor of SAHC multiple degree programmes.
Prof. Ing. Frantisek Wald, CSc., Department of Steel and Timber Structures, Faculty of Civil Engineering, the guarantor of SUSCOS multiple degree programmes.
Prof. Dr. Ing. Miroslav Svítek, dr. h. c., Department of Transport Telematics, (former Dean of) Faculty of Transportation Sciences, guarantor of the Transportation and Logistics Systems joint degree programme developed with the University of Texas at El Paso (USA) and University of Žilina(Slovakia)