School As a Living Laboratory

BUSINESS School As a Living Laboratory Prof. RNDr. Václav Snášel, CSc. is the rector of VSB – Technical University Ostrava and a professor in the Department of Computer Science. He has worked in research and development for over thirty years, including long-term cooperation with industry. In science, he specializes in the processing of multidimensional data, AI, indexing, data compression and related spheres of information retrieval. institutions, and as one of the very few we have a main resolver there. We also succeed in cooperating with businesses and our new web helps us analyse our cooperation, and the finances needed to cover solutions for businesses increase. He enjoys collaboration with young promising people. He believes that the best strategy is to focus on young talents, create an attractive working environment and conditions to motivate them to stay at VŠB-TUO. He loves reading, sports, travelling, and gardening. The university was founded 170 years ago. What is the school now and what are the visions for its future? I am happy to say the school is doing very well. Our vision is to remake the campus into something we call a living laboratory. To give you an idea, the campus covers over forty hectares of space and is one of the largest in Central Europe. There is an immense concentration of research and teaching infrastructures, with accommodation for students and sports facilities. Our idea on how to transform the university into a living laboratory is based on our desire to have technology and research equipment all around. We want our students to enjoy all the campus as one living laboratory where technologies are not locked away in the school labs. That is the vision. At the beginning of 2020, we want to start our own 5G network, and we intend to implement interesting projects in combination with the Internet of Things and with AI in relation to the National Supercomputing Centre. What have you achieved in science and research besides instruction and education? The question is how we could evaluate such achievements. We focus on great European projects, such as Horizon 2020, where we are one of the most successful The topic of this issue is “Innovation”. How do you innovate your teaching and respond to what enterprise requests? Innovation in teaching is related to the living laboratory. Students can see the projects we are working on: carsharing, driverless vehicles, industrial design. We also want to design a complex energy management of the university including rain water management. We want our students to get engaged in action rather than sitting in labs. We have a university Industrial Board with representatives of significant companies in the region and the republic. There are regular meetings and discussions on ways of collaboration, and forms of education which will produce the most attractive employees. In our region, almost every company operating with high added value employs a staff that is 90% composed of our graduates. I believe that the impact of the university in our region and the Czech Republic is quite crucial. Thank you for the interview. POSITIV 4/2019 ǀ 23