Organizer

Engineering education has a long tradition in the Czech lands, originating in 1707 in the form of a decree in which the emperor Josef I ordered the Czech general Estates to found an engineering school in Prague.

One of its founders, Christian Joseph Willenberg, addressed a petition to Emperor Leopold I. in January 1705, asking permission to begin teaching engineering sciences. Leopold's son, Emperor Joseph I., who succeeded his father on the Habsburg throne, responded to this request on 18th January 1707 with a decree in which he ordered the Czech general Estates to found an engineering school in Prague. Willenberg began teaching in his private flat with only 12 students. However, the number of students grew rapidly and reached more than 200 in 1779. Willenberg's successor was Jan Ferdinand Schor, author of the textbook on mathematical sciences taught at the Institute. 

In 1863, Prague Polytechnic was transformed into a Technical University headed by a rector.
At that time the studies were divided into 4 specializations: Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil Engineering and Architecture. After the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the school has been entitled to the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) in 1920.

Many other people famous for their work in the sciences worked and theorized at Prague Polytechnic. The most outstanding was Christian Doppler, professor of mathematics and practical geometry from 1837 to 1847, where he formulated his well-known principle concerning the frequency shift of waves due to the relative velocity of the source and the observer. This effect is routinely used in many fields of human activities, including physics, astronomy, medicine and meteorology.

In 1891, František Křižík, a former student of Prague Polytechnic, constructed the first electric street car in Prague. Architect Josef Zitek, a professor at the Polytechnic, designed many beautiful buildings in the Czech lands, Germany and Austria. His work included the National Theatre in Prague, the jewel of Czech architecture.

In 1912, Jan Zvoníček professor of theory and design of steam engines and compressors, invented a radial steam turbine. After transformation in 1920, The CTU involved seven schools, including the School of Chemical Technology, the School of Agriculture and Forestry, and the School of Business. These three above mentioned schools developed into independent universities in the early 1950's. In 1975, Professor Vladimir Prelog became the Nobel Prize winner for chemistry.

In spite of difficult times at the CTU during World War II and the large part of the last century (isolation of Czechoslovakia behind the iron curtain), graduates and staff members of the Czech Technical University in Prague created numerous remarkable engineering and architectural projects and achievements, developed noteworthy technologies, mechanical and electrical equipment, and reached notable scientific accomplishments and inventions.

 

At present, CTU consists of seven faculties and several institutes: Faculty of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering with four original higher education and research institutes, The Faculty of Architecture (1976), the Faculty of Transportation (1993), and the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering (2005) together, together with the newly founded Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (2013), which altogether have 48 thousand regular students and form the largest technical university in Central Europe.

Responsibility for the ECMR 2019 event organization has been overtaken by one of the recently established research institutes of the Czech Technical University in Prague, namely the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC, https://www.ciirc.cvut.cz/), in particular by its’ Intelligent and Mobile Robotics group (IMR)  at the Robotics and Machine Perception Division.