Prof. Vladimír Mařík Honorary Director Nims School of Computing & Artificial Intelligence

Prof. Vladimír Mařík belongs to Prague, Czechoslovakia.. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Cybernetics at the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1975 and 1979, respectively.

He was appointed Full Professor at the Czech Technical University in 1990. He has been acting as the head of the Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University since 1999 when he established this Department until June 2013. The Department of Cybernetics has been recognized as an EU Center of Research Excellence in 2000.

He was appointed Director of the newly founded Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics (CIIRC) at the Czech Technical University with the goal to build a national centre of competence and excellence in July 2013, he is considered as the Founder of this Institute. Since 2018 he acts as the Scientific Director of this Institute. He has built this Institute from the scratch. This Institute received 60 mil. EUR initial funding (to construct the building and the necessary infrastructure) and is currently staffed by more than 300 researchers. This Center has been focused to AI, Machine Learning, Robotics, Industry 4.0, Smart Cities and Biomedicine. CIIRC is growing fast in its research potential towards self-sustainable research body and the leading AI ecosystem in the country transferring a lot of results to both the local and global industries (Airbus, Volkswagen, Lego, Porsche, Siemens, Ford Motor, Valeo and others). CIIRC is participating in 4 (of 6) European distributed centers of Excellence and is strongly networked across Europe. Its labs has been recognized as No. 4 in Robotics and No. 8 in Computer Vision in Europe in 2022.

In parallel to these academic activities, Prof. Marik acted as the founder of the Rockwell Automation Research Center Prague as a part of the Advanced Technology organization of the Rockwell Automation Inc., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and has been appointed the Managing Director of this Center in 1992. Under his leadership, the Center grew up into a respectable research facility staffed with more than 50 researchers and 90 engineers with the core expertise in the fields of system diagnostics, agent-based systems, intelligent control systems, and software development and testing. Prof. Marik left, after 17 years of service, Rockwell Automation on his own decision at the end of 2009. This Center is the largest R&D facility of Rockwell Automation today.

Since 2010, he acts as a Chairman of the Board of CertiCon, a.s., a privately owned Czech Company which provides co-sourcing high-tech services to global companies, like Airbus Industries, Bosch, Medtronic, Honda, ZF and others. More than 400 employees are active in SW development and testing as well as in AI and Industry 4.0 areas. Both the quality of work and the technology novelty are in the focus of attention. Besides providing high-quality services (e.g. developing a completely new line of pacemakers for the world-wide market), CertiCon has got its own R&D department and has been developing several lines of own products, like e.g. the computer vision toolkit or production planning and scheduling platform.

Since 2015, he acts as the lead of the Czech National Initiative Industry 4.0 being appointed to this position by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Prof. Vladimír Mařík personally scientifically contributed to the development of pattern recognition methods for robotics, to the field of expert systems by designing efficient tools with multi-dimensional uncertainties, but namely to agent-based industrial real-time control, collision avoidance systems and production planning and scheduling.

He is author or co-author of more than 160 journal and conference papers, co-author or editor of 16 books (Springer Verlag, Kluwer Academic, Wolters Kluwer), he is also a co-author of 5 US patents in the field of agent-based control and collision avoidance systems. He has been invited to act as the keynote speaker at many conferences, e.g. at the World Scientific Forum in Kyoto (2009, 2012) or the DEXA conference Linz (2019). He gave many times invited lectures at Imperial College (Prof. Bob Kowalski), University of Cambridge (Institute of Manufacturing, Prof. Duncan McFarlane) as well as at the Stanford University (Prof. Burton Lee).

He acted as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal IEEE Trans. System, Man and Cybernetics in the period 2005-2013. He has been elected and re-elected the VP of the IEEE SMC Society for the periods 2014-2015, 2016-2017, 2018-2019, 2020-2021. He obtained the grade of the IEEE Fellow in 2020 and the IEEE Life Fellow in 2023.

In 2006, he became a co-founder of the Czech Technical University Media Laboratory – Foundation established to support research carried out by talented students and young researchers. He has been acting as the Chairman of the Board of this Foundation since 2006.

He was a member of the R&D&I Council of the Czech Republic in 2011-2015, later appointed again by the Czech government in 2018 and 2022 for the period 2018-2026. Since 2021 he acts as the Vice-chair of this Governmental Council.

He was elected member of the National Liberal Club in London, 1Whitehall Place in 2022.

He was awarded besides others by the Austrian Honorary Cross by the President of Austria (2003), Medal of Merit by the President of the Czech Republic (2017), Manager of the Year in the Czech Republic (2019) and the ABB-IEEE “Long-life Contribution to Factory Automation” Award (2016). Doctor honoris causa (dr.h.c.) from the Brno University of Technology (2013)..