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Professor and cybernetician Josef Psutka specializes in artificial intelligence and speech technologies. Among the projects he has worked on, he highlights two major undertakings over his five-decade scientific career. The first focused on automatic recognition of multi-hour testimonies from Holocaust survivors. Funded by a U.S. grant agency, the project involved collaboration with IBM, two American universities, and Charles University. The software could recognize not only English but also a range of Central European languages. “The greatest contribution of this project, both for me and for the public, lay in combining cutting-edge technology with the preservation and accessibility of historical memory,” said Psutka.

His second major achievement was developing software for subtitling live broadcasts on Czech Television. Thanks to this system and the work of his colleagues at the Faculty of Applied Sciences, more than 6,000 hours of programming are now subtitled each year, mainly on ČT24 and ČT Sport. “This has allowed tens of thousands of hearing-impaired viewers to access full information from live television broadcasts, significantly improving their access to media content. At the same time, the project pushed the boundaries of our technologies for automatic speech recognition,” he explained.

In mid-November, in Lužany near Přeštice, Psutka received one of the country’s most prestigious honors, the Josef Hlávka Medal, in recognition of his lifelong scientific work and dedication to educating new generations of cyberneticists. The occasion also offered him a chance to reflect on the beginnings of his career in the 1970s. At that time, a computer was a room-sized unit with noisy fans and costly computation time. Since then, technology has changed beyond recognition. “Computing power has moved from massive laboratory machines into our pockets and homes. What was once the privilege of a few specialists is now available to everyone,” Psutka recalled. “Computers are no longer mere calculation tools. They have become partners in knowledge and creativity. Looking back, I feel that in the 1970s we opened the door to what has become one of the greatest revolutions in the history of technology,” he added.

As an educator, he has supervised many bachelor’s and master’s theses. “I don’t keep statistics, but regarding doctoral students, I remember at least 25 successfully defended dissertations,” Psutka said. Among his graduates today are numerous experts in artificial intelligence and founders of technological startups.

The Foundation also regularly awards the Josef Hlávka Award, which is intended for high performing individual students. Among the awardees this year is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Arts, anthropologist Klementyna Mackiewicz, who specializes in the analysis of bone materials and the interpretation of cremation burials.