Faculty of Electrical Engineering received a subsidy for 6 key NCK research centers

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering recorded a significant success - it received a subsidy for 6 key research centers within the framework of the National Center of Competence program (NCK), the second public competition.

The Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TA ČR) will support a total of 18 national competence centers in the Czech Republic. The Faculty acquired the following centers (for two of them the Faculty is the leader of the consortium):

1. Center for Advanced Nuclear Technologies II (CANUT) - UWB main researcher
2. National Energy Center II (NCE II)
3. Center for Advanced Machines and Production Technologies (CAMAT) - UWB main researcher
4. Josef Božek National Center of Competence for Land Vehicle Engineering (BOVENAC)
5. New directions in electronics for industry 4.0 and medicine 4.0 (FEIM)
6. National Hydrogen Mobility Center (NAHYC)

The centers start on 1 January 2023 and will be solved until 2028. The Faculty has thus secured a significant part of its budget for research and development for the next 6 years.

The National Centres of Competence programme aims to support long-term cooperation between the research and application spheres and strengthen the institutional base of applied research.

The intention of the programme is to synergistically link the already existing successful centres, which were established with the support of TA CR (Centres of Competence), GA CR (Centres of Excellence), and operational programmes (especially the so-called R&D&I Centres) with other research centres and units into one integrated system = NCK centres. The programme will help to significantly strengthen the segment of research organizations focused on applied research and to motivate relevant existing research institutes to concentrate their research and technological capacities in the NCK centres, where quality applied research will be carried out according to the needs of the application sphere.

The programme will be used for synergistic and complementary effects with the EU Horizon 2020 programme and its successor Horizon Europe and in other international programmes that align with the program's focus.

The aim of the programme is to increase the efficiency and quality of applied research and technology transfer results in key fields with growth prospects, to increase the competitiveness of enterprises, and to strengthen the excellence and application relevance of research organizations.

The instrument for achieving this objective is the establishment of a sufficiently stable and long-term base of applied research (in the form of national centres of competence) through the concentration of research capacities and the setting of their strong orientation towards the application of their research results in practice.

(source: https://www.tacr.cz/program/program-narodni-centra-kompetence/)