Miroslav Lávička to Become the Rector of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen

Miroslav Lávička won the first round of the second election with 35 out of the 56 votes submitted.

On 1 March 2023, Miroslav Lávička, the former Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences, will become the Rector of the University of West Bohemia (UWB) in Pilsen. He was elected by the Academic Senate of the UWB in a secret ballot. Miroslav Lávička won the first round of the second election with 35 out of the 56 votes submitted. After his appointment by the President of the Republic, he will assume the office of Rector for the next four years, i.e. until the end of February 2027.

The other candidate, Milan Edl, the former Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, received 18 votes. In order to be elected, it was necessary to obtain a majority of the votes of the 59-member Academic Senate of the UWB, i.e. at least 30 votes. Miroslav Lávička will succeed Miroslav Holeček, who has led the university since March 2015, i.e. for two consecutive terms, and was therefore not eligible to run.

Prof. RNDr. Miroslav Lávička, Ph.D., (*1971) graduated as a teacher of mathematics and chemistry for secondary schools from the Faculty of Education at the UWB and continued his studies at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University. In 2011, he gained his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and in 2020 was appointed Professor in the same field. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 scientific papers. Since 2002, he has been working at the Department of Mathematics at the Faculty of Applied Sciences at the UWB; before that, he worked at the Faculty of Education. In 2012–2014, he was the Vice-Dean for Creative Activities and External Relations and in 2014–2017 the Dean and in 2017–2020 the Vice-Dean for Strategy and Legislation at the Faculty of Applied Sciences. He currently leads the Mathematical Modelling Department at the NTIS research centre. His professional specialisation is in applied geometry and geometric modelling; he is also active in the field of the teaching of mathematics. He is the chair of the Czech Society for Geometry and Graphics and a member of the permanent commission for evaluation methodology at the National Accreditation Office for Mathematics; currently, he also represents the UWB at the Board of the Council of Universities. For his teaching activities, he received a commemorative medal from the Hetman of the Pilsen Region in 2018.

Miroslav Lávička believes that the UWB should be an open university that emphasises the internationalisation of its teaching and research environment. He aims to increase the number of students, including international ones. In science and research, he wants to significantly boost the UWB’s activity in international projects such as Horizon Europe, as well as to intensify applied research and the transfer of knowledge and technology. The future rector believes that the UWB, as a multidisciplinary university, should utilise the heterogeneity of its faculties more efficiently both for new interdisciplinary study programmes and in scientific research. Given the current economic situation, Miroslav Lávička wants to seek new sources of funding for the university, including national, international and private ones, while also reducing operating costs.

The Academic Senate of the UWB voted on 21 December in a repeat election. In the first vote on 31 October, the candidates were Milan Edl and the former Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Jiří Hammerbauer. However, neither of the candidates received the required majority of votes in either of the two rounds.