My vision
Human-like dialogue with artificial intelligence is still elusive. Why? Simple. We’re not there yet. Fifty years after 2001: A Space Odyssey, and forty years after Star Wars, the gap between that level of dialogue and “Alexa - play Spotify” is still a quantum leap. But voice and speech remain the most natural prerequisites for human communication.
My mission
After 18 years in the industry, I have returned to the Czech Technical University, CIIRC, to share my experience with students. My mission encompasses three key areas:
My current research focus is on AI, large language models (LLMs), and conversational AI. In education, I supervise PhD students whose work centers on LLMs, including training specialized, smaller-scale models, reasoning mechanisms, and the design of agentic applications. A significant part of my efforts is dedicated to translating these research outcomes into practical AI-driven applications that enhance productivity in administrative tasks.
Employment, education
I have balanced my professional life between entrepreneurship and academia. Currently, I embrace both roles simultaneously—as a professor at CTU and a co-founder of the startup Promethist.ai.
Professional Experience
Researcher
2010 - Present
Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University Prague
- Director of the NLP group
- Director of the CTU MediLab Foundation,
Technical Lead Manager
2008 - 2010
Google, Switzerland GmBH, Zurich, Switzerland
- Managing regional teams in Google - Nordics, Central Europe
Research Manager - Voice Technologies and Systems
2000 - 2008
IBM Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic
- Founded, built and led the IBM CZ research and development lab in Prague
- Research and implementation of the core engine of the Embedded ViaVoice.
Research Staff Member (RSM), Human Language Technologies
1992 - 2000
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA
- Researcher contributed to key ViaVoice speech recognition algorithms
Recent industry partners projects
2025
Citizen help desk, classification City Hall Prague
2025
RAG base application - Ministry of Finance - CZ
2023
Analytical application - Porsche
2020
Conversational Manual PoC - Skoda Auto
2019
Infotainment visionary PoC - BMW
Amazon Competitions
2025
Amazon Nova AI Challenge - Alquist Coder - second place
2023
Alexa prize - Alquist Social bot - third place
2021
Alexa prize - Alquist Social bot - The WINNER
2020
Alexa prize - Alquist Social bot - third place.
2018
Alexa prize - Alquist Social bot - second place.
2017
Alexa prize - Alexa prize - Alquist Social bot - second place.
Educational experience
Assistant professor
1983 - 1992
Czech Technical University, Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Education
PhD - Digital Signal Processing
1978 - 1983
Czech Technical University, Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Master - Electrical Engineering
1972 - 1977
Czech Technical University, Prague, Faculty of Electrical EngineeringY
Startups
Patents
Below is a list of patents primarily in the fields of Digital Signal Processing, Automatic Speech Recognition, and Internet technologies.
2008
US7,315,613 - Multi-modal messaging
2007
US7,156,309 - Smart book
2006
US7,100,000 - System and methods for processing audio using multiple speech technologies
US Pat. Application 11548976 - Enhancement to Viterbi speech processing algorithm for hybrid speech models that conserves memory
2005
US6,965,773 B2 - Virtual cooperative network formed by local clients in zones without cellular service
US20050143972 - System and methods for acoustic and language modeling for automatic speech recognition with large vocabularies
US20050096070 - Efficient communication with passive devices
US20050086382 - Systems and methods for providing dialog localization in a distributed environment and enabling conversational communication using generalized user gestures
2003
US6584425 - Smart thermometer
2002
US6438247 - Seatbelt Microphone Mounting
US6442519 - Speaker model adaptation via network of similar users
2001
US Pat. Application 9837024 - Systems and methods for providing conversational computing via javaserver pages and javabeans
US Pat. Application 10007084 - Reusable VoiceXML dialog components, sub-dialogs and beans
2000
US6073091 - Apparatus and Method for Forming a Filtered Inflected Language Model for Automatic Speech Recognition
US06023673 - Hierarchical labeler in a speech recognition system
US06016476 - Portable information and transaction processing system and method utilizing biometric authorization and digital certificate security
1998
US05835888 - Statistical language model for inflected languages
1996
US05544277 - Speech coding apparatus and method for generating acoustic feature vector component values by combining values of the same features for multiple time intervals
US05522011 - Speech coding apparatus and method using classification rules
Awards
This is a list of awards, mainly from IBM, recognizing contributions to speech recognition and voice technology development.
2004
The Research Division Award for the development of the Embedded Engine
2000
Outstanding Innovation Award for the development of the Embedded Engine
The Division award for the development of the Embedded Engine
Third Plateau Invention Achievement Award in appreciation and recognition of creative contribution to IBM progress
1999
Second Plateau Invention Achievement Award in appreciation and recognition of creative contribution to IBM progress
1998
Whatever it takes award for management of the speech recognition part of the network car, which IBM exhibited at COMDEX 97
1997
First Plateau Invention Achievement Award in appreciation and recognition of creative contribution to IBM progress
1996
Outstanding Innovation Award in appreciation for the VoiceType 3.0 Design of an algorithm enabling to run CPU expensive labeling on a PC. The current product ViaVoice is still using these algorithms
1995
The Research Division Award for contribution to Large Vocabulary Isolated Speech Recognition
Contact
Location:
CIIRC CVUT 166 36 Praha 6, Dejvice, Jugoslavskych partyzanu 1580/3
Email:
Call:
+420 224354181