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My Life in a Nutshell

I was born in Český Krumlov in the last millennium. I was grown up in South Bohemia in small towns Tábor and Písek. Ok, I made a four years long detour to Olomouc in Hanakia (Hanakia is part of Moravia) but then we returned back to Tábor. My childhood was nothing special, sometimes skinned knee, sometimes ripped trousers etc. I was civilized even at that time. I proved this fact by strong allergy which is considered as a civilization disease. When my older brother was drying herbs at home, I was transported to hospital.

After happy childhood, a bitter teenage came. My hairs were not so blond as they used to be and my face was full of acne. After secondary school, I decided to change my haircut and enter grammar school in Tábor (a kind of non-technical high school). I never forget the years I spend there because we become very good friends in the class. We organized and enjoyed many events such as skiing course, dancing course, Pivotour, Limotour, skiing trips, hiking trips and cottage parties.

After graduation, I changed haircut and this time even place of studies. I've got to Faculty of Information Technologies (FIT), Brno University of Technology in Brno - at that time, I didn't know that I'm going to spend there next 14 years. I've moved to student dormitories and began to benefit from being a student. I learned how to drink bier, I shortly became editor of the student magazine NoName, member and chairman of the Student Union, member of information systems board, member of deans advisory board, chairman of the student chamber of Academic senat, and I had many more FIT related activities. Besides my studies, I had a part-time job as lecturer of programming and operating systems administration as well. After a three hectic years, I graduated and got Bc. title in information technologies.

Afterwards, I've got to master studies at FIT and decided to spend some time abroad as an exchange student. I won a competition and was accepted to study at Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland. After nine months, I've returned with strong memories on ice, wind and snow - and sauna of course. I used long winter nights by the Arctic circle to seek for an interesting subject for my master studies. Model Checking and formal verification subject interested me because the subject seemed to be challenging. I wrote an email to the supervisor dr. Tomáš Vojnar and got a long answer with a list of papers and books to read. When I've got back to Brno, we met and it happens that I started to work on an EU research project SHADOWS within which I cooperated with several international partners including dr. Shmuel Ur from IBM HRL, Israel. There was a lot of exciting work even for my workaholism. I graduated with a very good master thesis in next two years. The project continued and I've got opportunity to continue to PhD. studies under supervision of Tomáš Vojnar.

In the first year of my doctoral studies, the SHADOWS project ended and because of unsuccessful proposals of the following big projects, three years of my uncertain incomes followed. I made an advantage of that anyway. I moved and started to live together with Anna who I've met before my Finnish anabasis. We married one year before my graduation :-). No big project but a lot of work mainly due to ongoing cooperation with Shmuel Ur and other cooperating institutions. Moreover, traveling to conferences and visiting cooperating institutions every year. Already hectic life style got worse when I was writing thesis and reconstructing our first flat in the same time. I finally graduated just on time at the end of my fourth year of PhD.

I was looking for a position for a young researches almost a year before I graduated. I was lucky because thanks to an EU project, four such positions were opening at our faculty and one of them even in our research group. I won a competition and got three year postdoc position under prof. Tomáš Vojnar. Almost same work in the same office but finally with a good salary. Moreover, the project conditions allowed me to spend every year several weeks abroad. I've learned a lot at UCL in London in the group of prof. Harman, at UNL in Lisboa in the group of prof. Lourenco and at USI in Lugano in the group of prof. Pezze. This benefit turned into an obligation when Lada (my first daughter) was born but I enjoyed it a lot. Lada changed my life considerably. Now, I'm slowly turning from a partial workaholic into a father.

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