Czech Centres – Prague / Global Science Café 6: Robot 100

Czech Centres – Prague / Global Science Café 6: Robot 100

Datum / čas
Date(s) - 08.06.
18:00 - 20:00

Kategorie


TUE 08. 06. 2021 18:00
The event takes place online

Karel Čapek wrote his play R.U.R., subtitled Rossum’s Universal Robots, a hundred years ago. The play introduced the word “robot” for the first time and asked questions that are still relevant today. Last year, the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague published the book Robot 100 which includes not only the original play’s script but also essays by a hundred international professionals, above all scientists. The Czech Centres’ Global Science Café will feature the book’s editor Jitka Čejková and three of the authors who will explore Čapek’s work and robots from various angles. The panellists are: the theatrologist Jana Horáková, the AI expert Tomáš Mikolov and the chemical engineer specialising in chemical robots František Štěpánek.

Global Science Café Czech Centres (GSC) is a series of popular science lectures and debates with the best Czech scientists, innovators, economists and other professionals. It is organized by the Czech Centres and shared within the entire network. It is an informal forum for discussing current scientific and societal issues. 

ROBOT 100 

  • Online via Facebook 8. 6. 2021 at 18:00 (CET)
  • Host: Michael Londesborough
  • Guests: Jitka Čejková, Jana Horáková, Tomáš Mikolov, František Štěpánek
  • Live from: FEL ČVUT Praha / partner akce
  • More information: Robot 100

GUESTS:

Jitka Čejková is an Associate Professor at the Laboratory of Chemical Robotics at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. In her critically acclaimed research, she studies droplets and their similarities to life systems. Čejková popularizes science, primarily the Artificial Life studies and the etymology of the word “robot.” On the 100th anniversary of R.U.R., she published the book Robot 100.
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Jana Horáková oversees the MA and PhD programmes on interactive media and digital cultures at the Faculty of Arts of the Masaryk University in Brno. She focuses the new media art, robotic art and the intersection between art, science and technologies. She is a long-time researcher of the cultural history of robots, and has a special interest in performative aspects of robotic art in R.U.R. She has lectured in the USA, Germany, Norway etc., and wrote numerous scientific articles (Springer Berlin, Springer Japan) and book chapters. She published a monography on stage adaptations of R.U.R., Robot jako robot.

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Tomáš Mikolov is one of the most acclaimed artificial intelligence scientists. He works at the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC) at the Czech Technical University in Prague. Before that, he worked for Facebook and Google, and was an intern at Microsoft. His main interest is artificial intelligence, and he is exceptionally successful in word embedding. He was awarded the Neuron Award 2018 for major scientific discovery in Computer Science.

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František Štěpánek is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Czech University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. He worked and lectured in the UK. He was the first Czech person to receive the prestigious ERC Grant which allowed him to found the Laboratory of Chemical Robotics at the Czech University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. František was awarded the Moulton Medal (2x), the Philip Leverhulme Award, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award, the Neuron Award and the Werner von Siemens Award. He is an avid beekeeper and Ironman racer.