Vladimír Mařík (1952), Professor of Control Engineering, Scientific Director of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC) of CTU and Vice-Chair of the R&D&I Council of the Czech Republic. He founded the Department of Cybernetics at CTU (1999-2013) -EU Center of Excellence. Since 2013 he is engaged as a Founder, Director and later Scientific Director of CIIRC. He also acted as Director of the Rockwell Automation Research Center (1992-2009). His fields of interest include Pattern Recognition, AI, and Robotics with the focus to industrial needs. He is a author or co-author of 16 books, 160 journal papers and 4 US patents. IEEE Fellow since 2019.