The prize, which is intended for students and young scientists, was founded in 1994 by the eminent Czech mathematician Prof. Ivo Babuška. Our colleague from IT4Innovations Jakub Homola also scored points in the 2021 edition of the competition. The expert jury awarded his diploma thesis, in which he used Ostrava supercomputers.

You have received the prof. Babuška Prize for an outstanding work in the field of computer science for the year 2021. What does it mean to you?

I would like to clarify that the Prof. Babuška Prize is awarded to the best dissertation, but I came second in the thesis category. What does that mean for me? A difficult question. Thanks to my success among the national competition, I received feedback that my efforts were well spent, and I did a quality job. But there is still room for improvement.

What was the topic of your diploma thesis you were awarded for?

The title of my thesis was "Acceleration of the space-time boundary element method using GPUs". Simply put, I programmed matrix-vector multiplication. Going a little more in depth, to solve the problem using the space-time boundary element method, you need to solve a system of linear equations (which can be written as Ax=b). We use iterative methods to do this, so we just need to be able to multiply that matrix A with any vector. But the problem is that the matrix A may be so large that it won't fit in the computer's memory. Therefore, I have implemented an algorithm that doesn't need to have the matrix stored in memory but calculates the elements only when they are needed in that multiplication with the vector, after which it discards them again. All this on graphics cards (GPUs), which have many times more computing power than CPUs.

This prize is awarded by the Czech Society for Mechanics and the Union of Czech Mathematicians and Physicists. What stance have you adopted to mathematics and physics? Did you enjoy them at the secondary school?

I have enjoyed math since I was a little boy, and I have been interested in it ever since. I have also been into physics. My graduation thesis, in which I combined mathematics, physics, and computer science into a ray optics simulation program, can serve as a proof, for example.

When did you start to be interested in computational sciences?

At the primary school, where we had an HTML programing club. I was immediately drawn into the world of computers because of how well everything works there. I enjoyed it very much, so I then enrolled for the study of computer science at the Secondary Technical School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where I became even more interested in this field.

You are a PhD student at IT4Innovations. How did you get into the National Supercomputing Center, and why did you decide to pursue a PhD after obtaining your engineering degree?

It started with my bachelor thesis under the supervision of Ing. Michal Merta, Ph.D. I dealt with the simulation of gravitational interaction of many bodies, using the recently retired supercomputer Salomon. I was very interested in supercomputers, so I chose the specialization of Computational Sciences and HPC as my engineering studies. In my thesis I then used the Barbora supercomputer, which is also located at IT4I. I didn't get tired of supercomputers and wanted to work with them even more, so I enrolled for a PhD in Computational Sciences, and in addition to that I started working at IT4I as a research assistant.

What are you focusing on in your dissertation, and what projects are you involved in?

I have been pursuing my PhD studies only for half a year so far, and the topic of my dissertation have not been specified yet. However, it is most probably  be focused on GPU acceleration. At the same time, I'm getting to know the ecosystem around HIP, which is supposed to unify Nvidia and AMD graphic card programing.

Why have you chosen the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for your university studies?

I have chosen it exactly because this faculty offers the Computational and Applied Mathematics field of study. That was the ideal combination of mathematics and computer science for me as well as it is located relatively close to me.

Would you recommend studies at VSB-TUO to today's secondary-school students, who are just about to choose their higher-educational institution for their studies?

Since I have no idea what is like at other faculties and fields of study, I cannot speak generally about the entire VSB-TUO. But if you enjoy programming and are interested in mathematics, I can definitely recommend the Computational and Applied Mathematics programme.

Jakub Homola

After completing his Computational and Applied Mathematics studies at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at VSB-TUO, Jakub Homola joined IT4Innovations, where he works as a research assistant in the Infrastructure Research Lab. Here he is working on programming of AMD graphics accelerators. At the same time, he is working on his PhD in computational sciences.