ZČU is building a research and education center in Plzeň for 1.6 billion

Plzeň - The Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen has begun to build two research and educational centers in the university campus at Borská pole for more than 1.6 billion crowns. The NTIS Research Center - New Technologies for the Information Society and the Center for Technical and Natural Science Education and Research - are among the largest investments in the history of the university. They have been supported by the EU and are set to open by the end of 2014. They represent a completely new phase for the university; they will not only change the face of a part of Pilsen but will also significantly increase the potential of the university and the entire region, said the rector of UWB, Ilona Mauritzová, to ČTK.
      "The aim of the NTIS project is to construct and equip a new research workplace at a high European level, but primarily to establish teams for research and development focused on two areas - the information society and material research," said project director Pavel Novák. NTIS will occupy a higher six-story building for more than one billion crowns, which will have 12,000 m² of usable laboratories and offices. By 2015, the center will employ 180 people. Nearly 160 of them will be researchers, while the rest will be management and technicians. Part of the scientists still needs to be recruited from the faculty, other institutes, and companies.
      A third of the billion crowns will go to construction, and the equipment will cost over 200 million crowns. It includes five key devices costing up to tens of millions of crowns. For example, a high-resolution scanning electron microscope and vacuum chambers with plasma sources. A significant portion of the money will go to kickstarting the work of the research teams. These teams are already functioning within the faculty under individual departments and have numerous references from companies in the fields of energy, engineering, and medicine. Gradually, however, they will grow, and by 2015 they must become financially independent.
      The Center for Technical and Natural Science Education and Research for more than 530 million crowns will have four floors with 10,000 m² of usable space. It will include offices, facilities for educators, and teaching laboratories. The center will serve for the education of students in the Faculty of Applied Sciences, primarily for master's and doctoral degree programs. The faculty has over 220 doctoral students. Their subsequent employment will be in the NTIS project as well as in research in enterprises and other institutes.
      The construction itself will cost more than half a billion crowns. Both centers will be interconnected and will have shared spaces.
      For the university, according to the rector, this means an extraordinary opportunity to rank among the European elite in the field of research and development. "Thanks to these projects, we will have a quality background for training employable graduates, not only for the research and development base of the faculty but also to meet the demands of industry and institutions in the region," she added.