Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol1-1 > Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica

Matej Bel University (www.umb.sk) came into existence in July 1992 when the Pedagogic Faculty and the Faculty of Economics merged into one university. The University was established by the law of the National Council of Slovakia in support of the Central Slovakia Region in the field of university education, science and research, innovation and technology. At present, approximately 15,000 students study at six faculties, and 650 teachers and researchers and 600 other professional and administrative employees work at the University. Study programmes, including doctoral study, are offered at the Faculty of Sciences, the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Education, the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relations. The substantial part of research potential is oriented towards humanities and social sciences. However, the University also successfully organises several important projects in the area of innovations and technologies concerning the following fields: computer science and knowledge technogies, national and international security, energetics and sustainable resources of energy.

In 2009 we are introducing a new pilot project at the University in which we combine leading researchers in two centres of excellence: CaKS – Centre of excellence for information science and knowledge systems, and Centre of excellence with the aim to do research in the issues of national and international security. The support of the centres of excellence is a part of the strategy of the Government of the Slovak Republic. The implementation of this strategic goal is financially supported by structural funds of the EU.

Within CaKS – Centre of excellence for information science and knowledge systems – the University will orientate its research towards the development of knowledge methods and their implementation in the following areas:

• employment of methods of statistics, algebra, logic and fuzzy logic, probability in datamining;
• representation of data and mining of knowledge from structured and unstructured data;
• distributed and parallel data processing;
• natural language processing;
• complexity of models and algorithms including finite automata and automata with extensions, applications of these models in stringology, testing of new models;
• optimization of problems, sorting and searching, optimisation of data operations over many data files in a limited memory space;
• application of graph theory and algebraic structures in computer science, algorithms on graphs and on other algebraic models of reality.

The project is carried out in co-operation with Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice and with the University of Žilina. Further information can be found at http://ics.upjs.sk/cex.

In the field of information technologies the University also prepares several innovative projects in co-operation with well-established international companies, eg the opening of Microsoft Innovation Centre or the project oriented towards the applications of text mining products on the basis of statistical software SPSS.

The project of the Centre of excellence with the aim to do research in the issues of national and international security will solve the problems of national and international security in the following areas:

• non-military aspects of security (enviromental issues, society, energetic and information security);
• the present aspects of geopolitical development and creating geostrategic axes;
• the spread of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism at national and international level.

In the field of acquiring alternative resources we prepare two innovative projects. The first one concerns the acqusition of energy from biomass – the project is being prepared together with the Research Institute of Meadows and Pastures. The second project is oriented towards the use of geothermal energy and it is being prepared in co-operation with Geophysical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Science.

Prof. RNDr. Roman Nedela, DrSc.
Vice-rector of Matej Bel University
Národná 12, 974 01 Banská Bystrica
Slovakia
Tel: +421-48-446 11 11, 412 32 95
Fax: +421-48-415 31 80
E-mail: roman.nedela@umb.sk