At Saturday's ceremonial event, the university awarded honorary titles to nine Finnish personalities from the world of science and technology and to seven significant international partners, among them the Dean of FIT, Pavel Zemčík. "These are individuals who have been our long-term partners. We would like to thank them for their successful cooperation and strengthen our strategic partnerships in the future," said LUT Vice-Rector Jaana Sandström.

Pavel Zemčík established cooperation with the Finnish university more than twenty-five years ago, initially through three research and teaching internships he completed in Lappeenranta between 1996 and 1999. Gradually, the cooperation between FIT BUT and LUT deepened; today, they are significant partners in research, education, and student as well as academic staff exchange programs. "The honorary doctorate is an award I deeply appreciate. I consider LUT a top university and I am glad to have been present at the beginning of a partnership that is now very strong. I see it as a recognition of the entire collaboration between our faculty and Finnish partners, and when I look at the results that have emerged from our cooperation, I believe that our joint work on research projects and study programs will bring many more benefits to both sides in the future," says Pavel Zemčík.

Both universities share a research interest particularly in the field of image processing. Researchers from both institutions have collaborated on projects involving multispectral image processing, quality monitoring in wood production, and plankton evaluation. Brno University of Technology and Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology even have a joint double degree Master's program in Computer Vision and are currently preparing a joint doctoral study program.