BoosterChallenge: Summer competition for student ideas announces winners

The summer BoosterChallenge at BUT has wrapped up another very successful edition. This year, 19 student teams joined the program, 13 of which actively worked on developing their projects during the summer. The competition once again confirmed that BUT is a place where ideas turn into reality.

BoosterChallenge 2025 winners. | Author: Václav Koníček

BoosterChallenge offers an alternative to traditional summer internships or part-time jobs. Students focus on the technical and technological development of their own project, learn teamwork, and move their projects from the initial idea all the way to a functional prototype.

Examples of successful projects:

SOFOS, which addresses small but practically crucial issues related to service in gastronomy. Students Jan Lindovský and Marcel Mravec, both from the Faculty of Information Technology at BUT (FIT BUT), created a thoroughly and technically well-designed functional prototype;
cyrcID is a software platform designed to support the implementation of a digital product passport, providing information about the production process, used materials, and environmental impact. It focuses mainly on small and medium-sized enterprises in the fashion industry. A team of students from across Brno universities — Šimon Pekař (Faculty of Business and Management BUT), Tobiáš Frajka and Adam Pastierik (FIT BUT), Adéla Kočičková (Faculty of Fine Arts BUT), and Jakub Jamný (MUNI) — has their technical solution almost finished and ready for real-world testing;
Dominik Honza (FIT BUT) developed a fully functional application RUFFE – Revíry, which is built on a modern technological structure, is sustainable in the long term, and is actively used by the fishing community, which regularly provides feedback. The app has already been downloaded more than a thousand times;
Power Greens, represented by students Pravoslav Žilka and Andrej Žabka, both from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at BUT, presented an innovative biotechnological device for plant cultivation. The team built and launched a functional cultivator and conducted a number of practical experiments with growing and harvesting.

The cyrcID project, a software platform designed to support the implementation of digital product passports, also received an award. | Author: Václav Koníček

All presented student projects were evaluated based on their professional quality, originality, complexity, and level of development. The evaluation committee, consisting of representatives from BUT and the innovation agency JIC, assessed the projects mainly in terms of innovation, the quality of technical and technological solutions, business potential, and social impact.

Poseify has evolved into a functional application with an implemented machine learning model for recognizing yoga poses. | Author: Václav Koníček

“Opening the competition to all faculties and institutes of BUT connected students not only across BUT but also among Brno universities, and brought them valuable feedback from experts in different fields at BUT,” says Víťa Beran from FIT BUT, the guarantor and coordinator of the competition, who positively evaluates the expansion of the program across the university.

Feedback from the expert jury, as well as the opportunity to test their technical knowledge and gain new experience during the competition, is also highly appreciated by Jan Lindovský from the SOFOS project: “It would also be useful to consider ways of recognizing projects that correspond thematically to study subjects within the curriculum. This would help align project work with studies and further motivate students to engage in their own projects.”

SOFOS solves problems associated with service in gastronomic services. | Author: Václav Koníček

The BoosterChallenge competition has already taken place six times. It originally started at the Faculty of Information Technology at BUT as a competition focused on IT projects. However, it gradually opened up to students from all faculties and university institutes at BUT, without disciplinary limitations. The goal is to support the technical and technological development of entrepreneurial student projects with strong commercial and application potential, which they can further develop in the Student Entrepreneurial Spirit Award at BUT. Both activities are held under the auspices of the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem BUT - contriBUTe, which supports education, innovation, and entrepreneurship across the university. Thanks to this support, BUT students have the opportunity to gain practical experience, develop their skills, and build projects with real impact, as well as receive basic financial support for their outstanding work.