Team

We have a great team of talented people from CESNET, Brno University of Technology and Czech Technical University in Prague. It comprises of researchers, engineers, postdocs, and PhD students. Moreover, it also includes numerous students of both bachelor and master degree programs, most of which have cooperated with us since their first year at university.

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Leaders

Jan Kořenek is the Head of the TMC research department in the CESNET association and one of the four founding fathers of the spin-off companies Flowmon Networks and Netcope Technologies. He founded Accelerated Network Technologies (ANT) research group at the Brno University of Technology and has participated in the design of most hardware architectures for fast processing of network traffic, which were successfully commercialized by the TMC department. He led a research team that designed one of the first 100 Gbps FPGA acceleration cards. In 2016, the card won the Czech Head Prize in the Industry category. In 2018, his team won the Minister of the Interior Award in security research for the design of hardware-accelerated network probes.

Martin Žádník is a project manager and senior researcher at CESNET. He got his Ph. D. at Brno University of Technology in 2013. He focuses on the research and development of high-speed network monitoring and traffic analysis tools. He undertook an internship at University of Cambridge where he worked on a flow monitoring and a network traffic shaping using hardware-accelerated programmable network cards. Martin Žádníkhas participated in multiple R&D projects for stakeholders from both government and industry sectors. He was a principal investigator of projects such as Sharing and analysis of security events, Technology for processing and analysis of network data in big data concept. He participates in several European projects focusing on cybersecurity such as SPARTA, SAPPAN and GÉANT GN4.

Tomáš Čejka is a researcher and project manager in CESNET. He is the leader of a research team that works on the development of tools for network monitoring and anomaly detection. Network security and real-time network traffic processing based on IP Flows was the main research topic of his PhD thesis defended in 2018. Besides the employment in CESNET, he also participates in the education of bachelor and master students at the Faculty of information technology of Czech Technical University. At the faculty, he works as an assistant professor teaching Network security courses. At the faculty, he is a supervisor specialist of several PhD students. He has also participated in various projects regarding network monitoring, incident/anomaly detection, and mitigation of malicious traffic. For his research efforts and achievements, he was awarded by the Stanislav Hanzl foundation and the Foundation of Hlávka.

Radek Krejčí is the main architect and project manager of the tools for network configuration we develop as FOSS in our team. He is an active member of the YANG Doctors group in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), where he helps YANG data models authors to develop their modules. Besides that, Radek acts in the team also as a scrum master and mentor for junior software developers.

Tomáš Martínek is a researcher and project manager in the CESNET association. He works as a team leader who deals with hardware acceleration of virtual switches and NFV functions using FPGA technology. He also specializes in the field of synthesis from higher programming languages (HLS). He has participated in a number of national and European projects such as 6NET, SCAMPI, GEANT GN2-3. The results of his work were part of a technology transfer to Netcope Technologies, a.s. and Flowmon Networks a.s., where he is one of the four founding fathers.

Václav Bartoš is a network security researcher, developer and data analyst in the area of network security. His main research interests are Cyber threat intelligence and profiling of network devices, but he also has experience with network traffic analysis using flow data and with detection of security incidents. He has participated in a number of national and European research projects such as GEANT GN4, PROTECTIVE, SAPPAN and many others. He is the main author of the NERD system, which has been deployed in CESNET infrastructure. Currently, he leads research and development in the area of autodiscovery and classification of network devices.

Jan Kučera is the leader of a research team that works on the development of tools for DDoS attacks mitigation. Besides the employment in CESNET, he is a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Information Technology, Brno University of Technology. The main topic of his research is the acceleration of time-critical networking operations, particularly in the area of high-speed networks and intrusion prevention systems. For his research efforts and achievements, he received the Zdena Rábová award and the Brno University of Technology Rector’s Award.

Lukáš Kekely received his PhD degree from Faculty of Information Technology, the Brno University of Technology in 2017. Lukáš is a researcher and a project manager at the hardware department of Liberouter project which is a part of CESNET (Czech National Research and Educational Network). The main focus of his research is the hardware acceleration of time-critical networking operations using FPGAs, particularly in the area of high-speed network security and monitoring. He is an author of many research papers published at renowned international conferences and several articles published in impacted journals. For his research efforts, he received a few awards, which include Werner von Siemens Award and Josef Hlávka’s Award.

Jiří Sikora is a researcher and developer with a focus on the hardware design of FPGA network cards. He has a long-time experience with hardware design in Flextronics Ltd. company. He is the main author of our modern PCIe 40G, 100G, and 200G network cards based on the Intel and Xilinx FPGAs. These cards are deployed on the perimeter of CESNET network for network monitoring and security purposes. Currently, he has been working on the design of FPGA based PCIe Gen5 card for the 400G Ethernet technology.

Selected Alumni

Jiří Novotný (Liberouter project co-founder) was, together with Ladislav Lhotka, the founding father of the Liberouter project. Their idea to create an IPv6 router based on a commodity PC formed our successful team. This team was able to create the first 10Gb accelerated network interface card back in 2004 for the SCAMPI project. Jiří was an important person for founding spin-off companies Flowmon Networks and Netcope Technologies. He was a great motivator and his enthusiasm and leadership formed many of us.

Ladislav Lhotka (Head of R&D department, CZ.NIC) – together with Jiří Novotný, co-founder of the Liberouter project and our current team. After leaving CESNET, he joined CZ.NIC Association, which operates the Czech national domain. As an outstanding Internet researcher, he led many projects focused on secure remote management of network devices. In 2017, he became the new head of the R&D department of the CZ.NIC Association and also a management member of the Czech national domain administrator. He is an outstanding contributor to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), not only as a member of the YANG Doctors group but mainly as the author of a number of Internet Standards (RFCs).

Jiří Tobola (CEO, Flowmon Networks) is a former leader of the Liberouter project’s firmware team focused on the development of hardware-accelerated IPv6 router. He received the Thesis of the year award for his research in the field of hardware acceleration. As a co-founder and employee number one, Jiří accepted a challenge to develop a spin-off company back in 2007. His great leadership and technical background was an important contribution to make FlowMon Networks (former INVEA-TECH) a successful technology company with a worldwide presence. Currently, Jiří continues his mission in the company as its CEO.

Viktor Puš (Compiler Engineering Manager, Intel) is the former deputy head of the TMC research department in the CESNET association. Like many others, he started in the Liberouter project as a student and aimed his theses to the area of hardware-accelerated packet classification. He became our key person regarding the design of hardware systems. After leaving the CESNET, he joined Netcope Technologies as CTO. Currently, he leads the team working on the P4 compiler in Intel.

Pavel Benáček (Researcher, Intel) is the former leader of the research team aimed at the flexible programming of hardware-accelerated network interface cards (NICs). He was the main architect of the P4 compiler for the FPGA cards, which was developed in cooperation with the Netcope Technologies company and successfully commercialized. Pavel currently works as a researcher in Intel.

Marcela Zachariášová (Senior IC Verification Engineer, ASICentrum) is another example of a successful student who started her career in the Liberouter project, where she aimed at SystemVerilog verifications. In this area, she gained expertise and dedicated her dissertation to the topic, and created the HAVEN environment for hardware-accelerated functional verification of hardware. For several years she was the head of the verification team in Codasip and acted as a chair of the Compliance Task Group at RISC-V Foundation. Currently, Marcela works as an assistant professor at Brno University of Technology and Senior IC Verification Engineer at ASICentrum.