Illia Volkov achieved a significant success already in his first year of bachelor’s studies when, in April 2025, he took part in the prestigious International Conference on Learning Representations in Singapore, which ranks among the world’s top conferences in the field of artificial intelligence. Volkov presented a paper focusing on shortcomings of the ImageNet database, which he co-authored with Nikita Kisel, a student of the master’s program Open Informatics.
Illia Volkov and Nikita Kisel examined deficiencies of the ImageNet-1k database, a reduced version of ImageNet. It contains "only" about one and a half million images and one thousand categories. In their paper, the students revealed that the database includes images assigned to incorrect categories, duplicate images, and redundant categories. According to experts, these shortcomings are relatively easy to fix, although the process can be time-consuming. More details about the students’ paper can be found here.
The successful work was carried out under the supervision of Ing. Klára Janoušková and Prof. Jiří Matas from the Visual Recognition Group (VRG) at the Department of Cybernetics, FEL. Illia Volkov joined the research group even before starting his studies at FEE, thanks to a summer internship offered by the Open Informatics program to newly admitted students after enrollment.
In connection with the current award, Illia Volkov thanked Ing. Janoušková and Prof. Matas on the social network LinkedIn for the opportunity to work in the VRG as well as for the nomination for the award. "I also believe that none of this would have been possible without the Ukrainian people, who are fighting for our future—they also deserve thanks. One of the best ways to say thank you is to contribute to charitable organizations," the student said. He added that he donated the money he received as part of the award to the organization Come Back Alive, which supports the Ukrainian armed forces. At the same time, he asked people not to forget about Ukraine and encouraged them to support one of the transparent organizations helping the attacked country.
The Stanislav Hanzl Endowment Fund was established in 1997 in honor of the first rector of CTU in Prague after November 1989, Prof. Ing. Stanislav Hanzl, CSc. The fund’s financial resources come from grants, donations, and contributions from partner organizations, companies, professional associations, and individuals—especially former students and alumni of CTU faculties in Prague.
