Each year, the Faculty of Safety Engineering, VSB-TUO welcomes a number of international students for traineeships, most often within the Erasmus+ programme and the International Credit Mobility programme. Unlike standard study stays, these traineeships are highly practice-oriented and mostly take place in our laboratories.
Last year was truly exceptional in terms of both the number and the diversity of incoming students.
What did traineeships at the Faculty of Safety Engineering look like in 2025, and what did the students work on?
At the beginning of 2025, we welcomed two students from our partner University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. During their two-month stay, they enhanced their skills in assessing the risks of major accidents using methods such as the Purple Book, Hazard & Vulnerability Index, HAZOP, and others. Their work focused on the prevention of chemical risks in industrial processes and on ensuring safety, including crisis planning.
During the winter and spring 2025, a group of four master’s and doctoral students from Georgia spent time at our faculty. Their traineeship in the field of occupational and process safety provided us with valuable insight into how these principles are applied in Georgia and allowed for a comparison of two relatively different systems. The students also deepened their knowledge of scientific writing methodology, which will be beneficial for their further studies at their home institution, Georgian Technical University.
Our partnership with Dalhousie University in Canada within the framework of International Credit Mobility also enabled us to fund two-month traineeships for bachelor’s and master’s students specializing in process safety. Given their focus, their traineeships took place in various laboratories. Under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Václav Nevrlý, one student worked on combustion process modelling using detailed chemical kinetics. Another student, supervised by Ing. Vojtěch Jankůj, Ph.D., focused on gas mixing with hydrogen and on the safety aspects of such mixtures with respect to explosion risks.
In autumn, we also welcomed two students from Biznesi College in Kosovo, whose study programme in Emergency Management includes contemporary security threats. Among other topics, the analysis of international threats formed a key part of their traineeship, supervised by Ing. Marek Hütter, Ph.D., from the Department of Personal and Property Protection.
All of the above-mentioned traineeships were funded through International Credit Mobility.
With the arrival of autumn, the Department of Occupational and Process Safety hosted four Italian students from the prestigious University of Bologna, who worked intensively in our laboratories until the end of the year within the Erasmus+ programme. The topics of their projects were highly diverse and included, for example, analyses of laminar burning velocity using a heat-flux burner, as well as the explosive properties of hybrid mixtures containing dust in combination with gases, vapors, or mists.
Thanks to the excellent laboratory facilities of the Faculty of Safety Engineering and the expertise of our academic and research staff, there will be no shortage of traineeships in 2026 either—a fact we can already anticipate.
We also strive to ensure that students enjoy their free time outside the faculty and take home memories not only of laboratory work, but also of Ostrava, our culture, and the beauty of our region.
Students return to their home universities satisfied, which brings us great joy as a faculty.
Soon, you can look forward to an interview with a Canadian student who will be completing her traineeship with us until June 2026.