Doc. Ing. Ivan M. Havel, Ph.D.

Ivan M. Havel graduated in 1966 from Czech Technical University in Prague, Czechoslovakia. During 1969-71 he attended the University of California at Berkeley, earning his Ph.D. in Computer Science. For several years he worked as a research scientist with the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. His fields of interest are theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive sciences, and related philosophical issues. Before the communist regime collapsed in late 1989, besides his semiofficial scientific work, he hosted discussion groups in his apartment in Prague and cooperated with samizdat editions. From November 1989 till June 1990 he was engaged in political work (as a member of the Council of the Civic Forum Coordination Center).

Presently he is a docent (associate professor) at Charles University, the Center for Theoretical Study, an international cross-disciplinary institution affiliated with Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, where he was a director until march 2008. He also has teaching responsibilities at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. Since 1990 he is the editor-in-chief of Czechoslovak scientific journal Vesmír (The Universe). He is a member of Academia Europea and serves on boards of several academic institutions and educational foundations.