ELEDU, a BUT start-up, is changing the way electrical engineering is taught

For a long time, staff at the Department of Microelectronics at FEEC BUT designed their own teaching aids for the labs. That work eventually gave rise to the start-up ELEDU, which develops the Elabrix electronic teaching platforms and helps students literally get hands-on with electrical engineering during their lab sessions.

The BUT start-up ELEDU – Pavel Tomíček, Veronika Junasová and Matej Kadlíček. | Photo: Jakub Rozboud

Behind the project are three people closely tied to BUT's Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication (FEEC) – doctoral students Veronika Junasová and Pavel Tomíček, and faculty graduate Matej Kadlíček, now the company's CEO. The Elabrix platforms were created right in the faculty's own labs, where the founders themselves teach, and today they are taking them into schools in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. So how did innovating teaching aids turn into a BUT start-up?

From a faculty lab to their own company

ELEDU didn't start out as a business plan. During their time at the Department of Microelectronics, all three founders had been designing their own teaching aids for lab sessions and gradually modernising entire labs. Their Elabrix platforms caught the eye of teachers from other schools during visits to FEEC BUT, who praised them. Yet the serious idea of founding a company was a long time coming – until one trade fair.

"At the Ampér 2025 trade fair, I ran into an Austrian professor completely by chance who had photos on his phone of our Elabrix platforms being used in teaching at FEEC, and said he was seriously interested in them. That was the moment that set the idea of starting our own company in motion," recalls Matej Kadlíček. The idea was then given an institutional shape by the head of the Department of Microelectronics, Jiří Háze, who suggested the founders set the company up straight away as a BUT Start-up.

What they brought from FEEC BUT

All three know each other from their school days – they were classmates right up to the end of their master's studies in Microelectronics. Veronika and Pavel then went on to doctoral studies and today prepare and teach the very lab sessions they once went through as students; Matej moved into industry. It was precisely this experience from both sides of the department that gave the project its foundation: the founders knew where students most often struggle when wiring circuits, and could redesign the aids to – as Pavel puts it – "iron out" the things that had held them back as students.

According to Veronika, the results showed quickly. After the new platforms were rolled out, the number of technical problems in the sessions dropped by roughly two thirds, and the time needed to prepare the labs was significantly reduced. Up to 500 students pass through the labs each semester, and their work wiring circuits – one of the most demanding tasks for students – has noticeably improved. Further improvements are now driven by student feedback.

Veronika Junasová and Pavel Tomíček teaching, FEEC BUT. | Photo: Jakub Rozboud

Think, discover, make mistakes

What exactly the founders wanted to change in teaching stems from their own experience as students.

"It wasn't one particular thing I missed in electrical engineering teaching, but rather a number of little things that add up and can spoil your appetite for learning. One of them is precisely the lab sessions, where a student often doesn't know what they're doing and just operates the instruments exactly according to the prescribed procedure. In sessions like that, a student has no reason to switch their brain on and think about what they're doing in order to actually learn something. These are the things we're trying to change at ELEDU," says Pavel.

For Veronika, it's essential that students get "hands-on" with the technology, as she puts it.

"If a student works with pre-prepared circuits, where a single click on the computer measures everything for them, they have no need to think about what they're doing, they don't pay attention and they take nothing away from the labs. In practice, a student won't come across finished things that work on the first try or at a single click; as a rule they have to actively solve problems. They may not remember a specific circuit or a physical principle, but if they run into a problem in the future, they can have more confidence in solving it and be able to fix it on their own," Veronika explains.

Three roles and fourteen-hour working days

Within the team, the founders complement one another: Pavel leads the technical development of the Elabrix platforms, Veronika is in charge of the educational side – the lab exercises and workshops – and Matej handles strategic leadership and sales. Combining all of that with doctoral studies, research and teaching is no easy matter. Veronika makes no secret of the fact that there's little free time to spare:

"It's demanding. Juggling the university's technical and promotional projects, developing our teaching here at UMEL, research and ELEDU is a bigger challenge than one might think. We routinely work more than 14 hours a day, and something like a free weekend without work comes around once every few months. But I believe it will settle down over time."

Inspiring the next generation

Besides developing teaching aids, ELEDU also aims to popularise technology. The founders support the STEAM initiative through popular-science lectures, workshops at secondary schools and by taking part in events such as Maker Faire – and they say more formats are on the way. As for whether projects like these can draw more young people to technical fields, Matej has a clear answer:

"Absolutely. Technology is all around us and determines what the world will look like tomorrow, in a month, or in 50 years. That's why I see enormous value in being part of it and having the chance to build the technologies of the future."

But perhaps the most telling thing is their own story – and a message Veronika would like to send to all hesitant secondary-school students:

"Don't be afraid of studying at a technical university. It doesn't matter whether you come from a technical secondary school, a lycée or a grammar school – at university the differences even out over time. Everything can be learned, and an interest in giving it a try is enough. It doesn't depend on your secondary school or on the quality of the subject taught there. Both Matej and I came from a grammar school and had no idea what microelectronics was, even though we were applying for exactly that field – and we managed it without major difficulty, and came away with plenty of knowledge and experiences."

Where ELEDU is heading

The founders see the BUT Start-up status as a commitment. According to Matej, BUT is one of the most prestigious educational brands in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and becoming part of it is both an honour for the team and a motivation "to carry that brand responsibly and to deliver solutions that have a real impact on the quality of technical education". Over the coming years, ELEDU wants to bring the Elabrix platform to more secondary schools and universities, and gradually scale into new products and markets as well.

And what might ideal electrical engineering teaching look like in ten years? According to Pavel, perhaps surprisingly, much like it does today – it just needs to be approached differently. The first goal should be not to put students off the subject; the second, to spark their interest and self-confidence, so that with every challenge they tell themselves "I can do this!". To that Pavel adds logically connected subjects that build on one another, and project-based teaching – a kind of "mini bachelor's thesis" each semester, in which a student would demonstrate comprehensive knowledge by, say, designing and programming a simple switching power supply. And if they can get students excited, the ELEDU founders believe, the rest will be plain sailing.

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