Richard Štefl travelled on a regular basis to the USA already during his master's and doctoral study, to gain experience. After having completed his doctoral study, he spent five years at one of the most prestigious European research institutes, ETH Zurich in Switzerland. From there, he was watching the preparation of the CEITEC project and wanted to be a part of the development of the new research centre with the top technology equipment. For this reason, he accepted the offer to establish his own research group at CEITEC that he led for six years. In the course of the years, his work was honoured with a number of international and Czech awards. These awards motivated him to continue with his work, which resulted in the obtaining of the most prestigious European grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) in the amount of 52 million.
"It has been my long-term vision to advance the Czech science a little bit closer to the European standards. Although CEITEC has marched a long way, there is still a lot of work ahead of us," states Richard Štefl, the new research programme coordinator. He is embarking on his new journey in this position with an ambition to introduce procedures customary in other countries. "I want to search new heads of research groups and I will focus on the best candidates having the potential to obtain further ERG grants for CEITEC. At the same time, I will take measures to ensure that the scientific activities of my programme have a distinct direction, which I will support even at the cost of some risky projects," Štefl adds.
The results achieved at CEITEC in the field of structural biology exceed the borders of the Czech Republic. Scientists of this research programme are trying to understand the fundamental functions and life processes at atomic and cellular level and CEITEC offers them access to equipment and technologies at the world-class level.
"Richard Štefl will be a true leader for the Structural Biology programme. He has already completed a significant piece of work for his laboratory, but in this new role he will have additional opportunities to strongly influence a wider community as well," says Markus Dettenhofer, the director of CEITEC.
The previous coordinator of this research programme, Vladimír Sklenář, has succeeded to bring to CEITEC, in addition to Richard Štefl, also Pavel Plevka, a young and promising scientist who was the very first recipient of the ERC grant in the Czech Republic in the field of life sciences.
