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CEITEC MU seeks out scientific talent among secondary school students

17 September 2014

An oval building, underground laboratories, glass walls, instruments both huge and tiny with names that mean little to most of us, scientists in white coats … So a bit like something out of a science fiction movie in the eyes of many of the secondary school students who took advantage of the Open Day on September 17 to take a look at the scientific facilities of CEITEC Masaryk University. While a new pavilion with the most up-to-date equipment was opened at CEITEC MU only a week ago, the management of the centre are aware that scientific progress depends firstly on people. For this reason they want to interest the best and brightest already while they are in secondary school. The organisers of this event invited students from selected Brno secondary schools to meet world-renowned scientists already working at CEITEC who shared with them their experiences from their teenage years. They presented demanding scientific themes to these students in such a way that they were not only able to understand them but also to discuss them.

“We are aware of the current trend for young people to be attracted particularly to economics and the humanities. For this reason we organise activities of this type showing little known areas of science that are never encountered in the classroom and so we give them a chance to discover the scientist in themselves,”said CEITEC director Markus Dettenhofer.

For example Karel Říha, who has spent time at the prestigious scientific institutions of Texas A&M University in the USA and then in Vienna, attracted students to his projects in the areas of genetics and molecular biology. Thanks to other experts the young visitors were able to observe cells in previously inconceivable detail, using a cryo-electron microscope, one of the most expensive instruments in CEITEC and the only one of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe.

We want these youngsters to become part of building the future and have an interest in working on projects that open up new horizons for people,” added Markus Dettenhofer.

The Open Day took place with a contribution from the SYLICA multidisciplinary project, financed from the EU’s 7th framework programme, which links research in the life sciences with advanced materials and technologies.

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