Press Releases

One of eleven Czech holders of the most prestigious European scientific grant, Richard Štefl, has joined CEITEC at the position of the head of the research programme Structural Biology. He has won an open tender and thus gained the opportunity to influence the future direction of our research in the field of structural biology that already belongs to the world top. His arrival also represents a generation change among heads of research programmes within CEITEC.

Prague, 28 April 2016: The winners of the fifth annual Cooperation of the Year awards are the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) at Brno University of Technology, the start-up AtomTrace and Tescan Brno with the Sci-Trace project. These entities’ cooperation on the development of a globally unique solution for analysing materials was recently recognised by the Association for Foreign Investment (AFI) and the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic (AmCham) together with partners. The awards ceremony was attended by Minister of Industry and Trade Jan Mládek, who presented the Special Prize of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Scientists from CEITEC BUT continue in the strategy of commercial cooperation, which had already been started, this time in the field of plastic products. Today at the trade fair EmbaxPrint, the Director of CEITEC BUT, Radimír Vrba, has ceremonially signed a contract with the Czech company Rolofol which supplies international markets with stretch foil.

Learning from the best and reaching as fast as possible the top level of European science thanks strategic partnership. This is the aim of the European Commission which will help European research centres with a strong potential of growth towards excellence. Success within the first call for Twinning with even three projects out of five selected for funding in the Czech Republic proved that the strategy of international growth is on the right way at CEITEC. A close interconnection with several outstanding and successful scientific institutions gives CEITEC the opportunity to move forward in specific scientific fields. 

In December 2015 the Euro-BioImaging interim board ratified the first generation of Nodes (imaging facilities) for the pilot phase of the operating of the European research infrastructure for biological and medical imaging. There are the following two nodes from the Czech Republic among the 28 selected nodes:

• Advanced Light Microscopy Node – coordinated by the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and further consisting of Charles University in Prague, in particular the Biotechnology and Biomedicine Centre of the Academy of Sciences and Charles University in Vestec (BioCeV), Institute of Physiology and Institute of Experimental Botany both of Czech Academy of Sciences.
• Advanced Light Microscopy and Medical Imaging Node – coordinated by Masaryk University with Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), Faculty of Informatics of Masaryk University, Institute of Scientific Instruments of Czech Academy of Sciences and Brno University of Technologybeing its parts.

• Approximately half of the PhD students in Europe are women. However, the levels of women researchers decrease at the postdoctoral level and drop dramatically in leadership positions. These numbers demonstrate a dramatic waste of talent and resources in education, research and the labour market.
• Thirteen research institutes in life sciences in Europe, all of them partnering the EU-LIFE alliance, are to beat the current unbalanced situation regarding men and women in science. Supported by a gender expert organisation they will undertake the LIBRA project, aimed to evaluate the current status of gender equality in the different institutes and implement innovative actions to increase representation and participation of women in leadership positions in life sciences in Europe as well as raising science excellence by including sex and gender dimension in their research.

“Female cancer” can also endanger men. The seemingly paradoxical statement  is not only true but also summarizes one of the areas of a significant European project LIBRA focused on gender balance in science and research, in which CEITEC Brno is involved  together with twelve European institutions. It focuses not only on how to ensure equal opportunities to male and female scientists, but also on how to take into account gender in the experiments themselves.

This year the European Union is providing millions of Euros for projects which are approaching the moment that there will be mainly environmentally-friendly electric cars driving on the roads. Scientists from the research group Cybernetics in Material Science from CEITEC BUT in Brno, in cooperation with the company, Infineon Technologies AG, are involved in two of these projects - OSEM-EV and 3Ccar.

Core Facilities are helping to solve the steadily widening financing gap for scientific research. CEITEC (Central European Institute of Technology) in Brno is one of the pioneers of this concept, relatively new in the Czech Republic. Its Coordination Board has already approved the first joint regulations covering the running of the Core Facilities.

Scientists from the CEITEC Masaryk University (MU) research centre have begun to make use of two unique scanners for visualising the functioning and structure of the brain and spinal cord with the help of nuclear magnetic resonance. Thanks to these instruments worth some 100 million Czech crowns scientists will be able to investigate a range of serious diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s as well as epilepsy and schizophrenia and they will also be used to study the functioning of the healthy brain in research into the risky behaviour of drivers or the perception of music.