On Friday, March 15, 2013, a group of journalists associated in the European Science Journalists Association EUSJA visited our institute. Their visit was organized during the annual EUSJA General Assembly as a Study Trip to a scientific institution.

This year, Marina Hužvárová, the Czech EUSJA representative and Editor-in-Chief of the Academic bulletin, helped organize the EUSJA General Assembly in Prague. Member journalists thus had a possibility of a one-day visit to four institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (AS CR) located in the Prague suburb Lysolaje. In the morning they were welcomed at the Institute of Geology (GLI) by the President of the Academy of Sciences Jiří Drahoš and the GLI director Pavel Bosák, after which the group visited the institute and the Laboratory of Optical Fibers of the Institute of Photonics and Electronics. After lunch, the visit continued at the Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals and Institute of Experimental Botany of the AS CR.

To present how versatile our research is, we offered our guests two guided tours. After a short address of welcome by the director of ICPF Miroslav Punčochář and his general overview of the institute’s research activities, the journalists could choose to visit laboratories focused on basic research or those oriented at applied research. In the former, our research in the field of physical and analytical chemistry, and the study of aerosols was presented, the latter visit focused on our chemical-engineering research through presentations of microreactor research, microwave technology, and technology of fluidization and gasification of biomass and other fuels. It must have been a long and demanding day for our guests, but hopefully a useful one. We certainly got the attention of Kaianders Sempler of the Swedish journal NyTeknik. Milan Hájek's his talk on the use of microwave technology to dry books damaged by floods in 2002 in Prague inspired him to write a story on this and to illustrate it by a drawing. Wolfgang Goede, on the other hand, summarized the day spent in Lysolaje in his blog at the EUSJA website as pleasantly non-kafkaesque.

Abstracts of the presented topics,  Zdeněk Wagner's photogallery.