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The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission is an internal research centre of the European Union. It has been established in 1957 and is equipped with top laboratories. On Friday, September 20, the Czech Academy of Sciences signed a Memorandum of Understanding with JRC in Ispra, Italy.

The Karel Čapek Center for Values in Science and Technology (CEVAST), formed last year under the Czech Academy of Sciences, is quickly gaining a reputation of a foremost European institution dealing with emerging issues in technology ethics. Most recently, Forbes magazine has taken notice of CEVAST, praising it for „immediately convening important meetings in artificial intelligence and robot ethics“ and calling it “a new hope in Prague.”

International team including the scientist from Czech Republic has assembled – after six years of research – the first complete genome of field pea. The results has been published on 2nd  September in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics.

In February 2019, the ELI Beamlines Laser Research Center addressed the scientific community to submit proposals for the implementation of research projects in the E1 experimental hall for research related to applications in molecular, biomedical and material sciences. This was the so-called Commissioning call - the very first call that the ELI Beamlines has launched for external users. Its main purpose was to launch and test four experimental stations by using technologies already in operation in the experimental hall E1. "The experimental hall E1 was conceived as a very variable space providing several unique scientific instruments using high-repetition laser sources and thanks to cooperation with external users we managed to put it into full operation," says research program manager Jakob Andreasson.

Understanding processes in modern materials and nanostructures and developing new materials, components and applications for various areas of technology, power engineering and medicine – these will be the goals of a new research centre whose construction has just begun in the premises of the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (FZU CAS) in Prague 8 – Ládví. On 14 August 2019, the foundation stone has been laid in the presence of significant personalities of Czech science and politics, including the President of the Czech Academy of Sciences Eva Zažímalová, Vice President of the Czech Academy of Sciences Jan Řídký, Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček, Deputy Minister of Education, Youth and Sports Václav Velčovský, representative of the European Commission Josef Schwarz, and Director of the FZU Michael Prouza.

Emil Cienciala, a scientist from the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, became a member of the Mission Board for Soil Health and Food. The board will be a part of the European Union’s new Horizon Europe programme.

Young parasitologists from the Biology Centre of the CAS have announced a crucial discovery regarding transfer of Lyme borreliosis from tick to human. Careful experiments with ticks sucking blood have enabled them to describe the way how Borrelia, i.e. the bacteria causing Lyme borreliosis, are carried from the parasite to its host. Their findings have refuted a dogma that had been widely accepted in world science for decades. The discovery will facilitate development of more efficient vaccines and curing strategies preventing transfer of this serious disease.

Now more than ever, policymakers need good quality science advice to inform their decisions. Yet — as a new report by European academies highlights — the very policy issues for which scientific input is most needed are the ones where the science itself is often complex and uncertain.

Recently scientists all over the world have been examining components of ever smaller, virtually molecular dimensions. An international team from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Tokyo Institute of Technology has developed a new method which will contribute to the miniaturization of electric circuits in electronics. They have published their discovery in the prestigious scientific journal Chemical Science.

On Friday, July 19, the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Learned Society of the Czech Republic sent a letter to the Hungarian President János Ánder in which they express their concern over the situation regarding management and financing of Hungarian science. As soon as September 1, a new law will come into effect meaning that organisation of research, financing of science, and establishing or abolishing of scientific institutes will now be in the competence of a 13-member political committee, taking these decisions out of hands of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS).