News archive

ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, submitted a statement to the European Commission calling for a strong and well-resourced framework programme guided by principles of excellence, fairness and openness, and making concrete suggestions on their implementation in the current draft of the Commission’s Strategic Plan on Horizon Europe.

Launching the call for proposals for the ESFRI Roadmap 2021, Jan Hrušák, Chair of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, called for a new ambition for European science to go beyond the existing frontiers of knowledge and find sustainable solutions to growing global challenges. Speaking at the Roadmap 2021 Info Day on 25 September 2019 in Brussels, organized as part of the European Research and Innovation Days, he underlined that “World-class Research Infrastructures, such as those identified in the ESFRI Roadmap, are essential to help us to reach these goals.’

A new diamond-titanium nanocomposite may help decompose dangerous chemical warfare agents such as Soman in much more effective manner. It was developed in cooperation of scientists from the Czech Academy of Sciences, namely by the teams of Štěpán Stehlík from the Institute of Physics and Jiří Henych from the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, together with the teams of Bohuslav Rezek from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Czech Technical University, Karel Mazanec from the Military Resarch Institute, and Lars Österlund from the Uppsala University.

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.