We Will be Developing Nanorobots

You have been working at the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) for over ten years. How and why did you start considering going back to Czechia and forming your own group at the Institute of Physics?

After over ten years spent abroad, I wanted to strengthen my ties to Czechia and Prague also in terms of my future career. I’d been thinking about it for some time, and then an opportunity opened up for me to join a Mobility programme aimed at attracting researchers from abroad to come to Czechia to join different research projects. And why did I pick the Institute of Physics? This was a suggestion by Hanka Lísalová, an old acquaintance. We talked on the phone, and we agreed that we would try to do something together. I first wanted to fully understand what’s going on at the Institute of Physics so I could find out who is doing some interesting research. But then the covid-19 broke out, making things difficult everywhere, and I didn’t make any significant progress. Anyway, I’d like to make the transition from abroad to Czechia gradually, because, in science, it isn’t easy to leave one thing and start another elsewhere on the next day, so it’s been more of a parallel project than a new beginning so far.

Your group in Austria has been dealing with plasmonic biosensors and nano-photonics – what makes it different from your research in Czechia.

I’d like both projects to complement each other thematically. Both are linked to optics, sensors, biosensors. My focus has always been on interdisciplinary research. You must frequently combine other disciplines, so I really enjoyed Hanka Lísalová’s approach, who is also betting on interdisciplinary research. I’m not specifically a biophysicist, biochemist or chemist, but I’ve always needed these people to help me in my work. In the last year, I, together with her team, have completed several optical tools, and methods to be used by the team to explore different biointerfaces. The things I’d like to do here in my research group should be complementary to what I am doing in Austria. In Czechia I’ve been working with one student so far, with whom I am trying to do a bit of wilder science. We want to develop and employ nanorobots which could be activated by light pulses – let them move to a specific location and monitor the presence of specific substances found in that location.

How large will the robots be?

For example, 100 nanometres or a micron – rather small.

And they will be aggregated into larger units?

Yes. And they might swim around cells and explore them.

In a human body?

Well, that’s something everyone would like them to. But this is perhaps a too ambitious plan. It is an idea which is often associated with the “Once Upon a Time... Life” TV series. Since it first came out, people have dreamt of doing something like that. But that’s not how it can be done – at least not at the moment. On the other hand, we have sensors you can have implanted under your skin to measure your blood sugar levels. Or you can wear a watch to measure your bodily functions – this is based on quite a simple mechanism. Some might say that the idea of the nanorobots is perhaps a bit naive, but we are pretty impressed by it.

How does this relate to your existing research – biosensors, surface plasmons, photovoltaics?

I’ve always been interested in optical materials that amplify weak optical signals in spectroscopy. But you can have a look at it the other way round too: not only can they be used to control light, but light can also be used to control such materials.

How would you do that?

We are talking about materials such as those that contract when exposed to light, and if you turn the light off, they resume the original size. This mechanical motion might then be converted into a step sequence enabling a particular object to move. You can envision it as an inchworm placed in a tube that dilates and, by so doing, it adheres to a surface, makes a move forward, lets go of the surface, and so on.

What would it be good for?

This belongs in the realm of speculation but to give you an example – medical doctors use special tubes, called stents – often quite long – that they pass through the patient’s body to reinforce vessels. Instead of such stents, we’d use a miniature element to be controlled remotely without using any wires or tubes; it would be a minimally invasive surgery. The popular idea is that the system would search-and-destroy cancer cells. But what we want to do with my student Darius is far from this. First of all, we want to know if we can make such a small element of responsive polymers so that we could control their properties – for example if we can contract and expand a small hydrogel remotely using some kind of external stimulus such as light. And, then, we assume, we’d be able to produce a miniature device consisting of several parts, which can respond to light independently on each other. They might respond to light of various colour, which would make it possible to control a relatively complex morphing of shapes, allowing us to make the device move. In addition to this, we could use sensors to read and map out the surrounding space remotely using fluorescence or some other mechanism allowing to change the colour of the sensor depending on the presence of specific substances. But, at the moment, it’s just an idea that needs to be looked at in more detail.

How did you come up with this idea? How does a researcher come up with such a topic?

You need to meet people, go to conferences, talk things over a cup of coffee. And this was impossible in Zoom meetings during the pandemic.

Did people produce less ideas because of the lock-downs? Did it slow down scientific development, progress? Does the two-year gap make any difference for a researcher?

Yes, that’s how I see it, I don’t know about others. But I admit that in some respects, the pandemic has accelerated things. Society might now be more supportive of research areas such as detecting infectious diseases and pathogens, because they understand how important they are. So that’s where the pandemic might have been helpful. But as far as I am concerned, I spent my pandemic time trying to complete some unfinished long-term assignments. Also I had time to do more reading and prepare for my lectures in Austria. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had so much time for it. Nothing beats meeting people in person. I don’t have many opportunities to see what’s going on in other disciplines, so meeting others randomly on a conference lunch line, for example; is a great occasion for an informal discussion.

If we look at your international experience – could you compare the position of researchers in Germany, Austria and Czechia?

I think it’s about the same now, these three countries are culturally very close to each other.

How about laboratory equipment?

I’d say that even here, in Czechia, a lot of money has been put into laboratory equipment recently. Actually, when talking about equipment, I’d say the situation is sometimes even better here. What’s different as for grant projects in Austria and Germany is that you always get money to pay your people in the first place. The basis is to pay your people, the rest – such as travel expenses, isn’t so important; while in Czechia paying people doesn’t lie at the heart of things. I also find grant applications in Czechia too complicated. The GAČR (Czech Grant Agency) is an excellent funding tool but the application process seems too complex. Primarily, this should be about the research idea, whether it’s worthwhile or not. You get tired only by trying to handle the formal things correctly, and then you do it incorrectly anyway. I think the process is simpler abroad.

So, as for this, the proverbial Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy is actually more powerful here than it is in Austria?

I think it’s very similar, but applying for a grant with Austrian agency FWF seems easier than applying with GAČR here.

While we are at comparing things – can you compare the researcher status in Czechia with that in Austria? Is there any difference?

Ordinary people can feel intimidated by you if they know you are a scientist – they think you are a lunatic. The funny thing in Austria is that you can’t say you are a physicist, because otherwise they continue by asking “I hope you aren’t a nuclear physicist?”. That’s because in Austria people get very frustrated about this. Nuclear physics has had very negative connotations there. In other respects, the researcher status is generally quite similar.

So what do you keep telling them?

I tell them I do research. It’s also good to explain to them what my research is good for, not only what it’s about; they get better understanding of my job. If I tell them my research might help improve the way diseases are diagnosed in patients, they can make a better sense of it all. I think it’s important that laboratories and institutions both in Czechia and Austria place emphasis on communicating with the public because they understand it’s an advantage to inform the public about the importance of researchers for society. What’s more, researchers live from public money, so the public should feel that they are getting some value in return. But it isn’t always easy to put your research into context that would be easy to understand for anybody. Anyway, you should at least give it a try. But my experience tells me that, as a physicist, I am mostly considered an “exotic species”.

What’s the difference between your approach to biosensors and that of the team managed by Hanka Lísalová?

My research relatively rarely ends in manufacturing a prototype for application. I am interested in developing methods to be used for biosensor design. And I’m rather interested in the optical side of things; biosensors can be based on several principles, only one of which is optical. It includes surface plasmons, light reflection, light manipulation; this is the way of looking at it, which I am trying to develop. On the contrary, Hanka is more focused on how to design biointerfaces in a way that is compatible with complex samples, allowing a fast detection.

So, as far as you are concerned, basic research wins against the applied one, right?

Yes, basic research is more fun for me as there are more puzzles to be solved, and you connect them with each other, etc. Applied research gets me satisfaction as long as it features a prototype which is based on a basic research idea I came up with earlier. And, importantly, without applied research you wouldn’t convince any grant agency or the public that you’re doing something that is useful. I like science primarily because of basic research, in which I find more freedom. But I’m essentially not against practical application; in the end, you convert your basic research idea into the applied one after all. But I maintain that a researcher should have more topics for his research. For example, if, with a project, you move on to the applied research stage, it’s good to launch another basic research project, so you can build on it when the applied research project comes to an end. All in all, the projects usually end up following a similar trajectory. And, at one point, you’ll need to leave your topic anyway because otherwise you would have to establish your own spin-off and become a businessman. And I know I am not one, and I wouldn’t know how to do it.

So you can't imagine your device is being sold all over the world?

I don’t think I’d be able to do this well. To establish a spin-off, to write a business plan, look for investors; I think I wouldn’t be very good at it. I think I’d be happy if some things moved on to this stage, but in my discipline all research and development is a long-term effort. So I don’t even know if I ever get to see my patent turn into a device or form a base for a device to be sold at the shops. But this is something that my grandfather saw happening. He worked in medicine development. In the 50’s of the 20th century one could achieve results quite quickly. Some of “his” medicines were available at the local pharmacy, and he, of course, liked that.

What kind of medicines did he develop?

I think that, among others, he worked on sleeping pills. I don’t know exactly about other medicines he did. Also some of the medicines were very likely adapted from the West; this was a common practice during that time. But I don’t want to judge him unfairly – when he died, his wardrobe was full of patent applications; my grandma threw them all out.

So you come from a family of scientists?

My parents were not scientists; it skipped one generation – my grandma was a lab assistant all her life. My grandfather was a chemist, he used to promise me that he would explain the entire organic chemistry to me when I need it. “It’s easy, just a few principles”, he would say. But he died before we got to it.

Did your grandparents inspire you to become a scientist?

I don’t know, maybe. I liked the fact that my grandfather had travelled a lot as a scientist – as difficult as it was, scientists were allowed to travel abroad. He was in Zurich as a postdoc shortly after the war. During the war, he was deployed as a forced labourer to Nazi Germany, then the Rockefeller Foundation invited him to a postgraduate course, lasting two years, I think. During the course he made a lot of friends, and in spite of the difficult geopolitical situation, he was able to maintain the contacts and sometimes even reunite with them at a later stage. Not very often, but he could. He was able to connect his travelling with his work. He also wrote books for a German publisher. They were on methods in chemistry, chromatography; for them he would receive money he used for travelling. And that’s what I found very appealing, perhaps just subconsciously. But it’s always many things at once that influence you – some sort of a general impression. I don’t think that as a child I was thinking about my future career too much, or coming up with plans. This wasn’t something I would do.