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A device that uses a single blood drop to determine whether a patient has a melanoma, and, possibly, at what stage, is being developed by an international research team that includes researchers from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences led by the researcher Jakub Dostálek. As part of the VerSiLiB project, they are building a device capable of capturing and detecting even very small amounts of molecules produced by tumour cells, which can be used as biomarkers.

A total of 59 women registered for this year's L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Talent Programme, including Evgenia Chitrova from the FZU. Together with two other scientists, Eva Krupičková Pluhařová and Zuzana Střížová, she has won an award for her work.

On the occasion of the Dvořák Lectures organized by the Institute of Physics, the FZU Director Michael Prouza handed over decrees to appoint the Emeritus Scientists of the Czech Academy of Sciences to three researchers from the Institute of Physics. In his opening speech, he thanked the appointed researchers – namely Pavel Novák, Ivan Pelant and Antonín Šimůnek – for making a significant contribution to the development of physical research by fulfilling their scientific visions.

The prize for best dissertation in the Werner von Siemens Award has been received by Petr Hauschwitz from HiLASE of the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His dissertation dealt with laser micromachining technology and was defended at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague. We talked to him about material surfaces and why he decided to get an MBA.

Ivana Víšová from the Optics Division has won the second place in the prestigious Werner von Siemens Award for her dissertation thesis “The study on interactions of functional surfaces with biological systems”. She has received two other prizes for it: the Bolzano Award awarded by Charles University, and the Visegrád Group Academies Young Researcher Award. In spite of her success in physics, her journey to it wasn’t completely straight; she wanted to become an Egyptologist, and Egypt has remained her grand passion until today.

He likes to play with light, to put it bluntly.  Jakub Dostálek, who is the latest acquisition of the Optics Division, focuses on investigating material properties and how they affect light. Or the other way round – how light affects material properties and the ways to control such properties using light. Having worked for over ten years abroad, he is now taking his first steps to return to Czechia.

One of the winners of the 24th annual Werner von Siemens Awards is the promising researcher Bruno de la Torre from the Institute of Physics and the Palacky University in Olomouc. The Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences is also home to the first place winner in the best dissertation category Petr Hauschwitz and the second place winner Ivana Víšová.

Nataliya Kazachková lost both her university office and home. The bombing of Kharkiv turned her life upside down, but the tenacious scientist did not give up. Together with her parents and younger daughter she managed to leave Ukraine, and thanks to the programme of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic “Researchers at Risk Fellowships - Ukraine”, since April she has been working at the Institute of Physics.

Unique Cherenkov telescopes have successfully been installed at the Ondřejov Observatory near Prague. There are two telescopes at the site, which are now the largest optical telescopes in the Czech Republic. They have been developed in the frame of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, and evaluated as performing telescopes in the high energy region above 1 TeV.