Researchers of the Czech Academy of Sciences succeeded in the second year of the JUNIOR STAR competition of the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) and made up a half of the total number of supported 16 projects. This year from our institute, it was Prokop Hapala and Dominik Kriegner who succeeded in the big competition for grants. The Institute of Physics and the Czech Technical University thus have two awarded scientists, and came after the Masaryk University, which won three projects.
JUNIOR STAR grants support researchers within eight years after obtaining a Ph.D. and thanks to a budget of up to CZK 25 million, their holders have the opportunity to establish their own research group or focus on their own topic. This year, foreign evaluators, recommended by Science Connect, assessed a total of 315 projects. Their evaluation was performed in two phases and individual projects were assessed by at least four experts.
"We are very pleased with the high success of FZU scientists in the JUNIOR STAR competition. Young promising scientists are extremely important to us and are the driving force of science. Dominik Kriegner and Prokop Hapala belong among the rising stars in the fields of magnetism and quantum mechanics, and I firmly believe that the grants will enable them to fulfil their scientific dream and achieve top results,” Jiří Červenka, the Science Secretary, evaluates the success of the FZU employees.
The GACR Presidium member, doc. RNDr. Petr Baldrian, Ph.D. commented on the competition of young investigators who have high potential to achieve world-renowned results: “As with the EXPRO competition, these are exclusive grants – only a small percentage of projects are selected and their investigators are provided with above-standard support for a period of five years. Support for young scientists is one of the priorities of the GACR. This year, we have opened a new competition for young scientists POSTDOC INDIVIDUAL FELLOWSHIP, focused on scientific mobility. Young researchers – students and Ph.D. students – are also an important part of standard or international project teams, where they can gain practical research experience.”
The Czech Science Foundation (GACR) has been working since 1993 and it provides support for basic research projects from public funds, this year in the total amount of CZK 4.4 billion.