Praemium Academiae 2022

14. 11. 2022

Martin Pivokonský, a hydrochemist specializing in water quality and treatment, Lucie Bačáková, a leading Czech expert in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, and Viktor Černý, an anthropologist researching the earliest history of Africa and Arabia. Three outstanding scientists, who are among the world's leaders in their fields, received the Academic Award, Praemium Academiae, from the hands of the President of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Eva Zažímalová. The ceremony took place as part of the Week of the Academy of Sciences festival at the Library of the CAS.

The Praemium Academiae (Academic Award) of up to CZK 30 million can be used by the laureates over the next six years to cover costs related to research, salaries of their colleagues, or the acquisition of technical equipment. The Award is a financial as well as a symbolic moral recognition of the laureates' scientific excellence.

"These are truly the best of the best," confirms Eva Zažímalová, the president of the CAS. "The Academic Award is intended to create proper conditions for their research so that they can develop their potential for the benefit of the CAS and Czech science as a whole," adds the president.

The awarding of the Award is decided by the president of the CAS with an advisory committee of domestic and foreign experts, on the basis of the achieved results and with regard to the future perspective of the research. In addition to professional CVs and an outline of the focus of their research, the selected candidates must also submit a time schedule for the use of the Award. The laureates also receive guest status at the Academic Assembly of the CAS for the duration of the funding.

Proposals for the Academic Award are submitted by the directors of the CAS Institutes and the Chairman of the Scientific Council of the CAS. The Academic Award has been awarded since 2007 and has so far been awarded to 36 scientists.

Doc. RNDr. Martin Pivokonský, Ph.D.
Institute of Hydrodynamics of the CAS

Martin Pivokonský is a hydrochemist and water treatment technologist, the director of the Institute of Hydrodynamics of the CAS. He is interested in the physic-chemical properties of water, the composition and quality of natural and treated water, the occurrence of natural organic substances and micropollutants, and also methods of their removal.

He focuses on processes connected with water treatment and purification, such as coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, adsorption, and membrane filtration. He is the author of several patents and technologies for water treatment.

"Water is becoming a truly precious resource. It is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain good quality drinking water - also because of climate change, which is manifested, among other things, by the frequent alternation of dry periods and periods of sudden heavy rainfall. This affects not only the yield of water resources but also their quality," says Martin Pivokonský.

In a significant number of water sources today, there are pesticides, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, hormones, and other harmful substances, collectively known as micropollutants. "We can remove them in drinking water treatment plants. However, they remain in treated wastewater, which is practically not used in our country yet for drinking or utility water production," explains the scientist.

However, in the world, it is treated wastewater that is increasingly being used as a raw material for the production of utility but also drinking water. Israel, for example, covers 90% of its water needs for agriculture with recycled water, whereas, in Europe, only 1% of the water is recycled. "In order to recycle water, it will first have to be rid of the cocktail of toxic substances that wastewater is currently full of," warns Martin Pivokonský. Therefore, in his opinion, it is essential to optimize existing water purification and treatment technologies and to develop new ones.

"Using all available water resources, including recycling and reusing wastewater, is a logical consequence of the global crisis of water scarcity and poor water quality. In addition, this is one of the requirements of the 2020 Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. Yet, not only do we lack practical experience in treating such waters, but there is also insufficient scientific knowledge on which to base the design of appropriate treatment technologies," the hydrochemist points out.

Martin Pivokonský's Academic Award research will focus on a detailed analysis of contaminants in water sources, further explaining their properties, their mutual interactions, and their interactions with chemicals used in water purification and treatment. Moreover, he will also look at finding new ways to remove them effectively.

The results of the research will then be used to put new technologies into practice in water treatment plants. The project will therefore include semi-operational and operational testing.

Doc. MUDr. Lucie Bačáková, CSc.
Institute of Physiology of the CAS

Lucie Bačáková is a leading Czech expert in the field of biomaterials, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, and tissue substitutes. She is the head of the Laboratory of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering at the Institute of Physiology of the CAS.

The topics she deals with are unique. She focuses cumulatively on the repair and regeneration of tissues of the cardiovascular system and also the tissue of bones, joints, and skin, i.e. the human body systems that in the contemporary world suffer most from civilization diseases and damage due to work, traffic, and sports injuries.

By elaborating these topics to an unprecedented extent, Lucie Bačáková has introduced a new scientific school in the Czech Republic, fully respected internationally.

Tissue engineering is one of the latest trends in modern biomedicine. In the last decades, experiments with the use of stem cells, as well as the advanced development of nanomaterials and materials compatible with human tissue, especially suitable for the surface layers of implants, have been pushing the way to effective therapy.

Lucie Bačáková wants to use the Academic Award to develop all these areas.

In the field of the blood vessel and heart valve replacements, she wants to look for ways to prepare stem cells primarily in subcutaneous fat cells, which are available through a relatively minimally invasive liposuction method. She intends to modify them further not by genetic manipulation but by advanced RNA technologies.

Together with her team, she will also explore the possibilities of using stem cells from the so-called Wharton's jelly of the umbilical cord.

"The advantage is that these cells can be isolated in relatively large quantities from tissues that are essentially 'biological waste' and therefore do not burden the patient with any additional medical procedures," states Lucie Bačáková.

Lucie Bačáková's goal is also to solve, at least partially but preferably completely, the fundamental problem of vascular surgery, which is the lack of long-term functional biological vascular substitutes with a diameter of 6 millimetres or less. "Even after seventy years since the first vascular substitutes were introduced into surgery, this remains an unsolved issue, a kind of search for the 'holy grail' of vascular surgery," the scientist emphasizes. A possible direction of solution that her team will take is the use of biological matrices in combination with human stem cells.

In the field of joint replacement and bone defect filling, Lucie Bačáková wants to look for new materials that are better suited to bone tissue, such as titanium or metal alloys. She is therefore inviting top teams of physicists, chemists, and mechanical engineers to collaborate. She also wants to test materials with spontaneous mineralization, such as hydrogels.

In the field of replacements and wound healing, the scientist also intends to develop a 3D bioprinting method for collagen with cells. She also wants to focus on the treatment of non-healing and chronic wounds and scars.

Prof. Mgr. Viktor Černý, Dr.
Institute of Archaeology of the CAS, Prague

Viktor Černý specializes in evolutionary anthropology. His research focuses on prehistoric events and processes, such as climate change or cultural innovations, in which he seeks the causes of current genetic diversity. In collaboration with a number of international centres, he is involved in projects on human evolution in sub-Saharan Africa and his spread to Eurasia.

He has been working at the Institute of Archaeology of the CAS, Prague, since 1994. He has focused, among other things, on the search for genetic traces of the migration of anatomically modern humans across the Arabian Peninsula or on the impact of migrations on the population structure of the African Sahel, and more recently also on the research of genetic imprints based on different subsistence practices. Within the framework of these projects, he supervises students of the Master's and Doctoral programs in Anthropology at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague.

Today, as in the past, contacts between different cultures form a neuralgic point of social development. Populations and their cultures intersect to obtain food resources or, on the contrary, migrate to more climatically favourable places due to food shortages.

Receiving the Academic Award will enable Viktor Černý to address biocultural interactions, summarise, and also significantly extend his to-date research. The core of the project will be the African Sahel, where he studies the population history and contacts of nomadic shepherds and settled farmers. Climate change has had a significant impact on the relationships between these two groups. As a result, it has caused unequal opportunities for livelihoods in the Sahel and consequent conflicts between the two groups, which then lead to the destabilization of the region. The research will also focus on geographically defined contact points in Asia. The barrier between human populations is, for example, the Himalayas or various islands, in addition to the Sahara. Research on biocultural interactions in contact groups may provide answers to a number of current questions, says Viktor Černý.

"We want to study the interactions of historical and modern populations from the perspective of archaeology and genetics and think about their social implications," says Viktor Černý.

"I believe that a comprehensive analysis of the symbiosis of different ethnic and subsistence groups can also be useful for the current discussion on appropriate assistance aimed at reducing political destabilization," the anthropologist emphasizes.

The project envisages, among other things, engaging with existing research at the Institute of Archaeology, Prague, in Oman, which brings discoveries that open up new insights into the elucidation of the migration of anatomically modern humans from Africa across the Bab el-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea to Arabia during the Middle Palaeolithic.