<p><strong>Prof. Ing. Michal Kohout, Ph.D. is originally from southern Bohemia. He started studying at UCT Prague in 2000 after high school in Soběslav. After his postdoctoral research at the Institut of Analytical Chemistry of the University of Vienna, he decided to return to his alma mater, UCT Prague, and extend, apply and transfer knowledge and experience he gained abroad. He was recently named full professor and, in addition to research and teaching, considers his mission as professor to be setting an example for students in terms of not being afraid to start one’s own business since he, with colleagues, founded a UCT Prague spin-off company, Galochrom, discussed below.</strong></p>
<h5><strong>What does your research group do? What is the focus of your research activities?</strong></h5>
<p>We have been dealing with liquid crystals for a very long time. Liquid crystals are organic materials with various applications, and as research evolves, it’s expected that liquid crystals will have some added value in real-life applications, beyond simply being liquid crystalline (e.g. being chiral, sensitive to light or to magnetic fields). We try to modify molecules so that they can handle the various demands that modern materials chemistry places on them.</p>
<p>The second area of focus, chiral stationary phases for liquid chromatography, I brought back with me to UCT Prague from my post-doc stay. In liquid chromatography, we study systems that are used in the analysis of drugs (if an active substance is chemically and optically pure), for example.</p>
<p>Together with my colleagues and students, we also work on various side projects in classical organic chemistry, such as organocatalysis.</p>
<h5><strong>Most people can only conceptualize solid crystals. Can you introduce us to the world of liquid crystals?</strong></h5>
<p>It’s quite simple: liquid crystals are basically crystals too. One can imagine a crystal as being an ordered and oriented structure with molecules precisely and unambiguously arranged in space. Liquid crystals also have these characteristics, but their molecules can also move and are mobile even though they have, let’s say, a partially-preserved crystalline structure, for they are in the so-called mesophase. To conceptualize this, one could simply compare this to a system of straws floating in the same direction, because the molecules are arranged like this and are able to move when acted upon by an external impulse (e.g. electric or magnetic field or light). A structure can be rearranged so that it occupies a new, lowest energy arrangement. Liquid crystals are used, for example, in optoelectric devices, and we’re all surrounded by liquid crystals, which are not just used in monitors, televisions, and watch displays, but also in soap or cell membranes. One doesn’t even realize how many liquid crystalline substances and systems actually are all around us in the real world.</p>
<p><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/VSCHT_Pokousime_se_uspet_se_spin_off_firmou_Galochrom_profesor_Michal_Kohout_e7be735e35.jpg" alt="UCT Prague: We are trying to succeed with the spin-off company Galochrom"/></p>
<h5><strong>Is there anything else you’re up to that you’d like to tell us about?</strong></h5>
<p>I’d put liquid chromatography into the background a bit. Let me put it this way: the world of liquid crystals research is a kind of long-distance race, and we don’t know for sure if and when relatively complex molecules will be used. They certainly have the potential to be used in real life, but in the distant future. It is not easy to prepare and enhance them, so that they meet various requirements and do as many extra things as we would like.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if we look at the area of chromatography, the real world application of new research results happens relatively quickly. If we prepare a chromatography column that is significantly better than what’s currently on the market, it might be commercially interesting and result in a product that we’ll see on the market in our lifetimes.</p>
<p>But it bothers me and my colleagues that even the development of unique stationary phases is still too slow, that it takes too long for a chromatographic column to reach the market. In 2017, we tried to approach several large manufacturers with a unique system we patented. Unfortunately, there was no interest in this technology because manufactures would have to change their production technologies slightly. Because of this, my colleagues and I decided to found our own company, the Galochrom, UCT Prague spin-off. This way, we also wish to show younger colleagues and students that they don’t have to be afraid of starting a company and entering the business world.</p>
<h5><strong>How is Galochrom doing?</strong></h5>
<p>We are in the early phases. We founded the spin-off in September 2023, and since then, we placed second in a European start-up competition, which we consider to be a great success. We are currently trying to put the first products on the market and prove that they are better than those already available. Of course, we believe that our products will be adopted.</p>
<h5><strong>What practical value do you think your research and professional activities have for society and your field?</strong></h5>
<p>Our multimodal columns will have a wider range of applications and will thus be able to replace three to four standard columns. This will lead to dramatic savings for end users as well as lower solvent and solvent disposal costs.</p>
<p>As for liquid crystals, they’re a long shot, as I’ve already said, but we might, for example, use a system of so-called dopants. Let’s take a photosensitive material. We don’t have to use it as a single component; instead, we can add it to a cheaper commercial material and mix it (5-10%). Thanks to the dopant, an entire system is sensitive to light and we can not only switch individual parts (pixels) from the mesophase to the liquid phase, but also read this information with a laser. Such systems could serve as optical memories.</p>
<h5><strong>You recently became a full professor. What does this mean for you? What do you teach and what are your first impressions as professor?</strong></h5>
<p>Of course, I consider this a great personal success built upon the great work and support by my students, colleagues, and mentors. My original motivation for entering academia, a long time ago, was a promise I made to my dad: that I would graduate as one of the best in my class at UCT Prague. And I’ve made it this far, so I think he would be proud of me and that fills me with a certain sense of fulfilment. I teach organic chemistry. So for first impressions: I have more work, but it’s interesting for me, nevertheless, to teach students who are just starting their university programs. My lectures before this were for advanced students and doctoral candidates. All of a sudden, when you’re teaching core subjects, you start trying not to influence students’ mind sets too much while still conveying the information in some absorbable way, reassuring them that chemistry is actually cool and that chemists are pretty normal people.</p>
<h5><strong>It must be quite challenging to capture the attention of an auditorium full of people and to decide how much to go into detail. Do you struggle with this kind of thing? Do you have any tricks for engaging your audience?</strong></h5>
<p>It’s true, when you enter an auditorium and there are 180 people sitting there instead of 20, it’s really an incredible difference. It’s not so much about the number of people itself, because there are about the same number of people at conference presentations, but conference attendees are experts who aren’t really surprised by anything in the field. Teaching core subjects is rather about setting some level of comprehensibility for what you’re explaining.</p>
<p>Gradually, I’m getting faster at preparing my lectures, but at first, it was very time-consuming. Yet, during the class, sometimes I still get taken away a bit and then I get behind and play catch up. (He laughs.)</p>
<p>As for student engagement, I tell my colleagues that I’m trying to use my latent theatre talents, so hope that&#39;s at least somewhat successful. I’m going back in time a couple of decades and am going to use some simple, themed experiments from back then in my lectures.</p>
<h5><strong>You started studying at UCT Prague in 2000. What do you think has changed the most for students since then?</strong></h5>
<p>Definitely the quality of the food in the canteens. One hundred percent! But what has really changed for the better are the travel possibilities. That&#39;s the biggest shift I see. Today, it’s easy to go abroad for a semester, almost whenever you want. There are countless ways to do this. I remember how I tried to do an internship during my doctoral studies, but preparations were crazy. So instead, I arranged at a conference with my mentor’s colleague to join her laboratory within a European project because it was so much easier to go this way. Going abroad gives you a wealth of new experiences, and it’s great that this option is much more accessible than before.</p>
<h5><strong>Is there anything that you did not like as a student and managed to change—or are at least trying to change—as a professor?</strong></h5>
<p>For a relatively long time, my colleagues and I tried to appeal to UCT Prague’s management to provide competitive scholarships for doctoral students. Doctoral candidates are the UCT Prague’s main strength because without them, the university couldn’t do basic research. They should be valued accordingly. So I’m a supporter of finding ways to increase scholarships and I think we’ve been quite successful in this regard.</p>
<h5><strong>What would you like to achieve in your professional and personal lives?</strong></h5>
<p>As a professional, I would like that the things we’ve invented would actually be used. Research, whatever form, should aim at developing things that are useful for humanity. Basic research is great, but I like finding applications while striving to advance both science and society as a whole. Why else would we be here?</p>
<p>Personally, my highest priority is work-life balance. Achieving some reasonable balance with work, what I like to do, and time for family.</p>
<h5><strong>What does the future hold for your research group?</strong></h5>
<p>The long-term plan involves spin-off companies and connecting academia with the commercial sector. Engagement in basic research is necessary for finding usable materials and applications, yet connecting these applications directly to the industrial sector is crucial for us. The plan is to try to make a platform for quick and simple technology transfer at UCT Prague.</p>
<h5><strong>What do you do when you turn out the lights in your lab?</strong></h5>
<p>I have hobbies I’ve done for a long time. I’m either going to volleyball or trying to go fishing. Fishing is more time-consuming, so I mainly stick to volleyball. And, of course, I’m running home to spend time with my loved ones.</p>


We are trying to succeed with the spin-off company Galochrom

<p><strong>Talking to Michal Kolář is a pleasure for every interviewer. A graduate of <a href="https://lcms.labrulez.com/companies/16"><strong>Charles University’s Faculty of Science</strong></a>, with many years of experience in the German scientific context (including a stint at the renowned Max Planck Institute), Kolář gets straight to the point. He’s not afraid to bring up uncomfortable topics. He can explain complex matters from the world of physical chemistry using interesting analogies. At the same time, after sitting down with him for a few minutes, you realize he has the gift of infecting you right away with his thirst for knowledge and understanding the world around him.</strong></p>
<h5><strong>This year, you started working on a project, Towards an atomic understanding of the first moments of a protein’s life, supported by the Czech Science Foundation (CSF). The catchy title caught my attention and is actually the reason why we chose you for the interview, though several other researchers from UCT Prague also received CSF funding.</strong></h5>
<p>When I talk about science, I make an effort and enjoy interpreting my findings in the form of stories. Our project is about researching ribosomes, something I’ve been working on for seven years. I like to personify them and often compare the functioning of ribosomes to human childbirth during lectures. Because it’s easier to imagine something as intrinsically human as childbirth than it is to conceptualize the Lennard-Jones potential, which describes the interactions between atoms. A few weeks ago, Professor Pavel Jungwirth received a grant from the European Research Council (ERC). He is going to study, in detail, the interactions between atoms and ions, and in all interviews, he uses the analogy of a beating human heart. He sees a connection between our heartbeats and some microscopic parameter for calcium ion. That’s great, isn’t it?</p>
<h5><strong>If a grant proposal has a catchy title and is written in an accessible way, do you think it has a better chance of getting funded?</strong></h5>
<p>From a personal point of view, it would be great if this were the case. But I haven’t written enough proposals to be able to answer this question based on statistics. Quantitative research has shown that the appearance of the first page of a proposal is important to reviewers in the grant application review process. So, in this case, I made the title and the opening page stand out. That said, another successful CSF proposal in which I was a co-investigator was just the opposite. In terms of graphics, it was so ugly that I wouldn’t want to evaluate it. But the proposal was funded (laughs – editor’s note).</p>
<h5><strong>Please elaborate on what you expect to encounter as you are proceeding with this project, in terms of understanding the birth of proteins.</strong></h5>
<p>Almost every protein in the world has formed some kind of ribosome. A ribosome is a 25 nm complex with about 50 molecules that catalyses a chemical reaction. Protein synthesis takes place by combining protein building blocks, amino acids. An unbranched chain is formed, which typically has around 300 amino acid residues. For the protein, getting out of the ribosome takes quite a long time, on the order of seconds. The protein therefore spends a non-negligible part of its life bound to a ribosome, like a child connected to its mother by the umbilical cord, to use the childbirth analogy. No one knows exactly what happens to the protein at this stage; it’s uncharted territory.</p>
<p><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/VSCHT_Martin_Balicky_Vsichni_muzete_delat_doktorat_na_Stanfordu_nebo_MIT_276ee55a64/VSCHT-Martin-Balicky-Vsichni-muzete-delat-doktorat-na-Stanfordu-nebo-MIT.jpg" alt="UCT Prague/Martin Balický: Michal Kolář from the Laboratory of Biomolecular Dynamics"/></p>
<h5><strong>Why don’t we know anything about this process yet?</strong></h5>
<p>Current techniques, such as electron cryogenic microscopy or nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, do not “see” the initial phase of protein birth. Accordingly, we only have structural experiments available for about ten different nascent proteins, which are very specific. We know almost nothing about the rest. I study nature using computer models, machine learning, and structural analysis, thanks to which we can “see” what an experiment cannot.</p>
<h5><strong>What is the basis for modelling something that cannot be seen?</strong></h5>
<p>We know what amino acids look like, how they join in a chain, and how the chain grows. We also know the physical laws of the microuniverse. We enter the information into a computer and use it to predict what’s happening inside a ribosome, for example, in a part that’s called the exit tunnel. There are some special constricted places that the protein has to pass through. We do not know how it moves through the constriction region, what force makes it to do so. We also not know why constriction exists in ribosomes at all. What purpose could it have, since evolution has not removed it in over hundreds of millions of years? There are biochemical experiments showing that without narrowing, ribosomes function poorly, making non-functional proteins or not making them at all. It is also interesting that a large class of antibiotics binds precisely to the constriction region, which adds overlap to the applied setting complementing our basic research activities.</p>
<h5><strong>I assume that modelling events at the atomic level would be very demanding in terms of computational power. Do you use computing supercentres, or do you make do with UCT Prague’s infrastructure?</strong></h5>
<p>We have been able to employ the largest machines in the world for quite some time now. When we do a molecular dynamics simulation of a ribosome and count about 2.5 million atoms and their interactions, we consume supercomputer computing time in the order of weeks. We use the computing centre in Ostrava and compete for time elsewhere. Just as an example, when I returned from Germany from the Max Planck Institute in 2018, I had 40 million core hours of computing time allocated for my project in Stuttgart. At that time, in the Czech Republic, the Ostrava supercomputer centre had just announced a competition with the capacity of 70 million core hours for the entire republic.</p>
<h5><strong>Is limited computing time limiting to you in your research?</strong></h5>
<p>I am more limited in my “real-world” time, because I also have to teach, have a family, and also commute quite far to UCT Prague. If I suddenly had access to a large computing resource, I would be under more pressure to use it. Calculations need to be well planned and phased.</p>
<h5><strong>You mentioned that the outputs of your project may have overlap to applied settings, to antibiotics development. Is potential use in medicine (and thus helping people) a motivating factor for you in being a scientist? Or do you just enjoy exploring the unknown, and when a discovery comes with real-world impact, it’s a nice bonus?</strong></h5>
<p>B is correct: I&#39;m really interested in how things work and why they do what they do. I look at the world realistically and do not set unnecessarily large goals. I am not lying to anyone, not even to myself, that I will invent a new pharmaceutical. I don’t know, of course, if twenty years from now I might be disappointed by the fact that I spent my whole life tinkering with theoretical concepts and that you can’t buy anything I developed in a pharmacy. However, I do not share the current obsession funding agencies have, requiring basic research to be related to a social problem. After all, a lot of revolutionary and useful things have come about thanks to people digging into something that, at first glance, seemed useless.</p>
<h5><strong>I find your approach to basic research perfectly legitimate.</strong></h5>
<p>It is legitimate when we have fun together. But I can’t simply write to a funding agency that I’m interested in why there are suddenly five positively charged amino acids here in the ribosome and why evolution didn’t throw them away. That I don’t care whether an antibiotic is currently being attached to the site. But the funding agencies, in principle, require possible real-world applications. So I’m just going to tell them what they want to hear, because undoubtedly, there’s always some link to an antibiotic. But in the drug research field, an idea is often so far from implementation that it’s pointless to declare it.</p>
<h5><strong>At UCT Prague, you lead the Laboratory of Biomolecular Dynamics. How difficult was it to start this group?</strong></h5>
<p>Our group has been operating for six years now and the beginnings were hard for me. I had nothing to do with this university before coming here from Germany, and I think that UCT Prague is not very good at integrating scientists who did their training elsewhere. I see inbreeding being cultivated at every turn. To this day, I sometimes feel like a dissident who clearly has a different opinion than the people who studied at UCT Prague and straight away continued their academic careers here.</p>
<p><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/VSCHT_Kolar_lab_at_UCT_Prague_We_are_a_young_group_of_researchers_and_students_at_University_of_Chemistry_and_Technology_in_Prague_94978e6377/VSCHT-Kolar-lab-at-UCT-Prague-We-are-a-young-group-of-researchers-and-students-at-University-of-Chemistry-and-Technology-in-Prague.jpg" alt="UCT Prague: Kolář lab at UCT Prague: We are a young group of researchers and students at University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague"/></p>
<h5><strong>What did you struggle with the most?</strong></h5>
<p>I don’t list my daily frustrations (laughs). It has been time-consuming for me to find the necessary forms. I didn’t know how grant applications work at UCT Prague, who was in charge of which agenda, or how teaching works here. I often didn’t even know who to ask, and when I did ask, I usually didn’t get an answer. A lot of information is spread through grapevines among colleagues who spent their entire careers here and know how things work.</p>
<p>But enough criticizing: I was given space for absolute independence, and no one has told me what research topic to pursue and how, which has been fantastic. And some things are changing for the better. For example, getting the Project Centre going is a great step forward.</p>
<h5><strong>If you were to compare your time here with life at the Max Planck Institute, what do you miss the most?</strong></h5>
<p>Probably a way of thinking about science that I don’t see here. Here, we talk a lot about grants, administrative duties, and citations. But to talk to someone about ribosomes and proteins first and only later discuss about administrative tasks? I don’t experience that here, unlike in Germany.</p>
<h5><strong>Are you missing anything else?</strong></h5>
<p>Although I have been working at UCT Prague for over six years, I do not have any intensive cooperation with anyone else at the university. I’m certainly partly to blame for this; I don’t tend to actively reach out and try to convince others about things we might do. In Germany, we always had events where we could meet each other and solve purely scientific matters. For example, internal seminars, conferences, and thematic lectures, which many people attended. People were active, curious, and interested in learning how their colleagues could help them. A few days ago I was at a lecture on machine learning organized by the UNICORN association, and there were maybe ten, fifteen of us there.</p>
<h5><strong>Why do you think it’s like this?</strong></h5>
<p>The fact that the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry AS CR (IOCB) is nearby might play a role, because a lot of high-quality/ambitious people do their doctorates there or work there. Many UCT Prague colleagues are strictly technologically oriented thus they do not crave scientific knowledge. I need people who enjoy learning about the workings of nature and are not scared of words such as derivation, optimization, or programming. In my opinion, UCT Prague does not target the best students in the given age cohort. When I teach sophomores, I ask them, for example, who will go to Stanford after they graduate? And they stare at me with surprise, wondering if I lost my marbles. Almost no one starts with an ambition to do a PhD at a top-ranked university. Then I tell them: you could all go to Stanford or MIT; people there usually don’t have better brains than you, they’re just dedicated to their interests and consider it normal—even in their free time!—to talk about science, learning, solving tasks together, and preparing for a scientific career.</p>
<h5><strong>Is there something in which, on the other hand, UCT Prague excels compared to institutions where you worked previously?</strong></h5>
<p>I really like the social activities organized by the university on the Dejvice campus. CrossCampus, Hanami, Campusfest. I also find the relationships between younger and older students that is visible, for example, with tutoring activities, to be great.</p>
<h5><strong>How do you feel about the possibility of going abroad again in the future?</strong></h5>
<p>Right now, the Czech Republic is the place where I want to live permanently, but I’ve not yet closed the door to future international chapters. If the opportunity presented itself and, above all, provided favourable conditions for my family, I would like to do more work outside the country. Let’s say, as part of a sabbatical, for example. I have a few places in mind where I’d love to collaborate with specific scientists for a longer period of time. But I also have three daughters and a wife, and each of them has interests and responsibilities here in the Czech Republic…it would not be easy to coordinate.</p>
<h5><strong>Do you have a scientific dream?</strong></h5>
<p>You just touched upon my soft spot. All great scientists say that you have to have big dreams and goals. I don’t have them. I’m a little sorry about this but it’s probably connected to my aforementioned realist outlook on life and my tendency to avoid disappointment. So I’m just gradually working my way through the laws of nature.</p>
<h5><strong>You are one of the few active Czech scientists on Twitter (@mhkoscience). What motivates you?</strong></h5>
<p>I was originally looking for doctoral candidates there. Now it’s a kind of hobby. In any case, science is a community affair, and if a person wants to be successful, he or she must be part of a scientific community. It rarely happens that a lone scientist suddenly comes up with a discovery that takes the whole world’s breath away. Rather, it is about small discoveries that the community gradually adopts and continues to refine. Without marketing, no one will know you’re around these days, so I’m tweeting.</p>
<h5><strong>You use a combination of bike and train to get to work from the countryside near Kolin.</strong></h5>
<p>I don’t like to drive, and traveling by train, in particular, is a special to me. It’s a time when I can think and feel good. I really enjoy train travel, even though I hardly travelled by train as a child. During my studies, I travelled along the Trans-Siberian Highway and in southern India. On the Beijing-Almaty-Moscow-Košice route, I returned to the Czech Republic by train after my friends and I decided to visit northern China and track Siberian tigers.</p>
<h5><strong>Did you succeed?</strong></h5>
<p>Fortunately, no. Plans are one thing, but when a person enters the forest and realizes that a 300-kilogram tiger might be waiting for them, it’s just not good (laughs).</p>


All of you could do a PhD at Stanford or MIT

<p><strong>In October 2023, the <a href="https://gcms.labrulez.com/companies/11"><strong>UCT Prague</strong></a> Academic Senate elected Professor Milan Pospíšil as their choice for Rector. As of 1 January 2024, he will succeed Pavel Matějka in the top university position and begin a four-year term. In this interview, the long-term Vice-Rector for Strategies and Development and the Council of Czech Universities Chair talks about his intention to adjust the core curriculum and the need to diversify income sources, about his priorities in relation to employees, as well as about support for student associations and his ongoing hobby interest in photography.</strong></p>
<h5><strong>Is UCT Prague in good shape as you become Rector on 1 January 2024?</strong></h5>
<p>Our university is not in bad shape. R&amp;D and instruction are functioning. We are still perceived as a high-quality, competitive university in the Czech context. Pavel Matějka has achieved a lot in four years and there is much to build upon. However, I see challenges in that the world around us is changing quite a bit and we will be forced to respond to those changes.</p>
<h5><strong>What do you mean by such changes?</strong></h5>
<p>Above all, potential student interest in going into technical fields, including chemistry, has been stagnating or even declining for some time. Many students prefer easier paths of study in order to have enough time for extracurricular activities. The views of fresh high school graduates are changing, and they have increasing demands about what university education should look like in terms of levels of difficulty, structure, student support, and the use of information technology.</p>
<p>After a period of sustained economic growth, the Czech Republic has fallen into an economic and energy crisis, with growing frustrations and societal concerns about conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. The standard of living of the vast majority of the Czech population is declining.</p>
<p>We are also confronted with far greater competition from international universities, which are more attractive to students thanks to instruction in English and which can offer researchers better salaries and benefits.</p>
<h5><strong>How do you plan to address the decline in interest in studying chemistry?</strong></h5>
<p>Based on discussion and agreement with the UCT Prague Faculties, our core curriculum should evolve. We can tell ourselves over and over again that the current set up is ideal. But if we don’t have enough students, what good will our thoughts about this do? In any case, I don’t mean lowering standards, but exploring possibilities of distributing course loads in a more flexible way, making course choices more aligned with specific study programs and profiles, and taking student and employee preferences into more urgent consideration.</p>
<p>In cooperation with other universities, we must ensure that there are high-quality mathematics, chemistry, and physics teachers at the secondary school level. At UCT Prague, we already have a program in which we can train high-quality teachers who are keenly interest in chemistry. Other universities should do the same for physics and mathematics. This investment would pay off for us in more motivated, more prepared secondary school graduates.</p>
<h5><strong>Another problem is the real drop in university income with regard to inflation and the government’s inadequate higher education funding policy…</strong></h5>
<p>Teaching, training, and R&amp;D at UCT Prague are expensive because of necessary instrumentation and chemicals. The government has funded higher education at low levels for a long time, and the basic governmental funding intended to operate our institution cannot even offset inflation. As a result, we have to compete hard with other universities and institutes of the Czech Academy of Science for grants to supplement governmental funding. Since Czech grant funding sources are not sufficiently high and considering the enormous competition on the national level, success in obtaining such grant funding is generally low. As a result, our instructors and researchers are frustrated by the inefficient use of their time in applying for grants instead of conducting research or improving their teaching competencies. Unfortunately, the chances are that the situation will stay the same for the next five years, if it doesn’t worsen. So, we will need to change our approach to gaining funding and try to diversify our funding sources more.</p>
<h5><strong>Where do you want to get such funding?</strong></h5>
<p>Funding sources that hold the greatest potential are in applied industrial and corporate activities. We will need to switch back from a pervasive model where it was profitable to simply conduct research and publish and return to our technological roots. We also need to get more funding from international research grants. Our success rate with international grants is not bad at all, but we need to prepare and submit higher-quality proposals. I would therefore like to support research groups who have the potential to break into prestigious European grant structures and to apply regularly for grant funding. The university is currently able to withstand the current adverse budget situation thanks to financial reserves, but the reserve funding pool is not endless.</p>
<h5><strong>How specifically do you want to raise funds from the commercial sector?</strong></h5>
<p>We need to learn how to better connect our knowledge and skills in order to provide comprehensive offers of research cooperation to interested commercial partners. With this, I do not mean just routine lab testing and measuring, but rather providing quality corporate research that companies do not have the space or human capacity to conduct on their own. We can take advantage of the fact that many of our colleagues prefer more hands-on applications and collaborations with the applied sector over publishing. Virtually no one in the Czech Republic is doing chemical-technological research at our scale and quality level. I want to emphasize that this does not mean giving up on competitive, basic and applied research, especially when our goal is to attract and keep high-quality doctoral students, who are literarily indispensable for UCT Prague.</p>
<p>We must not forget our up-to-now underutilized potential for providing continuing education and customized retraining to our industrial partners and the specific government agencies. If some of UCT Prague’s Faculties show interest, I am more than willing to contact the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs regarding the possibility of financing these activities. I know that interest also exists at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic, and the Federation of the Food and Drink Industries of the Czech Republic (FFDI).</p>
<h5><strong>It is common in the corporate sector that if funding and new income streams are not sufficient, expenditures are also cut. Will you be considering savings in university operations?</strong></h5>
<p>A huge advantage of our university is the low student-to-teacher ratio, which is crucial from the point of view of training experts who are, as we can see, very competitive on the international job market. The downside of this, however, is a relatively large financial burden. Of course, we can consider how to save here, but I think that it would be a big mistake and that one of the great competitive edges of our university would be eroded. So we will look for saving opportunities together with the Deans and Vice-Rectors, primarily in operating expenses, not in personnel costs. Quality people are and always will be our best investment.</p>
<h5><strong>Let’s look at it from another angle. Aren’t you afraid that quality people will leave UCT Prague for better opportunities?</strong></h5>
<p>For me, it is a priority that university employees are satisfied and that they are paid decently for a job well done. I would like to continue gradually increasing basic salaries. Due to the developments in public financing anticipated in the coming years, this will mean lower individual percentage increases rather than tens of percentages year-to-year, but I would like to let employees know that they are important to the university. The first step after taking up the issue will be negotiations with the Faculty Deans about setting up a system for long-term employee motivation. We can start from the already-existing Employee Profile database, which can be used as a valuable initial data source.</p>
<h5><strong>What will Step Number Two be?</strong></h5>
<p>We need to conduct an analysis of services the Rectorate provides in order to determine which of them are more or less useful for the individual Faculties. Based on a statistical evaluation, we will propose their optimization and will prepare a catalogue of services provided by the Rectorate. Such an analysis has not been performed for twenty years and we are currently operating according to established habits. Today, we have a situation where various duplications appear, and some services are fine, but we don’t know if all of them are really necessary and if we can sustain them over the long term.</p>
<p><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/VSCHT_Svet_kolem_nas_se_meni_09e1f9c1f4/VSCHT-Svet-kolem-nas-se-meni.jpg" alt="UCT Prague: Milan Pospíšil: The world around us is changing and we have to react."/></p>
<h5><strong>The closest collaborators for the Rector are the Vice-Rectors. Can you tell me their names already?</strong></h5>
<p>First, I would like to do some reorganization. So far, I am not counting on having a Vice-Rector for Strategies and Development position, since this agenda better fits the Rector’s responsibilities. In its place, I would like to create a Vice-Rector without a pre-existing portfolio position. Her primary responsibility for the next four years would be doctoral student support and doctoral studies in general. Considering the recent legal changes, there will be a lot of work related to this agenda since we are a university that depends on high-quality doctoral students. As a Vice-Rector for Doctoral Studies, I would like to see Prof. Michaela Rumlová (Faculty of Food and Biochemical Technology).</p>
<p>As for the Vice-Rector for R&amp;D, I would like to work with Prof. Pavel Novák (Faculty of Chemical Technology) who will receive two important tasks from me: to start cooperation with the Czech commercial sector on a larger scale and to support and motivate our research groups for more active involvement in international grant competitions. I would like Associate Professor Milan Jahoda (Faculty of Chemical Engineering) to continue as Vice-Rector for Education. In addition to the many responsibilities he already has on his shoulders, I would like him to focus on extending partnerships with secondary schools and educating future chemistry teachers for primary and secondary schools.</p>
<h5><strong>The Vice-Rector for External Relations and Communications remains…</strong></h5>
<p>I will make a partial adjustment here as well and would like to have the Communications department report directly to the Rector, as is customary at other universities. The Vice-Rector’s agenda will therefore focus exclusively on internationalization and international cooperation. The main goal will be to involve UCT Prague in one of the university alliances; we also need to be more active in Brussels when negotiating scientific and research cooperation activities. I would be very happy if Prof. Pavel Matějka (Faculty of Chemical Engineering) would fill this role. I would also like to add that I, as Rector, would like to take responsibility for the Department of Safety and Risk Prevention’s agenda, which is crucial from the point of view of eliminating risks in operating a chemistry university.</p>
<h5><strong>You have announced that you want to involve the Faculty Deans more in university management. Why?</strong></h5>
<p>Most teaching and research takes place at the Faculties, and the powers of the Deans are therefore absolutely and legally essential. Faculties de facto determine basic directions of research and instruction. As Rector, my task will be to prepare optimal conditions for the Faculties and their core activities and, to this end, to ensure for them optimal functioning of the services provided by Rector’s Office. Furthermore, the Rector must coordinate the activities of the Faculties and, if necessary, act as a mediator, must be able to convince the faculties to pursue a common goal. Beyond UCT Prague, the Rector must be able to use diplomacy to ensure that the university as a whole can develop in the right direction. This applies, for example, to raising money for infrastructure development, promoting the interests of UCT Prague in decision-making processes, and in creating strategic documents on the national level.</p>
<p>Examples from the past show that if a Rector has communicated well with the Faculty Deans, university operations were very efficient. It is not a matter of resolving trifles, but of reaching a consensus on fundamental and conceptual matters.</p>
<h5><strong>Will you have enough time to manage the Departments that report to you?</strong></h5>
<p>This will depend on how we agree to set up the levels of managerial responsibilities. Of course, it can be overwhelming to deal with too many details, but that’s why there are very capable leaders as Heads of the Rectorate Departments. These departments work well and independently. I see my role primarily in the discussion of concepts, competences, goals and their implementation. It’s definitely not my intention to micromanage them.</p>
<h5><strong>What about instruction and research. Can you still perform these activities as Rector?</strong></h5>
<p>The position of Rector is more than a full-time job. I am internally reconciled to the fact that I will largely have to give up both research and teaching. However, I will keep participating in the Academic Council for the doctoral study programs at my home Faculty, will be ready to serve on examination committees, and count with supervising one or two doctoral students.</p>
<h5><strong>As Rector, you can no longer chair the Council of Universities. Won’t UCT Prague lose its influence there?</strong></h5>
<p>I don’t think so. We are an important member of the Association of Research Universities, an active part of the community of technology universities, and we are going to be more involved in the Czech Conference of Rectors. We will still have many quality contacts and connections and will make an effort to keep and extend them. I believe that I have done enough useful work for the entire higher education community in the role of Chair of the Council of Universities and will not lose my informal influence.</p>
<h5><strong>Rector Matějka strongly supported social and cultural activities for students. Will you continue to do this?</strong></h5>
<p>Clearly. Our student associations have a good reputation, even beyond our university. For example, many people marvel at our orchestra and say that we have such a wonderful and large orchestra at a tech university. The same applies to our theatre actors in Divoch. I would also add sports activities to the list because they also belong to being a student and can equip you with a number of competencies that come useful in life, especially team sports. I myself played basketball for UCT Prague for many years, so I know what I’m talking about.</p>
<p>What concerns me is the lack of infrastructure for leisure activities. I want to think things through with the Faculty Deans and to try to accommodate students as much as possible so that they have appropriate venues to meet and rest. On the other hand, I can’t work miracles. Only the new building on Vítězné náměstí will significantly improve the recent situation.</p>
<h5><strong>Professionally, you have primarily devoted your entire career to fuels. What drew you to investigating them?</strong></h5>
<p>Fuels were only an alternative path for me in the beginning. In elementary school, I wanted to study natural sciences, i.e., botany. When I was about the high school age, my teachers told me: Well, you are not suitable for natural sciences and you should go into the humanities (laughs). I was not particularly interested in Latin or history, however. So I successfully represented my humanities-oriented high school program in the mathematics and physics competitions, which was quite intimidating for the schoolmates from the science-oriented programs. Thanks to a nice chemistry teacher, I eventually decided to go study chemistry at UCT Prague. I wanted to focus on water, but at the admissions office I was told that water technology would probably be beyond my capabilities and that I should rather consider fuels (laughs). I met great people investigating fuel and stuck with the topic. Fuels were, are, and will be extremely important to society as is their impact on the environment. As a matter of fact, I am currently involved in preparation of a national, ten-year strategic plan for the use and modelling of the optimal composition of alternative energies as a part of a 20-member cross-sectoral expert team.</p>
<h5><strong>What was it about UCT Prague that made you entwine your entire adult life with it?</strong></h5>
<p>Above all, I have enjoyed the research topics, I met there excellent instructors and colleagues. I liked that our research outcomes have direct applied implications. I’m not the type of person who is satisfied solely with theoretical outputs. Furthermore, we all know each other at UCT Prague, the environment and inter-personal relations were always nice, enabling us to communicate and work together without any problems. I must also mention our students, who give us, older colleagues, energy and who enrich us.</p>
<h5><strong>What type of student were you? A slacker or a hard worker?</strong></h5>
<p>I was definitely good at chemistry; thus, my studies didn’t overwhelm me. I didn’t have to fool around all the time, I was able to deduce a lot of things, and so I also had time to play with experiments in the lab. Eventually I graduated with the highest grades and honours. I was also very involved in extracurricular student life. All the time I felt the urge to organize and invent something so that we didn’t get bored in the dorms.</p>
<h5><strong>You mentioned that you played basketball for UCT Prague. How long?</strong></h5>
<p>I started playing right after coming to the university in 1981 and quit in around 2005. In addition to the game itself, I enjoyed the incredibly diverse team, which included assistants, students, both Associate and Full Professors. In order to win, we had to be able to cooperate and communicate on the basketball court as we went, often suppressing our egos. For me, it was a valuable school for managerial skills as well as a great way to relax.</p>
<h5><strong>How do you relieve stress and work commitments these days?</strong></h5>
<p>I like to disappear into nature where I don’t have to think about anything. I also like to go to concerts and prefer quality over genre. Even cooking is a chemical discipline, so I’m happy to get behind the stove on weekends. I’ve also been taking nature and landscape photos all my life, and many of my shots are used in bookmark designs. Thanks to this, I have a rather funny deviation: I often perceive the surrounding world as a panorama, in 1:3 or 3:1 format (laughs).</p>


The world around us is changing and we have to react

<p><strong>Alexandr Malijevský, now a full professor, joined UCT Prague in 2000 as a doctoral student. He completed his Master&#39;s degree at the Charles University Faculty of Mathematics and Physics , where he studied theoretical physics. Since 2006, he has also worked at the Institute of Chemical Processes Fundamentals  at the Czech Academy of Sciences. He conducted postdoctoral research at Imperial College London for two years  and eventually found his workplace of choice at <a href="https://gcms.labrulez.com/companies/11"><strong>UCT Prague</strong></a>, where he was appointed a full professorship at the end of 2023. The line between his personal life and his research activities is often blurred; in his free time, he likes to play chess.</strong></p>
<h5><strong>What brought you to UCT Prague from Charles University’s Faculty of Mathematics and Physics?</strong></h5>
<p>I have asked myself this question more than once, given that my research fits into physics more than chemistry. My life path started out very straight, and I inclined towards mathematics in primary school. Next came high school, where I focused on mathematics and physics, and then Charles University‘s Department of Mathematics and Physics, where I studied theoretical physics. At Charles, I became one of the many „victims“ of the beauty of probably the most elegant physical theory ever, Einstein‘s theory of general relativity, and was also charmed by the professor who lectured on this topic, Professor Bičák. I did my Master thesis with him on a topic related to the problem of the energy of a gravitational field. This research was undeniably engaging, as were my discussions with Bičák, and I always looked forward to those, even if they sometimes only happened once in a couple of months, depending on the length of his many stays abroad. We would talk about domestic and international politics, the Březin brothers, religion, music, and so on. And if there was any time left, we‘d chat a little about my calculations too. I look back fondly to those times. However, after defending my Master thesis, I wasn‘t sure if I should continue in this direction, because the theory is quite well developed. The idea that I would be able to come up with something truly new was kind of naive. That‘s when my father, who was a professor at the UCT Prague Department of Physical Chemistry, noticed my hesitation. He mentioned to me a modern theory within the statistical mechanics of fluids that seemed very promising in terms of future research possibilities. I read something about it, it piqued my curiosity, so I decided to do my doctorate at UCT Prague‘s Department of Physical Chemistry. It was a bit of a shot in the dark, but it worked out as time went on.</p>
<h5><strong>What was the hardest part of making the transition to UCT Prague?</strong></h5>
<p>I had to get used to a different environment. In short, the mentality here is different, more focused on „performances“ and a bit of PR flair (these things are not interesting to me, even today). More than once, I was criticized for „not showing up much“. Many of my colleagues did not have a problem with this. And then, the level of UCT Prague students was somewhat different, especially where mathematics was concerned, which is totally understandable. I had to adapt. For example, it took me some time to align my research within the field of food technology. After an initial misunderstanding, I understood that I should start each exercise giving colleagues a gentle mathematical introduction, and then it settled down. On the other hand, my non-chemical background and technical ineptitude sometimes showed. For example, during laboratory exercises, which I also had to lead, this was sometimes quite adventurous.</p>
<h5><strong>What was it like starting work in a completely new field?</strong></h5>
<p>At that time, no one in the Czech Republic was dealing with the aforementioned theory, the subject of my doctoral thesis, so I was not assigned a classical supervisor with focused expertise in the field. I had to read a lot at first and gain a bit more knowledge on the topic. But the hardest thing was that, at the beginning, I didn’t know what exactly to aim for, i.e. what specific issue to focus my research on. Trips abroad helped me a lot, and I always tried to absorb as much as possible during these visits. All of this, at the same time, led to the fact that my work lacked a systematic nature for quite a while. I did a lot of work yet without getting the full picture. I only started to have greater consistency in my research efforts over time.</p>
<h5><strong>Are you happy or do you regret the transition, in retrospect?</strong></h5>
<p>A person would need to live two lives, or at least parts of them, in order to be able to evaluate which of the two fundamental decisions was the right one. We don’t have this option, so we can either complain about our life choices or, on the contrary, rejoice about them in the spirit of Nietzsche’s amor fati. I have every reason to be happy. I have both scientific and pedagogical freedom here. I was never assigned to teach a class that would take me beyond my comfort zone. No one is interfering with my research. Before I left for a postdoc at Imperial College London, I was still in touch with Charles University’s Department of Mathematics and Physics, but then I definitely decided to focus on just one field and to fully devote myself to it. By the way, I have visited Charles a few times recently (for example, I gave a popularization lecture there earlier this year), and I can’t say I miss the atmosphere there.</p>
<h5><strong>How would you describe your experience at Imperial College London and what did you take away from your time there?</strong></h5>
<p>It was definitely a great experience. Very positive in many ways, because you get a glimpse of how one of the most famous universities in the world works behind the scenes. For example, the great thing was that you don‘t have to travel anywhere to meet the best scholars in your field (and not only your field!); they „come to you“. But in time you discover that all that glitters is not gold. I had my first strange experience quite early on, after I handed over an almost finished manuscript of an article to my boss (in the first weeks there, I usually spent about fifteen hours a day, including weekends, at the university). I was told I must have co-authors for a manuscript on which I worked entirely alone. With genuine surprise, I asked what the contribution of the co-authors was supposed to have been. The answer surprised me: their contribution was to the writing of the grant project from which I was funded. This is apparently a common practice, but I refused to accept this argument. The article was shelved following this discussion and published only many years later. By the way, I still don‘t understand the practice of arbitrary attribution for articles in general; I would feel awkward and uncomfortable to be attributed to a work that I hadn‘t contributed to. What if someone asks me something from that article?</p>
<p>But to return to the more positive experiences. Over time, I established the cooperation with the Mathematical Physics Group, from whom I learned a lot. This collaboration actually continues to this day.</p>
<h5><strong>What were others differences compared to our academic environment?</strong></h5>
<p>I was used to more directness. I understand academia as being a specific independent environment that should be free-spirited and healthily confrontational. But I discovered there that criticism of opinions, within seminar lectures, for example, could be taken quite offensively and as an indication of a lack of respect. The pursuit of scientific debate was sometimes mistaken for a personal attack. But I would not like to generalize too much; it could have been a completely local experience.</p>
<p>Because I still visit Imperial College regularly, I notice the developments there over the years. And I can say that I’m not always very happy, and I observe the same (delayed) trends here as well. I mean, a kind of activism that jumps on modern political issues and that sometimes stands in stark contrast to the interpretation of an academic environment as I described it above.</p>
<h5><strong>Can you introduce us to your team’s research?</strong></h5>
<p>Very generally: we deal with the description of many-particle systems. We know that matter consists of an enormous number of interacting microparticles whose motion cannot be described deterministically. However, we do not need to know the state of each individual particle to describe a given system, but we are interested in how such a system behaves collectively, i.e. as a whole. For such a description, we use the methods of statistical physics, in the language of probabilities, mean values, fluctuations, correlations, and the like. With the help of appropriate microscopic models, we can predict the macroscopic properties of the system, and this relationship between the micro- and macroworld allows us to interpret the observed phenomena. We then specifically deal with, for example, the description of the phase behaviour of systems in an extremely limited environment, which is dramatically different from our normal experience. Here, theory typically precedes experiments.</p>
<p><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/VSCHT_Zivot_je_vyborny_model_pro_sachy_Alexandr_Malijevsky_68112d8717.jpg" alt="UCT Prague: Alexandr Malijevský."/></p>
<h5><strong>How is your work useful for society and what real applications does it have?</strong></h5>
<p>I am engaged in basic research, the primary motivation of which is a deeper understanding of natural laws. As for its technological application, that is a job for our engineering colleagues, for whom, it can be said, we are preparing a good terrain. Nevertheless, it could be said that our research does have the potential to be applied in modern nanotechnology.</p>
<p>Concerning my teaching, I see my primary role as motivating enthusiastic students who don’t just want a degree, but who genuinely want to pursue science and who have the capacity for this.</p>
<h5><strong>What classes do you teach?</strong></h5>
<p>I currently teach Mathematical Methods for Physical Chemistry and Advanced Methods of Mathematical Methods for Physical Chemistry, Statistical Thermodynamics, and an Introduction to the Modern Theory of Phase Transitions. These are courses for Master’s and doctoral levels students.</p>
<h5><strong>Which of them are popular among students, and which courses are rather challenging?</strong></h5>
<p>Challenging for me or for students? For me, the beginnings of lectures are the most challenging, regardless of what course it is. You are fully concentrated on solving a problem, but then you have to interrupt it and refocus on something completely different. This eventually engulfs me, so I completely refocus on the lecture and try to do my best. I usually end up with a sweaty shirt and strained vocal cords. They say that I speak quite loudly, but at least no one falls asleep. As for feedback, it depends more on the students than the specific class. In any case, whenever a student mentions your lecture in a favourable manner, it gives you satisfaction.</p>
<h5><strong>What was your primary motivation to become a professor?</strong></h5>
<p>The title of professor is (in addition to DSc.) the highest academic rank. In order to fulfil its prerequisites, you need to conduct long-term pedagogical and scientific work. And you do it because you enjoy it and you see the point of it. All the other benefits of this title, including promotion to a higher pay grade, may be nice, but for me they are not motivating enough. As for social prestige, if you look around and see who is also a full professor (including, for example, candidates for the high political appointments and the circumstances they obtained their titles), you start having some doubts about that prestige. What I am happy about, however, is a certain sense of freedom that comes from knowing that I no longer have to prove to anyone that my work is meaningful and that I am doing it well.</p>
<h5><strong>How about your personal life, what do you like to do in your free time?</strong></h5>
<p>The ideal state is for me is actually when I have no personal life. When the problem I’m working on becomes so engrossing that it wakes me up at night, and in the morning, when I can’t wait to continue solving it. Fortunately, this does not happen very often; it would not even be sustainable in the long term, to state it in modern terminology. Thus all I usually do in my free time is living normally. Or normally…I used to play chess a lot during my studies, now I am returning to it, very slowly and within my severely limited schedule. What fascinates me about chess is its parallel with real life: in both life and in chess, you are looking for (or at least you should be looking for) the optimal moves, regardless of the position you are in, trying to predict the consequences of your moves as far as possible. However, it’s often the case that there is objectively no best move; so you choose the one that is at hand, which causes the complexity on both playing fields. As a theorist, I can responsibly declare: life is an excellent model for chess.</p>


Life is an excellent model for chess

<p><strong>Although plastics don’t have the best reputation at present, they have fascinating properties. Modern society cannot make do without them. We all use them, and we’re not going to stop using plastics just like that. Why? The answer to this question follows in this interview with Professor Jan Merna, head of <a href="https://lcms.labrulez.com/companies/11">UCT Prague</a>’s Department of Polymers. Merna also discusses trends in polymer research, new approaches to 3D printing, and why biodegradable polymers are not the game changer they might seem to be at first glance.</strong></p>
<h5><strong>People commonly associate polymers with plastics, which do not have the best reputation with some in the general public. Why did you choose to study polymers in your professional life?</strong></h5>
<p>I became interested in polymers as far back as high school because they are cutting-edge materials. The study of polymers is actually the youngest branch of chemistry, next to the organic and inorganic branches. Just last year marked 100 years since chemists gained an understanding of the structure of polymers. There was hot discussion in the early days of the field. There were no polymer chemists, so a couple of organic chemists came up with the initial idea to create a specialty in this area. Hermann Staudinger, who demonstrated that polymers are composed of high molar mass macromolecules, had to struggle for a long time against the entire chemistry community at the time to show that polymers are not clusters of small molecules but are huge macromolecules. Most renowned chemists thought that such large molecules could not be stable and must be clusters. They were mistaken, though Staudinger waited over 30 years after his initial discoveries for the Nobel Prize.</p>
<p>What I like about polymers and modern materials is that they have a range of different applications and that the topic itself is complex. In organic chemistry, we often synthesize a new substance, describe it, and that’s more or less the end of the process. But for polymer chemists, the polymer synthesis is often just the beginning of research work, because we are interested in the material properties of a synthesized substance and investigating what a substance might be good for in real life. Lately, we are also thinking more about end-of-life for materials; how to deal with polymer waste.</p>
<p><strong>You mean recycling?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, this is a very important topic. We in Europe collect most of our plastic waste and not much of it ends up in the environment, but the problem arises in other parts of the world where there is poor waste management. If plastics get into nature, one of the properties of polymers is that they are very resistant to degradation and can survive in the environment for hundreds of years before disintegrating.</p>
<p>Actually, the optimal solution would be to develop better systems for collecting and reusing plastic waste. This presumes careful sorting into individual types of plastic, because if we don’t sort properly, just mix different kinds of plastics together, melt them, and make new products, the resultant outputs won’t have good properties. However, proper sorting is not only difficult, but it is also expensive. Plastic recycling also can’t be performed on an infinite loop, because repeated melting degrades the polymers involved and there is a limited number of cycles before the polymers become unusable. That’s why current research is focusing on finding alternative to mechanical recycling.</p>
<p><strong>Which is?</strong></p>
<p>The crucial challenge for our field is finding an economical and energetically reasonable way how to get to monomers, which are the primary raw materials from which virgin polymer can also be produced. So far, there are solutions for selected polymers, e.g. polyethylene terephthalate or polymethyl methacrylate (that is, plexiglass), but the vast majority of these are polymers that are not used broadly. We would need to find viable and cheap solutions for polyethylene and polypropylene. Unfortunately, there is no viable cleavage site in the structures of polyethylene and polypropylene, and current technologies such as pyrolysis are not very selective.</p>
<p>Another research direction is the quest for new monomers for the production of polymers that could then be easily degraded, i.e. recycled chemically. The problem, however, is that since the 1970s, no new polymers have gained ground in the marketplace, mostly for economic reasons. We will see if a requirement for good degradability would hearken change and if these kinds of new polymers might have competitive properties in terms of strength, ductility, processing stability, and so on.</p>
<p><strong>Does plastic waste in nature, despite being ugly, have other problems?</strong></p>
<p>In general, polymers are non-toxic inert substances and are biologically tolerated. They do not harm us on their own and are not toxic. Body implants are made from polymers; tissue substitutes are made from silicone. We store blood for transfusions in PVC bags softened with phthalates. What we don’t know for sure is whether polymers cause any health risks in the form of small particles.</p>
<p><strong>For example?</strong></p>
<p>There is an existing hypothesis that microplastics can act as carriers of pathogens, but this risk exists for all microparticles in the environment. We have been living with synthetic plastics for at least 70 years, so microplastics in the environment are not a recent phenomenon. In the past, thought, polymer products were not stabilized as well as they are now. They used to decompose over shorter intervals, and so-called secondary microplastics were formed more easily (but from far fewer plastics were produced). The first mention of finding microplastics in oceans dates back to the 1970s, but this was not a fashionable topic of investigation back then. Due to plastic non-toxicity, the WHO does not recommended monitoring microplastics in water. Water purification technologies, however, can be highly effective in removing any particles, including microplastics.</p>
<p><strong>What do you think about the fact that most plastics collected in yellow recycling bins across the Czech Republic end up in incinerators?</strong></p>
<p>Fine by me. From a chemist’s point of view, this is definitely a better scenario than being out in the environment or in a landfill. Of course, I’m talking about plastics, which are difficult to recycle. Most polymers are made from oil, and human being burn 90% of oil straight away. So if plastics could serve as an intermediate material product and we could get part of the energy we invested in production back, why not? The exhaust fumes from incineration of most common polymers are not toxic and are similar to those of burning gasoline, i.e. made of carbon dioxide and water.</p>
<p><strong>One of current research trends is the production of biodegradable polymers.</strong></p>
<p>Yes, but even in this case, one must note that even if a polymer breaks down into something harmless in nature after some time, we lose all the energy we had put into its production.</p>
<p>I believe that for biodegradable polymers, a much better scenario for the end of a product’s life cycle would be to collect and recycle them, or, if recycling’s not possible, to incinerate them. For polymers from renewable sources, this would achieve a neutral carbon balance. If we can collect plastic waste, it doesn’t matter if it’s biodegradable or very stable since we still can transform it into something.</p>
<p><img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/VSCHT_Ze_cast_plastu_konci_ve_spalovnach_Za_me_v_poradku_Jan_Merna_76e58abc1f.jpg" alt="UCT Prague: Jan Merna."/></p>
<p><strong>Are there any other hot topics for polymer researchers?</strong></p>
<p>Right now, new 3D printing technologies that naturally lend themselves well to small-scale production are very hot. Specifically, I am referring to reactive 3D printing, where polymerization takes place directly during production (printing), where the resulting product has significantly better properties than what’s possible using classic 3D printing technology from polymer strings. We are investigating this at UCT Prague as well.</p>
<p><strong>How do you polymerize during the printing process?</strong></p>
<p>We use light, for example. We have a bowl with a transparent bottom, pour a monomer into it, and the light where it passes through starts the polymerization process. Then we move the product a little higher and the monomer will again flow under the product under development, and so on, until a completely compact, homogeneous product is created.</p>
<p><strong>Can you also produce polymers that can react to external stimuli?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, this is also an attractive direction for research. For example, we have polymers which macromolecules, when heated, change shape and, for example, pack into a tighter conformation. Macroscopically, this manifests itself in the form of shrinkage that we can use as a mechanical element, a trigger or a valve. The stimuli can be different: ​​temperature, pH, or the presence of a specific chemical. There’s the potential for use in detectors or sensors.</p>
<p><strong>Your department is historically connected to the topic of hydrogels. Is there still room for development in this direction?</strong></p>
<p>Hydrogels belong to the group of materials that are attractive because they can be used in medical applications. Due to the softness and pliability of hydrogels, they are also used as substitutes for human soft tissue, beside traditional use as contact lenses developed by Otto Wichterle. Soft tissues are composed of natural protein macromolecules, i.e. they are also polymers, just perfectly produced by nature.</p>
<p><strong>You are particularly interested in research of catalytic polymerizations. What is that?</strong></p>
<p>You’re referring to coordination polymerization, but we ourselves also use the term “catalytic polymerization” for better comprehension. For most polymerizations, we need a substance that forces a monomer to transform into a polymer. In catalytic polymerizations, the agent that forces this transformation is the catalyst. We currently use such processes to produce the majority of polyethylene and polypropylene that together comprise the majority of plastics. The basic procedure has been around for decades but was initially unviable. As catalysts gradually developed, production increased, and today, these basic polymers are produced so well and so efficiently in terms of pricing and properties that they are replacing other polymers used in traditional applications.</p>
<p><strong>Can you give us an example?</strong></p>
<p>For the production of foils, e.g. for shopping bags, softened polyvinyl chloride was used most often in the past. Polyethylene is now used because not only is it cheaper, but its production is also more ecological. Modification of polyethylene and polypropylene properties for other application is definitely still a promising direction of research.</p>
<p>In academic research, the search for even more active catalysts is not our greatest concern because we can produce a lot of polymers cheaply enough. Instead, current research is directed towards the possibilities of depolymerization and investigating whether we will be able to selectively split a polymer into pieces and turn it into new material. In our research group, we focus on chemical modifications of polyethylene and we use one specific type of catalyst, the so-called chain walking catalysts. In the case of classic industrial catalysts, a monomer molecule sticks to the end of a growing macromolecule, and this is how the chain lengthens linearly. The catalysts we use are extraordinary in that they can jump back and forth along a polymer chain and start its growth again from a given part of the chain. The result is a macromolecule that is not “straight” but highly branched, and this completely changes its properties.</p>
<p><strong>How?</strong></p>
<p>For example, polyethylene and polypropylene are typical plastics and are hard materials, but if we branch them, we can make them into materials that have the same properties as rubber. Our next endeavour is to build polar groups into polyethylene chains. This is one of the biggest challenges in current catalysis. Fortunately, our catalysts are toleranteven to polar substrates, and this lets us to prepare special polar-non-polar macromolecules from which polymer nanoreactors can be constructed, to name one example. This means we are moving from commodity materials to chemical specialties.</p>
<p><strong>Does your research group currently collaborate with commercial partners?</strong></p>
<p>We have collaborated with Synthos for a long time. Most recently, as part of a two-year project, we jointly developed a new type of elastomer not based on butadiene polymers (normally used to make rubber) but on cheaper polymers based on ethylene.</p>
<p><strong>You said that the vast majority of polymers are made from petroleum. How much plastic is produced from renewable raw materials?</strong></p>
<p>Less than 1%, and the production costs are usually higher, so an increase in production is not very rapid. This is nicely described in the article “How green are green plastics?” To make a long story short, we use more energy to make environmentally degradable polymers than to make synthetic polymers. Which may not be problematic in principle, as long as fossil fuel energy isn’t required. So if we get to a future scenario in which non-fossil fuel energy sources are not a problem for us, this is one of possible path forward. We are still far from this ideal, however.</p>
<p>For the future, it should just be necessary to shift our point of view about options. In our group, we have investigated the use of carbon dioxide as a starting raw material for preparing polymers, for example. We overcame CO2’s low reactivity by adding a second, more reactive monomer and a suitable catalyst. The result was polycarbonates, which are otherwise produced from highly toxic phosgene. This kind of chemistry is not only more sustainable, but it can improve safety. So far, however, catalysts are not effective enough for industrial scale production, but this also used to be the for the aforementioned ethene polymerization catalysts in the beginning of their development.</p>
<p><strong>You have been head of the Department of Polymers for over two years. Where do you want to lead the department?</strong></p>
<p>I have no desire to tell people what to do. On the contrary, I would like them to be as independent as possible in their research. As a leader, what I can and want to influence is what kind of people will work here. We are currently witnessing a generational transition. Half of my colleagues are at an age when they wouldn’t have to show up tomorrow if they didn’t want to. Fortunately, they are kind-hearted, helping us here and passing on their experience to younger colleagues. It’s up to me to find us quality replacements for the future.</p>
<p>At first, I was sceptical that this could be possible, because we all know how basic table salaries are set here at UCT Prague. How to tell a potential candidate from abroad that their salary will be only higher if they find grant funding? Just 100 km away from Prague, candidates can get an adequate guaranteed salary (several times higher than here) for the same work. The number of students studying in materials programs is not large enough to ensure a big enough pool of doctoral students to meet our near-term needs for qualified research staff.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, we managed to recruit one former graduate who had completed several postdoctoral stays abroad, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA) facilitated his return. A young Ukrainian colleague also found employment with us via a similar MSCA grant for Ukrainian scientists. A year ago, in cooperation with the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the CAS (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; IOCB), we managed to recruit a married couple of chemists who had previously been at other top research groups. In Prague, they both got the opportunity to start their own independent careers, Dr. Gonsales at UCT Prague and her husband at IOCB. Working together as institutions, we try to provide them with excellent research facilities. Last but not least, I am pleased with the current cohort of young researchers who are slowly evolving from their junior status and are starting to succeed in getting their own grant-funded projects. The situation is therefore developing more optimistically than I had initially thought was possible.</p>


That some plastic ends up in incinerators? Fine with me.

<p><strong>Ions produced in electrospray are the key to modern mass spectrometry, but their behaviour still contains many unknowns. A new project supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) focuses on a detailed study of these ions and their potential use beyond analytical chemistry (for example, for innovative surface modifications). What new technologies might this research lead to and how will the research team deal with unexpected challenges?</strong></p><h4><strong>How would you describe your project to a layperson in a few sentences? Why it is important?</strong></h4><p>Our project studies the formation and behaviour of ions in the gas phase that are created by so-called electrospray, a device invented more than a hundred years ago in Minnesota by physicist John Zeleny, who had Czech parents. Electrospray has found many applications and was even awarded the Nobel Prize for its use as an ion source for mass spectrometry. We in the molecular mass spectrometry group are trying to study the behaviour and properties of ions created in this way and are developing techniques that will enable their use for original surface modifications. This is why our project is called IonSurf (Ions and Surfaces).</p><h4><strong>What inspired you to choose this topic? Was it a specific challenge you wanted to address, or a kind of natural continuation of your previous work?</strong></h4><p>For me, it is very much a return to the beginning of my career twenty years ago and to the problems I had already solved as a doctoral student at the University of Washington in Seattle. I spent a large part of my life abroad in corporate research. Now, after returning to academia, I was interested in what unsolved problems I could discover in my original field after so many years. I was surprised on all sides, by what various smart people have done in my field during these two decades, and conversely, by the things that no one has investigated yet or been able to solve.</p><h4><strong>What is the main goal of your research?</strong></h4><p>To improve our ability to work with ions in the gas phase and find applications for them outside mass spectrometry as well. We want to try to improve the efficiency of working with electrospray, which should lead to better detection limits in mass spectrometry. We are also trying to develop methods for modifying surfaces with desolvation-mediated protein ions. That is, to be able to give surfaces protein properties that cannot be achieved by immobilization using classical chemistry in solution. But we are analytical chemists, so we always have in mind how we could use this for various new forms of detection.</p><h4><strong>What do you think captured the selection committee’s attention the most?</strong></h4><p>The international reviewers appreciated the difficulty and novelty of the proposed research. On the other hand, it is fair to say that, given that GACR has been underfunded for a long time, receiving a grant is a bit of a lottery. None of us who have recently been successful with grants should feel as if we are better scientists than others who unfortunately did not get funded. The chance factor is simply too big with GACR. I think I was just lucky to some extent.</p><h4><strong>Will the project lead to any specific applications or technologies?</strong></h4><p>We have several applications in the project that are perhaps more “fiction” than “science”. One of them is, for example, the immobilization of a relatively newly described enzyme, hydrogenase Huc, which is able to obtain electrons from hydrogen gas, onto suitably selected nanomaterials and the creation of a molecular fuel cell.</p><h4><strong>What makes your project unique?</strong></h4><p>I wouldn’t dare to say that it is more unique than other projects, but its combination of analytical and materials chemistry makes it quite interesting.</p><h4><strong>With whom are you collaborating on the project?</strong></h4><p>The project is primarily focused on collaboration with a Taiwanese colleague who is the head of the Department of Physics at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan and is working on similar topics. We plan to obtain some nanomaterials from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot and have great support from colleagues at Biocev in Vestek, especially in terms of protein production and expertise in protein chemistry. The Military Heath Institute in Prague is interested in one aspect of the technology, namely the detection array for particularly dangerous toxins.</p><h4><strong>What obstacles or challenges do you anticipate during the project? Do you already have strategies for overcoming them?</strong></h4><p>It is likely that the experiments will not work out as I originally expected. So, everything will be a challenge. But you have to ask yourself questions that you don’t know the answer to in advance; otherwise, it’s not research. You can’t avoid hard problems. I once worked at a Californian start-up where an institutional investor forced us to come to market with a device that was not finished. Even though we were rewarded well with financial bonuses for meeting the deadline, I still feel bad about it. It is the same with basic research. It makes no sense to do easy things and then send the results to some predatory journal and pretend that’s it. The best strategy for overcoming obstacles is a small, effective team comprised of intelligent collaborators. I have a very smart and capable colleague—we supervise Master and Bachelor students in our lab together—and I hope to add a few doctoral students soon.</p><h4><strong>What brings you the most joy in working on this project?</strong></h4><p>The opportunity to “play with boxes”, as someone once jokingly but truthfully defined work in the field of chemical instrumentation. Simply the freedom to do chemistry.</p><h4><strong>What theoretically should happen with your research after the project is completed?</strong></h4><p>I hope that thanks to this grant, three talented students will be able to complete their doctoral studies in our laboratory. Passing on the maximum possible part of the experience is both a big challenge for me and a goal in itself. All my colleagues are significantly younger than me, and I think they would like it if we managed to put something into practical application, perhaps in the form of a spin-off. This would be a suitable goal and continuation of our research. Unfortunately, this is still not easy in the Czech Republic, even when things are already working in the laboratory. We are still very far from that reality. So I will let myself be surprised and am ready for anything. <strong>As Bill Murray says in the movie Aloha:</strong> “<i>The future isn’t just something that happens. It’s a brutal force, with a great sense of humour, that’ll steamroll you if you’re not watching</i>.”</p>

How to control ions? Dr. Michael Volný’s Czech Science Foundation project investigates new possibilities in mass spectrometry

<p><strong>Cell-penetrating peptides may hold the key to targeted drug delivery, yet the mechanisms behind their passage through cell membranes remain unclear. A new project led by Dr. Mario Vazdar and supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) aims to uncover the role of the unusual aggregation behavior of arginine-rich peptides in aqueous environments. By combining simulations and experiments, the research seeks to shed light on a fundamental mechanism of cellular biochemistry.</strong></p><h5><strong>Could you describe your project to a layperson in a few sentences? Why is it important?</strong></h5><p>Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs), often rich in arginine amino acids, are used in medicine to deliver drugs in the cell. Since cells are protected by a membrane that does not allow facile transport to their interior, it is a challenge to understand how these peptides are translocated. We are trying to comprehend that using simulations and experiments.</p><h5><strong>What inspired you to choose this topic? Was it a specific challenge you wanted to address, or a kind of natural continuation of your previous work?</strong></h5><p>The CPPs that we are studying contain arginine amino acids. Despite the positive charge between them, they are positively charged but have shown a unique ability to self-aggregate in water. This unique ability is due to the arginine side chain, which contains guanidinium (Gdm) cation with similar self-aggregation properties, which we have studied for years. In turn, we are convinced that the unusual aggregation properties of CPPs are connected to their cell translocation ability, but the exact details of this process are unknown.</p><h5><strong>What is the main goal of your research?</strong></h5><p>The main goal of the research is to understand the effect of aggregation properties of CPPs on their cell translocation ability. To understand this, we apply a combination of molecular dynamics simulation techniques with state-of-the-art fluorescence methods at our partner institution, which performs experiments on model cellular systems.</p><h5><strong>What do you think captured the selection committee’s attention the most?</strong></h5><p>I think that the interdisciplinary and synergistic effect arising from a collaboration between the simulation and experimental groups, combined with a rigorous approach to the problem, was the key factor in obtaining the grant.</p><h5><strong>Will the project lead to any specific applications or technologies?</strong></h5><p>Since this project is fundamental in nature and related to understanding the processes at the molecular level, it is challenging to extrapolate immediately whether any specific applications will result from it in the short term. However, understanding the mechanism of cell translocation has been a goal in biology and medicine for decades. Hopefully, the knowledge gained during this period will lead to more applied discoveries in the near future.</p><h5><strong>What makes your project unique?</strong></h5><p>This project is unique in the synergistic and complementary approach between simulations and experiments. Simulations are often a simplistic version of experiments, which include many external factors that are often not included in simulations, leading to wrong interpretations. Therefore, we aim to perform simulations more realistically by including those external factors. In other words, we would like to simulate as closely as possible what our experimental colleagues are measuring, i.e., “to speak the same language,” and better understand the results we will obtain.</p><h5><strong>With whom are you collaborating on the project?</strong></h5><p>Our co-PIs in the project are the group led by Doc. Radek Šachl, at the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry in Prague. They are world-recognized experts in fluorescence measurements in model biological membranes.</p><h5><strong>What obstacles or challenges do you anticipate during the project? Do you already have strategies for overcoming them?</strong></h5><p>All creditable science is intimately connected to a certain amount of risk. Moreover, we believe that the risk associated with science itself is acceptable and desirable since it frequently leads to unexpected but often very valuable results. In our case, we assessed the risks that can arise from simulations, which may not be powerful enough to predict experimental outcomes. On the other hand, experimental work with cellular models is also very sensitive due to many external factors, which can influence the results. However, we tried to make a convincing contingency plan to provide us with alternative ways to proceed if problems occur.</p><h5><strong>What brings you the most joy in working on this project?</strong></h5><p>My greatest joy is the involvement of students in the project. I would like to transfer my knowledge on the subject, hopefully inspiring and motivating them to continue with their own ideas in the future. Also, collaboration with experimental partners and discovering something new and unknown is what the scientist's job should be about.</p><h5><strong>What theoretically should happen with your research after the project is completed?</strong></h5><p>As previously mentioned, it is ambitious to state that the results obtained in the project will result in immediate application. However, I believe that during these three years, we will learn enough to continue the research with more realistic cellular models. At that time, we hope to understand the molecular behavior of cellular translocation, which is a powerful asset that should lead to more applicable scientific discoveries.</p>

How to get inside a cell? Dr. Mario Vazdar’s project explores arginine behaviour

<p><strong>How can we replace scarce lithium in batteries? A project led by Dr. Tomáš Hartman and supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) is seeking answers in 2D materials based on silicon and germanium. These more affordable and widely available elements could pave the way for next-generation batteries and support a more sustainable energy future.</strong></p><h5><strong>How would you describe your project to a layperson in a few sentences? Why is it important?</strong></h5><p>The aim of this project is to examine new low-dimensional (2D) materials based on silicon and germanium, both of which are remotely similar to (already notorious) graphene. These materials exhibit a number of unique properties such as large surface areas—and, in terms of silicon, abundance and low cost—which suggests their hidden potential for energy storage purposes. They could also make it possible to conveniently use other, more accessible metals in hypothetical batteries built upon the aforementioned 2D materials as an alternative to lithium (for example, calcium or magnesium). Because of this, new knowledge about energy storage/batteries could be gained as an outcome of this project.</p><h5><strong>What inspired you to choose this topic? Was it a specific challenge you wanted to address, or a kind of natural continuation of your previous work?</strong></h5><p>To tell you the truth, I started working on energy storage in batteries a few years ago. It is an area with quite interesting real-world potential for application, especially during the “Green Deal”.</p><h5><strong>What is the main goal of your research?</strong></h5><p>Our goal is to examine nanomaterials based on silicon and germanium with an emphasis on their ability to interact with calcium or magnesium ions and to investigate the potential these nanomaterials might have as active materials for storing electrical energy.</p><h5><strong>What do you think captured the selection committee’s attention the most?</strong></h5><p>I would not like to speculate here, but I think it is mainly a combination of two relatively hot topics in R&amp;D right now: 2D materials (this particular class of 2D materials has not been explored much) and their subsequent application for energy storage purposes using ions from other metals than lithium.</p><h5><strong>Will the project lead to any specific applications or technologies?</strong></h5><p>The project is focused mostly on basic nanomaterials for batteries research, but of course, if potential applications emerge from our endeavour, we would be pleased.</p><h5><strong>What makes your project unique?</strong></h5><p>I think that the attractiveness of the project lies mainly in the idea of not using lithium, which has severely limited sources, unlike calcium or magnesium, which can also be considered as much safer substitutes.</p><h5><strong>With whom are you collaborating on the project?</strong></h5><p>The research team is composed mainly of colleagues and students from UCT Prague’s Department of Inorganic Chemistry.</p><h5><strong>What obstacles or challenges do you anticipate during the project? Do you already have strategies for overcoming them?</strong></h5><p>More specifically, the attractiveness of lithium in current batteries lies mainly in its potential, size, and its mobility. These properties are difficult to match with ions from alternative metals, but by choosing the right conditions or a suitable cell design, we might overcome these obstacles.</p><h5><strong>What brings you the most joy in working on this project?</strong></h5><p>Personally, I am very glad about the fact that on the second attempt, I succeeded in retooling my proposal to please the reviewers.</p><h5><strong>What, theoretically should happen with your research after the project is completed?</strong></h5><p>The most likely next step is further research, eventually optimization of findings for practical use. After all, laboratory work, especially fundamental research, is a small first step towards practical use.</p>

GAČR project by Dr. Tomáš Hartman explores new materials for the batteries of the future

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