Archive of news

UCT Prague successful in the prestigeous MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship call

Two new holders of the prestigious EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA PF) will join UCT Prague. These grants enable talented postdocs to implement their own excellent research project and boost their career development.

Dr. Emilia Jakubowska from Poznań University of Medical Sciences received an exceptional 100% evaluation score for her project "Advanced manufacturing of drug substances by co-processing with excipients through heteronucleation in a milifluidic device (ManCoProc)". Supervised by prof. František Štěpánek, the fellowship will be implemented at the Department of Chemical Engineering during 19 months, incl. 3 months of "non-academic placement" at Zentiva.

Dr. Yirong Zhao succeeded with her two-year project "Developing high-energy tellurium/selenium redox-amphoteric conversion cathode chemistry for aqueous aluminum batteries (TSRA)". After completing her current postdoc at the Technische Universität Dresden, she will join the group of prof. Zdeněk Sofer at the Department of Inorganic Chemistry.

Another 14 projects achieved sufficient evaluation score to obtain synergic funding from the OP JAK programme, for which the Project Center is preparing a joint application (joint project Chemfells VII). In total, 16 of the 25 submitted proposals are thus eligible for funding from one of the available sources, same as in the 2022 call.

UCT Prague thus confirmed the success of previous years and once again ranked among the most successful Czech institutions. Out of the total number of 8039 submitted projects, 1249 will be funded, 12 of them to the Czech Republic institutions. Currently, 5 MSCA PF projects are implemented at UCT Prague (incl. 2 from a specific call for Ukrainian researchers) and 11 MSCA PF projects financed by OP JAK (Chemfells V and VI projects).

• Results MSCA PF 2023:

From November 6 to 9, 2023, the traditional CHISA chemical-engineering conference took place in the Conference Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic at the castle in Třešť. The program offered interesting plenary and student lectures and poster presentations. In the competition for the best student contribution, third place went to Laura Bábanová from our faculty, who developed her work as part of an Erasmus stay at the Istituto per la Tecnologia delle Membrane (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) in Italy. She is a student at the Department of Chemical Engineering and is now working on her diploma thesis under the supervision of doc. Jitka Čejková and Prof. Karel Friess. Her work dealt with functionalized polymer membranes for pesticide degradation. Congratulations and thank you for representing our university at this year's prestigious CHISA 2023 conference.

Many congratulations to our MSc student Martin Roudný, who won the 2023 national academic championships in orienteering in both the Middle distance (6000 m) and in Sprint (3600 m). The championships took place in Olomouc as part of the 2023 Czech Academic Games and Martin won from a field of more than 50 competitors. Many congratulations for this outstanding achievement, and huge respect for being able to combine top-level athletic performance with Chemical Engineering studies!

Congratulations  to the team of Vojtěch Klimša, Gabriela Ruphuy Chan, Ondřej Kašpar and František Štěpánek for the European patent entitled:: DEVICE FOR CONTINUOUS SPRAY DRYING WITH VARIABLE INLET COMPOSITION, METHOD FOR CONTINUOUS PRODUCTION OF MULTI-COMPONENT POWDERS BY SPRAY DRYING AND USE.

Recent publication titled “Computational prodrug design methodology for liposome formulability enhancement of small-molecule APIs” has been featured on the cover page of Molecular Pharmaceutics. The paper, authored by Martin Balouch and František Štěpánek in cooperation with Kateřina Storchmannová and Karel Berka from Palacký University Olomouc and kindly supported by The Parc, reports on a new computational strategy for the design of prodrugs in order to modify their permeation rate across lipid bilayers. This is important both for poorly permeating substances to improve their bioavailability, and for very rapidly permeating substances to enable their formulation into liposomes.

This year, the only representative of VŠCHT Prague succeeded in the prestigious JUNIOR STAR GAČR competition. Vít Svoboda, who is joining the Department of Physical Chemistry after years abroad, will tackle the project Study of chiral dynamics on femtosecond time scales.

A graduate of our university continued his doctoral studies at the ETH in Zurich. He subsequently worked at the Max Born Institute in Berlin and is currently completing a postdoc in Colorado, USA.

The JUNIOR STAR grants are intended for excellent  scientists within 8 years of obtaining the Ph.D. title, who have already published in prestigious international journals and have significant experience abroad. Thanks to a five-year project with the possibility of drawing up to CZK 25 million, they get the opportunity to become scientifically independent and possibly even establish their own research group, which can bring new research topics to Czech science.

The Laboratory of Molecular Electronics and Smart Materials of the Department of Computing and Control Engineering, UCT Prague in cooperation with Tanta University and Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology has obtained an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project. The received funds will enable the staff and students of all institutions to conduct experiments in the laboratories of their foreign partners as a part of long-term study and work internships. This three-year project builds on the previous successful cooperation between UCT Prague and Tanta University in the field of materials based on conducting polymers for the catalysis and degradation of toxic substances in wastewater treatment.

The Laboratory of Molecular Electronics and Smart Materials will work with both Egyptian universities on key topics for solving current Egypt’s environmental problems - polluted air and surface water. The aim of the cooperation is to develop new materials and equipment that will enable rapid detection, absorption or decomposition of pollutants.

The project was also created thanks to the very good work of the employees of the Department of International Relations of UCT Prague.

On Wednesday, December 11, 2019, at Prague Castle, the President of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman, appointed Professor Pavel Matějka Rector of the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague.

Professor Matějka will become leader of the university on January 1, 2020, with a four-year term of office.

Joining Professor Matějka at the event were Radek Cibulka, Chair of the UCT Prague Academic Senate, and outgoing Rector, Karel Melzoch.

Prof. Dr. RNDr. Pavel MATĚJKA studied physical chemistry at the Faculty of Science, Charles University, joining UCT Prague in 1993. In 2003, he became associate professor and since 2008 he has been a full UCT Prague professor. From 2010 to 2013, he was Vice-Dean for External Relations at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering. Since 2013, he has been Head of the Department of Physical Chemistry. In 2016, he became UCT Prague‘s Vice-Rector for External Relations and Communication. He is interested in the development of vibrational spectroscopy techniques using nanoparticles and nanostructures, resulting in approximately 150 publications in high-quality journals, more than 2,100 citations (without self-citations), and h-index 23.

The University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague (UCT Prague) is a natural hub for top-class education and research in the field of chemistry in the Czech Republic. It is one of the largest Czech educational and research institutions focused on technical chemistry, chemical and biochemical technologies, material and chemical engineering, food sciences and the environment. There are over 4,000 students studying at the university, with an extraordinary proportion of doctoral students (on average, 700). Some of the educational programmes are unique and crucial for the future of the entire Czech Republic. UCT Prague cooperates with more than 100 academic institutions mainly in Europe, but also in the USA, Canada, Japan, Vietnam, and beyond.

Photography: fotoarchiv KPR, Hana Brožková

Dear colleagues, academia members of FCE,

we would like to announce the two candidates for the dean elections of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, UCT Prague:

• Dr. RNDr. Pavel Matějka
• Ing. Michal Přibyl, Ph.D.

The Academic senate of FCE has already asked the candidates a set of questions. The answers of both professors together with their short resumes are available HERE

On Friday the 14^th of December 2018 at 1 PM in the AII lecture hall there will be a public presentation of both candidates in Czech language. The candidates will present their visions and will answer further questions of the academia members.

Questions can be asked either directly during the presentation or in advance through a form here https://goo.gl/forms/51eFrArm6i8g1Ji82

The election will take place on the 17^th of December and the new dean’s mandate will start on the 1^st of February 2019.

Kind regards,
the election committee

Dr. Ing. Pavel Vrbka (chair); vrbkap@vscht.cz

Ing. Martin Člupek, Ph.D.; clupekm@vscht.cz

Ing. Marek Šoltys; soltysa@vscht.cz

Editor's Choice: Paul Cremer

Associate Editor Paul Cremer highlights the article of Jan Heyda et al. “Guanidinium can both Cause and Prevent the Hydrophobic Collapse of Biomacromolecules“, an open access article published under an ACS AuthorChoice License:

“Guanidinium salts are widely used as protein denaturants. In this work, we showed that their influence on biomacromolecules depended strongly upon the identity of the specific anion with which the guanidinium cation was paired. This led to very rich chemistry.

For example, low concentrations of GndSCN helped to stabilize the collapsed state of the macromolecule despite the fact that higher concentrations of the same salt served as a powerful denaturant. Moreover, Gnd2SO4 worked as a stabilizer of protein structure, but for very different mechanistic reasons than low concentrations of GndSCN.

This work highlights the strong interplay of thermodynamics, spectroscopy, and theory that is currently employed to unravel challenging mechanistic problems in modern biophysical chemistry.”

See more here

The development department of ZENTIVA is proud to announce that Tereza Boleslavská, as the first Zentiva student, has just started two-month training at the Trinity College in Dublin within the frame of ORBIS (Open Research Biopharmaceutical Internships Support) program sponsored by 2.3 mio EUR grant from European Commission (HORIZON 2020). The aim of ORBIS is to create a bridge between academic and industrial scientists in order to develop new efficient methodologies in pharmaceutical RD.  Zentiva will keep sending its best students and employees to study in the best European academic institutions. At the same time our academic partners will spend period of research work in Zentiva laboratories having the opportunity not only interact with our scientific staff but to gain experience from the pharmaceutical business and manufacturing as well.

ATHENS interdisciplinary course on “DIGITAL SIGNAL AND IMAGE PROCESSING WITH APPLICATIONS”  organized by Department of Computing and Control Engineering, UCT Prague, took place on November 14-18, 2016. All its participants from 7 countries successfully presented their research topics during the final colloquium.

2nd place - Ondřej Rychecký: Cultivation of spheroids in liquid marbles (supervisor Jitka Čejková), Department of Chemical Engineering

3rd place - Petr Číhal: Sorption and diffusion of organic compounds in CTA-based polymeric blends (supervisor Ondřej Vopička), Department of Physical Chemistry

Laboratory of Inorganic Materials, a joint workplace of the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague and the IRSM ASCR, v.v.i., was awarded a two-year contract to work with US national Laboratories on the development of the mathematical model of glass melting during the vitrification of nuclear waste.

The team at UCT Prague is headed by Richard Pokorny, a PhD student at the Department of Chemical Engineering, who already cooperated with US laboratories for several years. “Together with associated professor Jaroslav Klouzek, we will build on my previous work, and will focus on the development of the model for batch to glass conversion in nuclear waste melter. Using this model, we will be able to predict the melting rate, and help to optimize the whole conversion process”, Mr. Pokorny says.

About the Vitrification project:

In southeastern Washington state, Bechtel National, Inc. is designing, constructing, and commissioning the world’s largest radioactive waste treatment plant for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). When complete, the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant, will process and stabilize million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste currently stored at the Hanford Site.

For more information, visit http://www.hanfordvitplant.com/about-project.

Professor Petr Slavíček from the Department of Physical Chemistry was awarded the Neuron prize for a young researcher. Congratulations!!

The Neuron Award for Promising Young Scientists is designated to acknowledge Czech scientists under the age of 40, who have achieved excellent scientific results, and to recognise their activities and promote their future progress.

Each year,  the best scientists in the fields: physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine and social sciences are awarded.

Student Jakub Kubečka from the group of Prof. Slavíček received the Audience Award. Congratulations! Further finalist from our faculty was To Quyen Nguyenová from the Department of Chemical Engineering. Václav Bystrianský from the Faculty of Environmental Technology won the Academy of Sciences Award. Congratulations! Eliška Selinger from Charles University will represent the Czech Republic in the final international competition. 

FameLab is an international science communication competition that currently runs in 23 countries all around the world. Contestants have three minutes to present a scientific subject of their choosing. They are not allowed to use a projector. The only props allowed are ones that they can carry onto and from the stage themselves.

Ph.D. student David Tomeček from the Department of Physics and Measurements
got E-MRS award for graduate students conducting research. Congratulations!

The Czech Constitutional Court recently referred to Prof. RNDr. Štěpán Urban's research into human smell recognition. 

• Read more about the case (in Czech)
• Read more about Prof. Urban's research

Our student Vít Svoboda and his supervisor Ondřej Votava from the Department of Physical Chemistry received Werner von Siemens awards for their work "High resolution overtone spectroscopy of atmospherically relevant molecules". Congratulations!

Werner von Siemens awards are sponsored by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. 2016 marks the eighteenth time the awards have been granted.

Traditional Students' Scientific Conference took place on Friday November 20, 2015. 141 of works in 18 competitive sections were presented by students of bachelor's and master's degree. The level of the lectures was high and the members of the commissions did not have an easy task to choose just the top three. Winners took diplomas from the hands of our dean prof. Urbanová. We congratulate to all of the winners! All organizers and participants are acknowledged! And of course we would like to thank our sponsors for their generous donations!

Professor Miloš Marek from the Department of Chemical Engineering received the award for the outstanding outcomes of his research. He and his group focus namely on heterogeneous catalysts for exhaust gas conversion.

The University of Chemistry and Technology Prague was one of organizers of the INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE FOR MULTIMEDIA UNDERSTANDING (IWCIM 2015) at the Strahov Monastery 29-30 October 2015. There were presented 41 papers submitted by 145 authors from 16 countries. Further details and complete videorecords of 4 invited lectures presented by authors from top universities are available from the workshop web page: http://iwcim.isep.fr/. All papers will be published in the IEEE Xplore.

The Faculty accepts PhD students on a rolling basis throughout the calendar year; it is essential when making your application for doctoral studies that you find an advisor who will guide you through the entire period of your PhD studies. 

Read more →HERE or →HERE

Marek Lanč and his supervisor Karel Friess were awarded for Marek's Diploma thesis "Study of gas transport in high free volume polymers" by Siemens. The Werner von Siemens award was associated with a financial reward and the memorial medal of Werner von Siemens.

From 1^st of January, Vysoká škola chemicko-technologická v Praze uses following names in foreign languages:

• University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, UCT Prague
• Universität für Chemie und Technologie, Prag
• École Nationale Supérieure des Technologies Chimiques de Prague
• Chimiko-technologičeskij universitět, Praga