We are pleased to announce that Karolína Salvadori from our Faculty of Chemical Engineering at the University of Chemical Technology in Prague has won the prestigious Jean-Marie Lehn Prize for Chemistry.

The award ceremony of the French Embassy's Scientific Awards, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, took place on 28 June 2024 in Prague. These prizes are intended for PhD students or postdoctoral fellows who have recently defended their dissertation. The awards cover the fields of chemistry, medicine, pharmacy, computer science and informatics, nuclear research, environment and climate, and social sciences and humanities. The oldest of these awards is the Jean-Marie Lehn Prize for Chemistry, which has been recognising outstanding research work in chemistry by Czech students during their PhD studies since 1994, when it was established by Jean-Marie Lehn, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry in 1987.

Karolína Salvadori was awarded for her PhD thesis "Study of Building Blocks Suitable for Preparation of Functional Receptor Materials for Sensorics", supervised by Professor Pavel Matějka. Karolína's research focuses on the preparation and study of novel receptor materials and their building blocks. These materials have urea binding sites in their structure, which are suitable for anion complexation. In addition to synthesis, her work also includes a section dedicated to the study of the physicochemical properties of the prepared molecules. To this end, she uses a range of molecular spectroscopy and electrochemistry techniques. Particular attention is paid to the evaluation of binding properties. A thorough investigation of the complexation properties provides the data necessary to understand the regularities of building block behaviour in the presence of anions, and also enables the prediction of the complexation behaviour of the final receptor materials. Receptor materials are prepared by attaching binding units to molecular supports (mainly dendrimers and macrocycles from the calixarene group); alternatively, receptor units are designed so that they can be used to modify electrode surfaces. The study of recycling of the prepared systems, for example by nanofiltration, is also an integral part of the project. 

Karolína told us about her work and her love for chemistry: "I worked on the development simultaneously at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Institute of Chemical Processes (Bioorganic Chemistry and Biomaterials Group) and the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry (Molecular Electrochemistry and Catalysis Department), which allowed me to combine a number of different approaches. If I should summarize the work very briefly - it is mainly focused on the development of new anion receptors and their building units. Thus, the work includes both a synthetic part and a study of properties. I study the properties using a number of techniques, both spectroscopic and electrochemical. I have been involved in chemistry since high school, and in my last year of high school I had the opportunity to attend the Supramolecular Chemistry group at Masaryk University in Brno. Here, under the guidance of Professor Vladimír Šindelář and Dr. Tomáš Fiala, I was introduced to the chemistry that became my destiny - the chemistry of anion receptors. So I decided to pursue supramolecular chemistry during my studies at university. I first graduated in Chemistry and did my bachelor thesis at the Department of Organic Chemistry. Since I started my Master's studies, I was taken in by Professor Matějka, who together with my advisors (Dr. Petra Cuřínová and Professor Jiří Ludvík) has accompanied me to this day and helped me to further develop my topic. Gradually, we moved from very simple molecules to the study of more complex systems. Moreover, thanks to the combination of a number of approaches, one never really gets bored and new research challenges and goals are constantly opening up."

From left: the French Ambassador to the Czech Republic Stéphane Crouzat, the Chairman of the NF IOCB Tech Board Barbara Eignerová, Helena Hrušková (CSCH Special Prize), Petr Macháč (3rd Prize), David Dunlop (2nd Prize), Karolína Salvadori (1st Prize), the President of the CSCH Prof. Tomáš Navrátil and Prof. Jean-Marie Lehn. (Photo: © Ondřej Besperát)

Many congratulations to Martin Balouch from the group of Prof. František Štěpánek for winning 3rd place in the Pharmacy category (Sanofi Prize), one of several Scientific Prizes awarded annually by the French Embassy in Prague. Martin was nominated for his PhD thesis titled “Investigation of mass-transfer properties and permeability control of phospholipid bi-layers” and received his prize at a ceremony in the presence of Nobel Prize laureates including prof. Jean-Marie Lehn. Congratulations for this well-deserved award!

Congratulations to Ing. Maria Plaché, Ph.D. from the group of Prof. Petr Kočí from the Department of Chemical Engineering, who with her dissertation thesis "Modelling of transport and reaction in porous catalytic filters using 3D computer reconstruction" won the 1st place in the scientific competition of the French Embassy in the category "Make Our Planet Great Again - Prize in Environmental Sciences".  The prize was accepted by her supervisor Prof. Petr Kočí (in the middle of the photo, photo: © Ondřej Besperát).

The Make Our Planet Great Again Prize for Environmental and Climate Research is organised by the Embassy of France in the Czech Republic together with BNP Paribas. This prize aims to reward the research work of Czech students in the field of climate change, environment and sustainable development. The winners will receive financial assistance and the first two will also have the opportunity to complete an internship in a research laboratory in France. The prize was awarded during a reception at the French Embassy in Prague, Buquoy Palace, chaired by Professor Jean-Marie Lehn, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, and the Ambassador. Make our Planet Great Again is an initiative of the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, launched on 1 June 2017 following the decision of the United States to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. It is a call for researchers and teachers, entrepreneurs, associations and NGOs, students and all civil society to mobilize and join France in the fight against global warming.

The second edition of the conference "Growing with Chemistry" took place on 27-28 June 2024 at the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague. This event was primarily aimed at young chemists under 35 years of age. The organizers managed to follow up on last year's successful event, which started a common meeting, discussion, networking and mutual motivation. Once again, the motto of the conference "Growing with Chemistry" was successfully lived up to. Several students from our faculty represented the University of Chemical Technology in Prague at this event. The two-day student meeting benefited from the support of the Faculty of Science of Charles University, the Czech Chemical Society and other sponsors and partners, which ensured a valuable experience for all participants.  The prize for the best lecture and poster was sponsored by Metrohm. In addition, three honorary prizes were awarded. The winners received a one-year membership to the Czech Chemical Society and gifts from the sponsors. We are proud that one of these prizes was awarded to Nina Nováková from the Department of Chemical Engineering for her lecture "Biomimetic behaviour in chemical systems: formation of myelin figures" (co-authored by her supervisor Jitka Čejková and Jan Macháček). This award highlights the quality and impact of her work. We congratulate Nina and thank all the participants from our faculty for their exemplary representation of VŠCHT Praha.

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.