Secretariat of the Director

We experienced another successful participation in career fairs. This year we started on 4th April at the FJFI CTU at the proven event "Ulov mě na Jaderce" and continued on 24th April at "Dny firem na Matfyzu". In both cases, a considerable number of students, especially students of physics and mathematics who are already looking for job opportunities during their studies, arrived at the FZU stand. Together we discussed the possibilities of professional employment and the offer of internships at FZU.

The Excellent Research call in the Johannes Amos Comenius Programme (P JAC) is one of the most important Czech grant calls with a total allocation of CZK 12.2 billion, which aims to enable Czech research to reach European and global excellence. The Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (FZU) has achieved a significant success in this competition and will participate in the investigation of six projects out of the total of 26 projects that received funding in an extremely demanding evaluation process.

The Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences organizes the Physics Photography 2024 competition, which this year is thematically dedicated to "transformation".  The main goal of the competition is to popularize the beauty of physics and to break the stereotypes of the perception of this field of science. The photography competition ends with the announcement of winners and an exhibition of the awarded and selected photos during the Night of Scientists, which is organized by the institute in the Na Slovance facility on Friday, September 27, 2024.

At the beginning of his New Year's speech, Director Michael Prouza thanked the employees at all three facilities for coping with the difficult situation in 2023, when owing to their joint efforts FZU managed to overcome all the difficulties.

The Institute of Physics (FZU) of the Czech Academy of Sciences hosted a major event on September 14, welcoming 130 participants to a kick-off meeting of Physics for Future. The central mission of this Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND project is to recruit 60 exceptionally talented postdoctoral researchers.

In the newborn independent Czechoslovak Republic, the sugar industry was a key sector. The total production of the 155 sugar factories at that time was hardly believable – one million three hundred thousand tonnes of sugar per year.

FZU has just launched the first call of Physics for Future (P4F) MSCA COFUND Action designed for a new generation of physicists, allowing them to execute their own bottom-up research projects. P4F also offers an opportunity for an integrated blend of advanced scientific, transferable, and soft skill training. 

Past summer months brought us not only sunny days and holidays, but also the traditional summer meeting at the Institute of Physics – "HR Coffee & Talk".

On the night of June 19-20, 2021, visible light from a source 10 billion light-years away from Earth was captured by three telescopes. Two of them – robotic telescopes – are operated by Czech institutions – the D50, located in Ondřejov, is managed by the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, while the other, FRAM-ORM, is located on the Spanish island of La Palma. The third telescope, Mini-MegaTORTORA, is installed in Nizhny Arkhyz, Russia. An international team has published a study of this extraordinary source in the May issue of Nature Astronomy.

RNDr. Mariana Klementová, Ph.D., head of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory, is interested in the characterization of inorganic materials at the micro to nanoscale and in 3D electron diffraction to determine the atomic structure of unknown crystalline substances.

You belong among the ten most cited women at FZU. What advice would you give to younger colleagues so that they succeeded in the scientific competition?

Don't give up. Be persistent and patient. Don't get discouraged. If you feel like your kids are holding you back, they'll grow up fast and won't need you. Be happy that you have a profession that fulfils you and someone at home who loves you.

On February 11, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science is celebrated. On this occasion, we decided to find out what status women in research have. Facts will be revealed, but in addition to graphs, we also offer interviews with female scientists working at the Institute of Physics. We wanted to find out why they chose physics and whether there are equal opportunities in physics.