A double interview with Helena Reichlova and Barbora Špačková, who have succeeded in tough competition and both won five-year funding for their own Dioscuri centres. They describe, for example, the role they believe social media play in research careers. And they also explain what guides their selection of new collaborators.
May 1st 2024 marked the 20th anniversary of the Czech Republic joining the European Union (EU). The past 20 years have profoundly changed the Czech research landscape, German-Czech research cooperation and the European Research Area. “Science has greatly benefitted from the possibilities that Europe offers during the last decades. Mobility is a striking example, funding opportunities are another,” says Max Planck President Patrick Cramer at the opening ceremony for the first three Dioscuri Centres in the Czech Republic on 17 May 2024.
Theoretical interpretation often steps into the spotlight first once breakthrough experiments have been finished. A much more exciting situation, especially in the realm of spectral properties of magnetic materials, is when a theoretical prediction persuades researchers to undertake a specific measurement approach, and subsequently, the collected data align precisely with the prediction. Research that resulted in a paper published last week in Physical Review Letters, where an international team reported that the way light is absorbed by a magnetic substance varies according to its state of polarization, followed just this less common line of development.
The research in TERAFIT project will focus on the development of applications that are essential for the Internet of Things and the Big Data economy. The aim is to achieve breakthroughs towards a new generation of information technologies – the three research objectives of the project focus on interconnected breakthroughs that will lead to substantial savings on energy, space and time scales.
"A scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.” This quote by Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford could be applied to the recent achievements of Libor Šmejkal. He was selected from hundreds of nominated scientists to be awarded the Breakthrough Scientific Discovery of the Year 2023 title in the Falling Walls competition for his theoretical work on altermagnetism and non-dissipative nanoelectronics. He was able to explain his discoveries to the general public by comparing a new form of magnetism to the dance of swans. His scientific career illustrates the importance of the role of teachers and mentors and symbolises a commitment to discovery and contribution to scientific knowledge.
In an article published in Nature an international team of scientists breaks down the traditional idea of dividing magnetism into two branches – the ferromagnetic one, known for several millennia, and the antiferromagnetic, discovered about a century ago. Researchers have now succeeded in directly experimentally demonstrating a third altermagnetic branch theoretically predicted by researchers in Prague and Mainz several years ago.
The Max Planck Society has announced funding of the second Czech-German Dioscuri Centre at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (FZU). Its future director, Barbora Špačková, will focus on the development of new technologies providing new insights into the biological nano-universe. The centre has received five-year support of up to CZK 35 million and will start to operate in the summer 2024.
Solid state physicist Helena Reichlová will establish the Dioscuri Centre for Spin Caloritronics and Magnonics at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences from 1 October 2023. She will look for ways to reduce the exponentially increasing energy consumption in the information technology sector of the future.
Approximately only one percent of scientists in Europe succeed in obtaining a grant from the European Research Council, but Professor Tomáš Jungwirth from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences has succeeded in a large competition for the second time. With his project Altermagnetism and spintronics without magnetization and relativity he has succeeded once again in the ERC Advanced grant category after twelve years and received the highest possible support of €2.5 million. The success rate for this type of grants was only 13.2% in 2022.
The atomically sharp domain walls that were discovered by an international team led by researchers from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, might considerably improve the research of ulta-fast memory devices made from antiferromagnetic materials.
Researchers of the Czech Academy of Sciences succeeded in the second year of the JUNIOR STAR competition of the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) and made up a half of the total number of supported 16 projects. This year from our institute, it was Prokop Hapala and Dominik Kriegner who succeeded in the big competition for grants. The Institute of Physics and the Czech Technical University thus have two awarded scientists, and came after the Masaryk University, which won three projects.
Libor Šmejkal from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences has won the second place in the “Best Dissertation Thesis” category in this year’s Werner von Siemens Award. Libor won the award for the thesis entitled “Topology band theory of relativistic spintronics in antiferromagnets” supervised by professor Tomáš Jungwirth.
