Martin Pumera is the first person to be named to this position.

At its meeting on October24 , the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague’s Scientific Council approved the establishment of the position of visiting professor at the Department of Inorganic Chemistry in the field of Chemistry Education and subsequently appointed associate professor Martin Pumera to the position effective for the period November 1, 2019 to December 31, 2022.

Professor Pumera is a world-renowned expert in the field of inorganic chemistry and his rankings in prestigious databases confirm that he belongs to the top percent of most cited chemists in the world. Before joining UCT, he worked for many years at the prestigious Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, an institution with which UCT Prague has been developing closer ties. Since 2017 he has been the head of the UCT Prague Center for Advanced Functional Nanorobots.

“The establishment of the position of visiting professor and the appointment of Professor Pumera will further strengthen the scientific activities at our faculty and the whole university,” said Professor Karel Bouzek, Dean of the Faculty of Chemical Technology.

The privilege of appointing visiting professors was granted to UCT Prague in June 2019, within its institutional accreditation in the fields of Chemistry and Food Technology Education. The post is given only to the scholars who have achieved academic rank abroad comparable to Czech professors and associate professors or who were prominent professionals practising in their fields for at least twenty years.

At the UCT Prague, visiting professors are appointed by the Scientific Council based on the Rector’s submission upon a proposal by the Dean of the respective faculty.

For the first time, UCT Prague has been ranked among the 1,000 best universities in the world, rising to 355^th place, the second best position among Czech universities this year.

These excellent results in the QS World University Rankings 2020 was largely due to the small student-to-academic instructor ratio. Individual support for the educational process and the consequential involvement of students in research activities has finally carried UCT Prague to 47^th place in the world and first in the Czech Republic.

“We are pleased that student support at UCT Prague is also appreciated at the international level. But we are really talking about students and their individual growth, so the rankings results are just a pleasant consequence,” said Karel Melzoch, Rector of UCT Prague.

Contributing to this year’s ranking was the international environment of our university—for the Czech context, a relatively high number of students from abroad. In recent years, the university has also attracted international researchers who decided to pursue their careers at UCT Prague.

“Placing in the first 400 can help us attract more excellent students and researchers from abroad,” said Pavel Matějka, Vice-Rector for External Relations and Communication. “On the other hand, I don’t want to overstate one year’s ranking; we don’t know how the numbers will look like next time, particularly because we ranked in the first 1,000 for the first time,” added Matějka, who sees room for further improvement. “As a disciplinary-focused university, we will never have as much recognition as the larger universities. Yet solid work in science and research as well as collaboration with companies and institutions can push us even higher.”

This year was a good year for all Czech universities included in the rankings. Charles University broke through to the top 300 in the world, and all other Czech universities have improved. CTU Prague was ranked 498^th, Masaryk University 551-560^th, Palacký University Olomouc 601-650^th, and BUT Brno 651-700^th. New to the rankings were TU Liberec (751-800^th) as well as the the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CULS) and the University of Ostrava, both in the 810-1,000^th ranking band.

All rankings together with ranking methodology can be found online at: QS World University Rankings 2020.