The Flatlands beyond Graphene 2023 conference is under way in Prague, Czechia.

Flatlands beyond Graphene has successfully established a platform for scientists to engage into fruitful discussions and exchange the latest discoveries in two-dimensional materials beyond graphene. This includes advances in synthesis, characterization and theoretical modeling, and the applications in electronics, energy storage, catalysis and optoelectronics. It was first held in Bremen, Germany (2013) and then subsequently in Dublin, Ireland (2014), Ramat Gan, Israel (2015), Bled, Slovenia (2016), Lausanne, Switzerland (2017), Leipzig, Germany (2018) , Toulouse, France (2019), Online (2021), Lanzarote, Spain (2022).

• Conference website

Petra Karnetová and Jana Sommerová from UCT Prague brought home the silver trophy at the EURPRIO 2023 conference (Vienna, Austria) in the best communication projects category. The European Association of communication professionals in Higher Education (EUPRIO) has over 700 members from 21 countries. At this year’s conference, hosted by the Vienna University of Technology  (27 to 30 August), several topics were discussed, including the use of AI, science communications and the threat of fake news.

The award-winning “Let’s Engage in Modern Chemistry” project is one of UCT Prague’s most important activities aimed at primary and secondary school children. The project presents and explains modern chemistry is a comprehensible and engaging manner, showcasing new trends, and—most importantly—practical applications without which our everyday lives could function. The presentations in schools not only inspire children to study chemistry, but they show modern chemical disciplines as being relevant, thus emphasizing chemistry’s importance, even to those whose life paths will not lead them to pursue science, technology and math (STEM) careers.

The project was created in 2005 as a reaction to negative media coverage after the Czech floods in 2002. It gradually grew into a compilation of different scenarios presented in schools by trained lecturers working in pairs from UCT Prague. During the 2022/23 academic year, we visited 150 schools with our road show, teaching 1,006 lessons and entertaining more than 20,000 children.

Presentation scenarios represent the range of research activities conducted at UCT Prague and are full of entertaining (but at the same time, educational) experiments. They are prepared by experienced instructors. The first two scenarios, for example, were created by Dr. Petr Holzhauser (head of the Department of Chemical Education and Humanities at UCT Prague and chair of the Czech Chemistry Olympiad committee), and Prof. Petr Slavíček (head of UCT Prague’s Department of Physical Chemistry and recipient of a Czech Neuron prize for young and promising scientists).

Participation in “Let’s Engage in Modern Chemistry” is provided to schools at no charge and is fully funded by UCT Prague together with significant support from commercial sector partners such as Spolchemie and Synthomer. ORLEN Unipetrol is the most important of these partners, having provided funding since the outreach project started.

Read more at: https://www.vscht.cz/hmch-en 

UCT Prague ranks well among Czech universities and 556th overall in the QS World University Rankings

A small ratio of students to an instructor traditionally count most in terms of solid QS World University Rankings. Individual educational support and the involvement of students in research earned UCT Prague 35th place in the world—and first in Czechia—for this criterion in this year’s ranking.

After the QS methodology was expanded this year to evaluate nine different parameters, UCT Prague placed fourth among Czech universities, dropping two places compared to last year. UCT Prague monitors its position in several ranking systems, all of which have different methodologies and resultant rankings. UCT Prague is rather unique in Europe due to its small size and chemistry focus, and this also impacts rankings.

“My comments are similar every year. University rankings are good for holding up a mirror to ourselves, spurring us to think about what others are doing differently and what we could improve. But they have a downside, because trying to improve rankings at all costs can lead to the pursuit of numbers that correspond to a certain ranking methodology at the expense of quality. We Czechs have experience with this because of our research evaluation system. Let’s try to make the right decisions, even if sometimes they can be politically bold and unpleasant for some. I believe that, in the long term, making the right decisions will have a positive impact in terms of rankings as well,” says Pavel Matějka, UCT Prague Rector.

UCT Prague’s international environment, with a high (by Czech standards) percentage of international students, contributed to this year’s good placement. In recent years, UCT Prague has also attracted international researchers, both of which contributed to UCT Prague ranking 201st in the international criterion.

Other Czech universities (16 in total) were also ranked. The largest, Charles University, placed 248th in the world. Masaryk University ranked 400th; and CTU Prague, 454th.

More detailed information about the QS World University Rankings, including methodology, are on the 2024 website.

The Welcome Office organised the second guided tour of the sights of Prague for our foreign students and researchers, which took place on Saturday 20/05/2023.  This time we visited the wonderful premises of the Strahov Monastery in Prague, its gallery, we looked into the ancient libraries and the halls with the exhibition of old collections of curiosities. 

A detailed explanation of the history of the monastery and interesting exhibits was again given by our former UCT graduate Ing. Martin Belohradsky.

The tour of the monastery was attended by 27 of our foreign students and scientists, including the six-year-old daughter of our Indian scientist Dr. Amutha Subramani. Everyone really liked it, as can be seen from the attached photos, and our foreigners expressed their interest in continuing these guided tours of Prague.

Are you interested in more information or do you have any ideas for planning other cultural events? Feel free to write us to welcome@vscht.cz