Innovative Prague XXVII
Prague is not only an amazing historical city with a wealth of monuments, excellent gastronomy, cordial residents, and a wide range of events. It is also a modern and innovative science hub. Prague excels in many fields, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, biomedicine, low-carbon technologies, data technologies and selected creative industries, providing ideal opportunities for holding conventions and conferences with the matching topics.
The 27th edition of Innovative Prague takes you to the world of technology and medicine. Which top projects are moving to the Czech Republic and which Czech talents are conquering the world? We also bring you news from space and the latest from Czech robotics.
Prague: a Mecca of technology?
The prestigious European project EuPRAXIA (European Plasma Research Accelerator with eXcellence In Applications) is heading to the Czech Republic! Research focused on the development of compact and high-power electron accelerators that use advanced laser and plasma acceleration technologies has chosen the ELI Beamlines laser institute, located near Prague, as its hosting infrastructure, in addition to the Italian Frascati. This will open the door to the most advanced areas of applied research.
Two Czech and Slovak students also achieved exceptional success, and this year's international Earth Prize was awarded to the project of early-career scientists Tomáš Čermák and Anna Podmanická. The PURA project comes up with a method of removing up to 98% of bacteria in water by using plasma, all in just three minutes.
International recognition of Czech inventions also comes in the form of international certifications. After years of preparation, Ladislav Semetkovský, the founder of Primoco company, has received certification that opens the door for his drones to NATO member states' armies. His unmanned aircraft can stay in the air for 15 hours and fly up to 1,800 kilometers. Although he is now cooperating with the military, Semetkovský continues to insist that his drones do not carry weapons, but he does not rule out their deployment in conflict areas. He works, for example, also on future linking drones with artificial intelligence or expanding his production line and training programs abroad.
Look before you leap...or how Czech scientists improve measurements in several areas
Space ihas been one big mystery for humanity. Step by step, we explore and measure it. But what specifically can we measure? One of the most mysterious particles in the universe is the neutrino. Its non-zero mass suggests that unknown physical processes in the universe happened earlier than was previously claimed. In their experiment, scientists from the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences measured its mass and came to the newest result of less than 0.45 electrovolts. This finding is crucial for determining the total mass of the universe and understanding the underlying physical processes.
Researching the properties of the universe does not end with matter. One of the basic quantities that we can measure is distance, and this is what a team from the CAPADS laboratory at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague has been engaging with in connection with space. The so-called Hanbury Brown-Twist effect has so far only been observed at a single frequency. However, the team has developed a spectrometer that is able to capture the HBT effect at five neon frequencies at once, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of cosmic structures and phenomena.
Czech traces around the world
In the Czech Republic, not many people have heard of them, but in America they have made a great impression. Two young Czechs, Jakub Suchánek and Ronald Luc, teamed up with Singaporean Keefe Wayne Teo during their studies, and today they run their start-up, Fabrica AI - a software platform designing robots of various talents based on to the client's instructions. The pilot version has already been launched, testing is underway. At the same time, Fabrica AI develops not only software, but also hardware – i.e. its own robots, the sale of which will financially contribute to the development of the start-up's main focus.
But the robot can also learn other skills. Do you want it to become a varnisher, for example? Just show it the job! This innovative approach was taken by the founder of the Prague start-up RoboTwin, Megi Mejdrechová. Thanks to artificial intelligence, which transcribes the worker's movements into instructions, there is no need for a specialist to program the robot in a complicated way. This saves time and money.
Martin Tolar, an American neurologist of Czech origin, also leaves Czech trace overseas. He has long been concentrating on brain health, with the Alzheimer's disease as his main focus. Dealing with this serious disease is not easy, and most cases are addressed only when it is too late. The app that Martin Tolar and his team are developing will work with symptoms and try to prevent them with the help of AI and personalized medicine.
In many cases, however, prevention alone is not enough and the treatment is launched. But how to proceed in the drugs development so that drugs do not damage the liver? This was the focus of the international research project PRO-EURO-DILI-NET, in which the team of the Laboratory of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences was also involved. The project created liver organoids – miniatures of the human liver – that make it easier to simulate the reaction of the human body while minimizing the need for animal testing. The project also contributed to the creation of the first common guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of drug-induced liver damage.
New technological inventions and theories in the Czech Republic are constantly emerging and are becoming known to international institutions such as NASA. A few months ago, its data confirmed one fundamental theory coming from the Czech team. Jakub Cehula, a doctoral student at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in Prague, participated in the research of the origin of gold or other heavier metals in the universe. The result of the research was a theory claiming that so-called magnetars – neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields – eject pieces of their matter into the environment. This happens every few years during eruptions in the Milky Way. During the eruption, heavier elements, such as the aforementioned gold, are formed by the reaction of matter.
Would you like to learn more interesting facts? Browse through the previous three issues of Innovative Prague: