For the second time, IOCB Tech was a partner through its Foundation (Nadační fond IOCB Tech) of the French Embassy Science Awards, which celebrated their 30th anniversary this year. Additionally, foundation supported the accompanying public science conference "Sounds of Science," organized by the French Embassy and the French Institute in Prague. 

The French Embassy Science Awards are aimed at PhD students or postdoctoral researchers who have recently defended their dissertations. The awards cover fields such as chemistry, medicine, pharmacy, computer science and informatics, nuclear research, environmental and climate sciences, and social and humanities sciences.

The oldest of these awards is the Jean-Marie Lehn Prize for Chemistry, which, since its establishment in 1994 by Nobel Prize laureate Jean-Marie Lehn, has recognized outstanding research work by Czech students in chemistry during their doctoral studies. This prize, along with the financial rewards for the winners, was sponsored by our fund for the second time.

This year's winners are:

  • 1st Prize (80,000 CZK): Karolína Salvadori from the Faculty of Chemical Technology at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague, awarded for her research "Study of building blocks suitable for preparation of functional receptor materials for sensorics."
  • 2nd Prize (50,000 CZK): David Dunlop from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Czech Academy of Sciences, awarded for his research "Electronic and geometric degrees of freedom of organoelement compounds."
  • 3rd Prize (30,000 CZK): Petr Macháč from the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University in Brno, awarded for his research "Synthesis and characterization of catalysts."

In addition to the main prizes, a Special Prize from the Czech Chemical Society was awarded to Helena Hrušková from Masaryk University for her work "Micro- and mezzo-fluidic instrumentation for enrichment of biological samples."

The laureates were presented by Prof. Jean-Marie Lehn, and the awards were given by the French Ambassador to the Czech Republic Stéphane Crouzat, the Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the IOCB Tech Endowment Fund Barbara Eignerová, and the President of the Czech Chemical Society Prof. Tomáš Navrátil.

Besides the Science Awards, we also sponsored the third annual public science conference Sounds of Science, which bridges top scientists and musicians in a dialogue between science and art.

This year, the event hosted three leading French scientists: Jean-Marie Lehn (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1987), Jules Hoffmann (Nobel Prize in Medicine, 2011), and Alain Aspect (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2022), who gave short lectures on the latest scientific concepts in their fields.

Between the lectures, musical performances were delivered by Michal Rataj, Jan Trojan, and Ivo Kahánek.