CEITEC - a new EU-funded research centre for Czech Republic
A new EU-funded institute for life sciences and technical research has opened its doors in the Czech Republic, following an opening conference on 26 September. The CEITEC (Central European Institute of Technology) centre, the first of its kind in the Czech Republic, was given a boost of more than EUR 200 million as part of the Operational Programme 'Research and Development for Innovations'. The Operational Programme 'Research and Development for Innovations' is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and one of its main aims is to create a number of Centres of Excellence; well equipped research and development (R&D) centres with modern research infrastructures that can help integrate leading Czech R&D teams with their European and international counterparts as well as existing European research infrastructures. The complete site is expected to be finished in 2014 when scientists will move into the newly-equipped modern laboratories covering 25,000 m2 , built on the campus at Bohunice and on the Pod Palackeho vrchem campus in Brno. But scientific research is already well underway, following approval of the project by the European Commission in June working teams already in place in partner institutions have been busy on various research projects. The project is implemented by a consortium of six partners, universities and research institutes, lead by the Masaryk University. These include work on special hydrogels that can glue partially split bones using a syringe, and research into 'smart' materials used in aeroplanes that will be able to report their own weaknesses or defects. A hypodermic chip that can measure the life functions of a patient and inform a doctor at a distance is also being developed, and the production of biosensors that can detect an illness at an earlier stage is another flagship project for the centre. Scientists are also learning to differentiate between various kinds of cancer and are searching for suitable possibilities for treatment. 'Our ambition is to become a European Silicon Valley in the fields of science and research and the CEITEC centre surely belongs to significant projects on the journey back towards the world's elite. Moreover, CEITEC is the most favourably evaluated project of all of the so-called major projects - within the Operational Programme Research and Development for Innovations - and therefore the expectations of its success from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) are extremely high,' says Jakub Hodinár, First Deputy of the Minister of Education, responsible for European affairs. The centre will be unique in terms of the close relationship it will forge between research in life sciences and research into the field of advanced materials and technologies. Unique instruments and equipment will help the work of 600 scientists and almost 1,200 students as well as companies from the whole of the Czech Republic and abroad. 'The Czech government has been actively supporting research and development for a long time and therefore the start of realization of the CEITEC project is another clear example of its determination to conceptually invest in the future of the Czech Republic,' comments Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas. The main aim of the Institute is to cooperate with, and also to become a part of, a global network of prestigious international scientific centres. By increasing cooperation among scientists and companies in the region, and indeed across the whole country, it is hoped that other national and foreign investors will be attracted to the areas and thus foster job creation and innovation in the area.For more information, please visit: CEITEC (Central European Institute of Technology): http://www.ceitec.eu/
Countries
Czechia