News archive

Next year, Czech astronaut Aleš Svoboda is set to participate in a mission to the International Space Station. Experts from the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences are testing some of the equipment and experiments he will bring on board. A new high-performance T100 cobalt irradiator, officially inaugurated on 30 September 2026 by CAS President Radomír Pánek, will be a key asset in this process. The T100 is one of the most powerful devices of its kind in the Czech Republic and is located at the institute’s Bulovka facility in Prague.

Three experienced researchers and six promising scientists received the Academic Award – Praemium Academiae and the Lumina Quaeruntur fellowship on 9 November 2026. Each of these awards targets a different group of researchers at various stages of their careers, but there is one thing the honours have in common: they are the highest form of grant support that the Czech Academy of Sciences offers. Thanks to this funding, the laureates can focus on research with the potential to transform their fields and influence people’s lives.

People with achondroplasia are documented throughout history – from ancient Egypt to the courts of European kings. Only today has science reached a level where it can successfully unravel the complex causes of growth disorders and find treatment options. One researcher who has long focused on this topic is cell biologist Pavel Krejčí from the Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, whose work we featured in A / Magazine, the annual English-language magazine of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Desert settlement models have long been based on the assumption that where there was water, there were people. According to a new study published in the prestigious journal Nature, however, stone was an equally important resource. If it was absent, the area remained uninhabited despite an abundance of freshwater. Scientists from the Czech Republic, Austria, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the USA, and Oman have created a freely available model that predicts where in arid regions anywhere in the world people dependent on stone tools could permanently live.

They have been found in the snow on the peak of Mount Everest and in the depths of the Mariana Trench. We drink them in our water, and they rain down on us. And because they essentially don’t decompose, they accumulate in the environment. In other words: every milligram of “forever chemicals” ever created on Earth is still circulating somewhere in the ecosystem, with more added every single day. While the chemicals known as PFAS are human-made, many animals also produce remarkable cocktails of toxic substances. Common bees are a case in point. What happens when one stings us, and what toxins unleash a cascade of pain, burning, and itching?
Poisons take center stage in the latest issue of A / Magazine.   

How do social divisions shape political parties and political systems in the post-Ottoman space? How different are the social and political cleavages in the Middle East and North Africa region from those in Europe, and how were they influenced by history? The international, interdisciplinary CLOSER project aims to take a deeper look at a region that is often not fully understood by European elites and the public alike. Supported by a European Research Council Synergy Grant, the project started in June 2026 and will run until 2032. On Friday, 16 October 2026, the Czech Academy of Sciences hosted the kick-off meeting for the project’s principal investigators, leadership from participating institutions, researchers, and students.

Czech, German, Austrian or Italian? Preacher, philosopher, or mathematician? Prague's Bernard Bolzano, born exactly 245 years ago, was all these things. Now, all his works are to become available online, thanks to Mexican researcher Elías Fuentes Guillén, who has been based at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences since 2018, making the immensely rich legacy of this versatile National Revival intellectual accessible to the public. In the latest issue of A / Magazín, he explains why Bolzano became a crucial figure for subsequent generations of researchers and why he was a thorn in the side of some of his contemporaries.

Two thirds of Czech hospitals are already using artificial intelligence tools – most frequently for diagnostics and evaluating imaging methods. The role of AI has grown exponentially in recent years, and understandably so. The ability to "delegate" routine tasks to computers saves doctors time, accelerates care, and can even help make decision-making more precise. However, it also brings pitfalls. Leading European experts from EASAC and FEAM are drawing attention to these risks and issuing key recommendations to policymakers.  

The Academy Council of the Czech Academy of Sciences strongly condemns yesterday’s barbaric attack by the Russian Federation on the building of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv and joins the statement issued by All European Academies. The Council expresses its solidarity with colleagues in Ukraine and the families of the victims. 

Three of the six ERC Starting Grants awarded to the Czech Republic this year went to researchers at the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS). Two of them prepared their applications with support from the ERC Incubator (ERC-in), which the institution launched in January. How many applicants are currently “warming up” in the incubator to be better prepared for the competition for further European Research Council grants?