The investigation of the NPU receives the highest mark

The highest mark —outstanding—goes to RCPTM in the final opposition procedure of the NPU I Project entitled Development of the Centre of Advanced Technology and Materials. According to the members of the Opposition Committee, RCPTM has proved to become one of the leading European centres of chemical; materials; and optical research, also thanks to the 5-year project funded by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic (MŠMT).

“The proposed results have not only been achieved but significantly exceeded, in some cases even by hundreds of percent. For example, the high success rate in commercialising results and the high income coming from contract research and patent licensing is very positive,” said Vít Kavan, the Chairman of the Opposition Committee of MŠMT.

The most successful outcome of the project, according to the final report, is the establishment of a stable research and education institute, which is outstanding in all the relevant aspects and managed to prove its sustainability.

“The project has met all the requirements that were established. In the case of RCPTM, they managed to hire the right people, have a great sense of good topics, establish an excellent network of international contacts and be able to sell the results worldwide. This means getting into major impacted journal and drawing attention to the results. Foreign scientists come to Olomouc, which contributed to promoting the city, and the university is viewed as one of the hubs of science and technology transfer within the Czech Republic. I’d already got some information about RCPTM before I went there, but now I see it as standard against which excellence could be measured,” said Bohuslav Rezek of CTU, a member of the Opposition Committee.

RCPTM’s results were also highly rated by another member of the Opposition Committee, Jaromír Pištora from the VSB – Technical University of Ostrava. “All the accomplishments also point out to a visionary selection of topics by the project’s principal investigator Professor Zbořil,” he added.

RCPTM representatives, on the other hand, praised the National Sustainability Programme. “The project was extremely important to us. It enabled us to stabilise and internationalize the research team. The centre was equipped with cutting-edge technologies. Moreover, the project has not been burdened with excessive bureaucracy and communication with colleagues at MŠMT was flexible,” said the principal investigator Radek Zbořil.

At the time of the project investigation, from 2014 to 2019, RCPTM, for instance, managed to increase internationalisation rates. Currently, the share of foreign workers is 35 percent. The centre works with more than 40 foreign scientific partners and dozens of companies. Compared to the planned 500 publications over the reporting period, RCPTM managed to have 1 500 papers published in journal with an average IF of 5.33. The project also allowed revitalisation and other purchases of instrumentation infrastructure. The total subsidy was $236.1 million.