TECHSCALE meeting at CATRIN

Presentation of the results so far and search for more areas for interdisciplinary cooperation were the aims of the TECHSCALE project meeting.  The representatives of scientific teams from Palacký University (UP) met at CATRIN on Thursday, March 14^th. In addition to CATRIN, which coordinates this project funded by the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme, another five UP faculties are involved, alongside partners from Charles University and CEITEC-VUT.

“We have been working on the project for several months, so it was necessary for us to summarise the results so far and to specify the next steps in joint research on the basis of the findings. I am very pleased that the cooperation is taking off and all parties are looking for ways to develop it further. We are aware of the importance of broad cooperation within the university. We know that we have a unique opportunity to achieve results and outputs that will be competitive in an international environment,” said the physical chemist Michal Otyepka from CATRIN, TECHSCALE’s Principal Investigator.

Other participants confirmed the importance of such meetings. “I consider these meetings to be very important as they are a good basis for further cooperation. Within the microbiology team from the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, our task in this project is primarily to test the antimicrobial activity of newly developed nanomaterials and assess the possibilities of their application in medicine. The problem medicine is currently facing is that we do not have enough new antibiotics and antibiotic resistance is constantly rising. In 2050, the most common cause of death will be infections caused by multi-resistant bacteria. This is a huge global problem and one of the goals of the TECHSCALE project is to contribute to its solution,” said Milan Kolář, Dean of the UP Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, according to whom the team has already had its first results, including first publications.

The aim of the project is to develop nanomaterials and technologies that will contribute to solving two current societal challenges, i.e. the acquisition and storage of renewable energy and the improvement of quality of life. Besides experts in materials research, there are also representatives of social sciences who will assess the acceptance of new technologies in society and at the same time propose strategies to combat so-called fake news, which could negatively influence the perception of new technologies.

“I find today’s meeting very useful because we presented what we are researching in the different parts of the project and we have found other joint topics enabling us to analyze the problems from different perspectives. That is, from the perspective of both the natural sciences and the social sciences and the humanities. We can share data and we have found other topics for joint publications. Regarding our work package we are currently in the data collection phase. We are looking for an answer to what extent researchers are aware of the risks that their result can be inadvertently or intentionally misinterpreted towards the public. Similar to what we saw for example during the covid pandemic. In the next stage we want to get a response from the public to the so-called fake news,” said Jiří Lach from the Faculty of Arts.

Experts from the UP Faculties of Medicine and Dentistry, Arts, Law, Health Sciences and the Sts Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology are working on behalf of Palacký University. The project has received about half a billion Czech koruna in finding. It officially started on June 1, 2023, and will last until the end of June 2028.