Two of the 2021 Otto Wichterle Awards, an honor given by the Czech Academy of Sciences in recognition of outstanding and promising young scientists under the age of 35, have gone to Dr. Eliška Procházková and Dr. Tomáš Slanina of IOCB Prague.
Eliška Procházková
Dr. Eliška Procházková (born 1987) of the NMR Spectroscopy Group specializes in research on the structure and physical and chemical properties of substances and frequently combines NMR with quantum chemical calculations. Currently, she is working on the development of new NMR methods for studying the stereochemistry of phosphorus-containing bioactive molecules.
She embarked on her career in science in the laboratory of Prof. Antonín Holý. Prior to specializing in NMR spectroscopy, she worked in several areas, including organic chemistry and biochemistry. She further expanded her knowledge with postdoctoral fellowships in Germany, Australia, and Japan. In the Czech Republic, she has established several methods, such as NMR combined with an optical fiber to transmit light directly into the sample. The method provides unique real-time structural and kinetic information on the photochemical reaction.
She regularly publishes in prestigious scientific journals (more than 40 publications to date). Last year, for instance, she published an article in the journal Angewandte Chemie on a new type of molecular photoswitches with the fastest switching rate yet observed. They can be used, for example, in the development of new nanodevices or photoresponsive materials.
Since 2020, Dr. Procházková has been a PhD supervisor in physical chemistry at her alma mater, the Faculty of Science, Charles University.
Tomáš Slanina
Dr. Tomáš Slanina (born 1988), head of the Redox Photochemistry Group, primarily specializes in the development of new methods for controlling chemical and redox processes using visible light and also develops photochemical and redox switches and photoactivatable molecules.
He studied organic chemistry at Masaryk University in Brno, going on to earn his PhD in Germany at the University of Regensburg and Masaryk University in Brno. He undertook specialized and postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Kansas, the University of Strasbourg, Goethe University Frankfurt, and Uppsala University in Sweden. Since 2019, he has headed a junior research group at IOCB Prague currently comprising 14 members, whose work is supported by two international and three national grants.
During his career, he has received a number of accolades, among which are the Josefa Hlávka Award (2020), the Alfred Bader Award in Organic Chemistry (2019), a European Photochemistry Association Award (2016), and, for his dissertation, the Jean-Marie Lehn Prize (2015).
To date, Dr. Slanina has published 28 scientific articles, with more than 800 citations, on the topics of photochemistry, physical chemistry, and organic chemistry. In 2020, he contributed to an article published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society successfully describing the process of the transformation of the excited state of benzene.
