Prague is not only an amazing historical city with a wealth of monuments, excellent gastronomy, cordial residents, and a wide range of events. It is also a modern and innovative science hub. Prague excels in many fields, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, biomedicine, low-carbon technologies, data technologies and selected creative industries, providing ideal opportunities for holding conventions and conferences with the matching topics.

The sixteenth issue brings invitations to Prague’s innovative conferences, but also inspiration from recently awarded projects of young scientists. We will also introduce you to the latest advances of Czech scientists from the field of medicine and artificial intelligence.

Focus on Innovation

Prague City Hall has been one of the organizations focusing on supporting innovation with a growing intensity in recent years. In April, the Council of the City of Prague has approved a new subsidy program that will support events popularizing innovation, as well as exhibitions and trade fairs helping connect representatives of start-ups with small and medium-sized enterprises in the business areas designated in the Regional Innovation Strategy of Prague. In total, the city has allocated CZK 5 million for this support.

The fact that research and development is thriving in the Czech Republic, and that it makes sense to support innovation is also evidenced by the number of applications that Czech entities filed with the European Patent Office last year. In total, there were 241 of them, which is almost 9% more than in 2022, according to the VědaVýzkum.cz website,

However, support in the Czech Republic is not only aimed at the top rank scientists. The Czech branch of Siemens also aims to motivate young scientists. This year, a total of 18 promising students received its Werner von Siemens Award,, with a winning team led by Tomáš Slanina representing the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences. They won in the competition of 496 submitted projects and received the award at a ceremony in Prague’s Bethlehem Chapel. Hospodářské noviny news server reported about the details of the ceremony and awards.

In March, the Czech Technical University (CTU) also presented the best scientific projects of its students in Prague. If you are interested in how young people teach cars to see,  how they detect Parkinson’s disease from patient’s  voice, or simulate crisis scenarios in the functioning of emergency medical services, click through to the article on Novinky.cz.

Find Inspiration at Prague Conferences

The meetings season is in full swing, and we can look forward to several interesting innovative events in Prague in the coming weeks and months. At the end of April, there will be an interactive AI open day workshop for small and medium-sized businesses, where their representatives can learn how get the best of the artificial intelligence in their companies. Another event in April will be a traditional annual event of the Prague meetings innovation scene – Machine Learning Prague. Europe’s largest conference focusing on AI, machine and deep learning will once again welcome more than a thousand participants and 40 international speakers over the course of three days. Last but not least, the website VedaVyzkum.cz has revealed the date of the second year of the Prague.bio conference, which will be attended by the best experts in the field of biotechnology. This year’s conference theme will be technology investment and commercialization.

Research in Prague Helps Saving Lives

Not only us, but also our cells face stressful situations. The specific ATF4 protein ensures that they do not suffer from any permanent consequences in the form of, for example, cancer. How the cell produces this anti-stress protein has now been described in even more detail by scientists from the Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. You can read about their work on the VědaVýzkum.cz website.

Another Czech success in the field of medicine is certainly the expansion of the Prague-based start-up Carebot, which was reported by Forbes magazine. Thanks to the newly obtained international certification, it will be able to help analyze X-ray images of patients’ lungs not only in the Czech Republic, but throughout Europe. Thus, the software will help to improve detecting anomalies that are not so easily recognizable by the human eye.

Further research, which is currently underway at the Czech Technical University in Prague, can also help saving lives in the future. At the Artificial Intelligence Centre, scientists are working on how to use AI to teach robots to navigate difficult and unknown terrain and find, for example, victims of natural and other tragedies. You can listen to what the robots can do in the Czech Radio’s Radiožurnál report.

Would you like to learn more interesting facts? Take a look at the three previous issues of Innovative Prague:

• Innovative Prague XV.
• Innovative Prague XIV.
• Innovative Prague XIII.

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