Third place and the Audience Award in this year’s Czech final of the Falling Walls Lab 2024 international competition, which took place at the National Technical Library in Prague, went to Marie Pražáková, a student of the UP Faculty of Science, with her project Breaking the Wall of Manganese, Medicine & MRI. Riccardo Fusco, a student of the Institute of Molecular and Translational Medicine at the UP Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, who works in the Innovative Chemistry research group at UP CATRIN, was also among the top ten participants.
Contestants’ presentations were in English in a “pitch-talk” format, with a maximum of three minutes’ long. Marie Pražáková is a doctoral student in Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Inorganic Chemistry and also a UP Endowment Fund scholarship holder, which supported her projects for the third time. In her research, Pražáková focused mainly on the preparation of new coordination compounds with manganese and their use in medicine, especially in the field of tomography, magnetic resonance and positron emission tomography. She is also investigating the possibility of their use in the field of theragnostics, which includes therapy and diagnostics.
“I am very happy that I could present my scientific work in the finals and very briefly introduce one of the newer projects I am working on to the public. It focuses on theranostic compounds containing manganese, where I combine a potential contrast agent (a unit containing manganese) and a cytostatic containing another metal, such as platinum (a unit to destroy cancer cells). I still cannot believe that the jury and the audience liked the presentation so much that I won third place as well as the Audience Award. It definitely makes me happy and motivates me to continue doing what I do, whether science or its popularisation,” said Pražáková.
Another national finalist, Riccardo Fusco, a PhD student at the Institute of Molecular and Translational Medicine at the UP Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry who works in the Innovative Chemistry research group at CATRIN, spoke on the topic of Breaking the Wall of Accelerated Nano-droplet Cancer Therapeutics. Under the guidance of Prof Alexander Dömling, he is contributing to the development of the breakthrough technology AMADEUS for faster, cheaper and more sustainable drug development. “It was nice to present the research. It is not my first experience, but it was the first time I had to explain the project in such a short time. I consider quality science communication to be very important,” he said.
The Falling Walls Lab international competition was held under the auspices of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in the Czech Republic and the National Technical Library for the ninth time. The competition is intended for students, young scientists, or innovators who present their research project, business plan or civic initiative in English to an audience and expert jury.