Dear friends,

I would like to invite you to our next and departmental seminar, for which we will have two special guests, Dr. Claudia Roman and Prof. Moisés García-Morales  from Universidad de Huelva. The seminar will be held this Friday, 26 May at 11:00 am in the room B028 and we can look forward to the two following talks (see abstracts):

1. Phase affinity of nanoparticles in immiscible polymer blends: theoretical prediction, experimental evidences and strategies to minimize the percolation threshold
2. Case study: The selective localization of MWCNTs in PMMA/LDPE nanocomposites

You are all cordially invited to join us, listen and discuss the research of our guests. Again, snacks will be served, as well as tea and coffee, so do not forget to bring your mugs, too!

With best regards,
Sasha Zubov

Recent publication titled “Computational prodrug design methodology for liposome formulability enhancement of small-molecule APIs” has been featured on the cover page of Molecular Pharmaceutics. The paper, authored by Martin Balouch and František Štěpánek in cooperation with Kateřina Storchmannová and Karel Berka from Palacký University Olomouc and kindly supported by The Parc, reports on a new computational strategy for the design of prodrugs in order to modify their permeation rate across lipid bilayers. This is important both for poorly permeating substances to improve their bioavailability, and for very rapidly permeating substances to enable their formulation into liposomes.

Dear friends,

Contipro is one of the world leaders in the production and research of hyaluronic acid for pharmaceutcal and cosmetic industries. Representatives of our department went on an excursion to the headquarters of this biotechnological company in Dolní Dobrouč to discuss possible cooperation and the possibility of involving students in research projects.

Dear friends,

1. Lenka Krajáková: Improper behavior of ethylene polymerization
2. Erik Sonntag: ROBO-PHARMACIST: Automatic Compounding Line for Continuous Manufacturing of Personalized Multi-Component Capsules
3. Karel Mařík: Thermographical observation of the distillation process

In article Solvatochromic Shift Enables Intracellular Fate Determination of Curcumin Nanocrystals (Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 12/2022) Denisa Lizoňová, Adéla Brejchová, Eva Králová, Jaroslav Hanuš, František Štěpánek from our department describe a methodology based on fluorescence microscopy, where curcumin nanocrystals can be distinguished from cell-dissolved curcumin due to differences in fluorescence emission spectra. Thanks to this, the curcumin in the cells is visualized as blue (thus blue macrophage) and nanocrystals as red. This process depends on nanocrystal surface stabilization.

25 GAČR (Czech Science Foundation) projects are heading to UCT Prague, 13 standard projects will have the main researcher from UCT Prague, and UCT is cooperating on another 12 projects. One of the supported projects will also be solved at our department. It is called "Development of inhalable carriers for in-situ production of natural antibiotics" and the principal investigator is Ing.Ondřej Kašpar, Ph.D. Congratulations!

Dear friends,

I would like to invite you to our last departmental seminar of this calendar year, which will be held on Friday, 16 December at 11:00 am in the room B028, consisting of the three following talks:

1. Přemysl Richtr: Towards more efficient and stable zinc–air flow battery
2. Vojtěch Šálek: Mathematical modeling of fire spread
3. František Jonáš Rejl: Transfer characteristics of negative, neutral and positive system during distillation on structured packing

You are all cordially invited to join us, listen and discuss the research of our department. Again, snacks will be served, as well as tea and coffee, so do not forget to bring your cups, too!

With best regards,
Sasha Zubov

Department of Chemical Engineering would like to invite you to a lecture by Dr. Hermann J. Feise from BASF company titled „Is a climate friendly chemical industry possible?“ which will be held on Monday, 5 December from 4 pm in Uhelna.

Is a climate friendly chemical industry possible?

Dear friends,

please mark in your calendars that the next seminar of our department will be held on Friday, 11 November at 11:00 am in the room B028, consisting of the three following talks:

1. Lucie Mašková: Nature-based 3D bioprinted films for controlled in-situ synthesis of bactericides
2. Dominik Švára: Preparation of porous structures for drug delivery applications
3. Pavel Zelenka: CFD simulation of air-flow and cross-contamination in production space

You are all cordially invited to join us, listen and discuss the research of our department. Again, snacks will be served, as well as tea and coffee, so do not forget to bring your cups, too!

With best regards,
Sasha Zubov

On October 5 - 8, 2022, the teambuilding event "Běstvina 2022" took place for students of the 1st year of the Master's degree in Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering. The event was attended by 32 students who stayed for three nights at the UCT Prague camp base in Běstvina and traveled by bus on the excursion every day. The program included a total of 6 industrial excursions (Škoda Auto, Synthesia, Kemwater ProChemie, Pardubice Brewery, wastewater treatment plant in Kutna Hora) and a block of presentations by representatives of the research groups of our department. The event was organized by Jitka Čejková.

Our PhD student Ondřej Rychecký and his friends founded the H2OPODAŘ association in 2017. The H2Ospodař project prepares and presents activities in the field of water management for schools, the public and institutions. The original goal of the project was to create an interactive traveling exhibition about the cycle of drinking water and better water management in households and in nature. Several dozen events take part in this exhibition every year. They also regularly visit primary and secondary schools and are striving to become an information and educational platform focused on the careful handling of water.

Now H2Ospodař has scored in the program Hello Země! The six-month journey to the gala evening was challenging. Of all the applications for this year's SDGs Awards 2022, first Hello bank! selected 15 projects that would deserve their financial support. Bank employees then sent 10 of them to the final, where their clients already decided. From the festive evening in the beautiful premises of the National Museum, the H2Ospodař delegation, accompanied by little droplet Jarmilka, received with great joy a check for 2nd place worth 300,000 CZK! This H2Ospodař activity award is greatly appreciated by the team members, largely because it was ordinary people from Hello bank!'s clientele who had the decisive say. It means that the activity of H2Ospodař is important.

Many congratulations to the awardees and many thanks for their activities and education on how to save water.

The Scientific and Management Board of the Neuron Endowment Fund awarded the best implementation of basic research into practice. The Neuron Award for connecting science and business was awarded to Pinflow energy storage (Juraj Kosek, Jiří Vrána, Petr Mazur a Jaromír Pocedič), a company specialising in the storage of energy in redox flow batteries. 

Dear friends,

please mark in your calendars that next seminar of our department will be held on Friday, 21 October at 11:00 am in the room B028 (ex-classroom B03 in the ground floor next to the Respirium), consisting of the three following talks:

1. Simon Jantač: Electrostatic charging of powders: A perplexing multiphysics phenomenon
2. Martin Bureš: From homogeneous to “colloidal” olefin polymerization catalysts: effect of mass transport limitations on reaction kinetics and polymer microstructure
   
3. Elizaveta Mutylo: Multiple-Unit Dosage System: a flexible tool for combination therapy
   

You are all cordially invited to join us, listen and discuss the research of our department. Again, snacks will be served, as well as tea and coffee, so do not forget to bring your cups too!

With best regards,
Sasha Zubov

The first renewed seminar of our department took place on Friday, 30 September at 11:00 am in room B028 (ex-classroom B03 in the ground floor next to the Respirium).

Three talks of our PhD students were presented:

1. Marie Plachá: Pore-scale modelling of soot deposits and their impact on catalytic filter performance
2. Petr Polezhaev: Characterization of ion-exchange particles as the major functional component of heterogeneous ion-exchange particles
3. Charlie Maslen: Hydrogel microrobots

Organized by Sasha Zubov

Oratorium Marianum hall of the University of Wroclaw hosted the competition Falling Walls on Monday 26 September, 2022. The participants pitched their innovative ideas in just three minutes, showcasing a breakthrough that creates a positive impact on science and society. Our student Erik Sonntag presented "BREAKING THE WALL OF MEDICAL NON-COMPLIANCE" and took the 3rd place. Congratulations!

The University of Chemistry and Technology Prague celebrates its 70th anniversary this year. On this occasion, a paper (in Czech) by Jitka Čejková devoted to the Faculty of Chemical Engineering was prepared. First, the history of the faculty and the development of its departments is summarized. The faculty was established as the Faculty of Chemical Production, Automation and Economics in 1960 and it was renamed to the Faculty of Chemical Engineering in 1969. Further, the key scientists, teachers and deans are introduced and their contribution to the advancement of the faculty highlighted. The current offer of study programs (bachelor, master and doctoral) in both Czech and English is also listed.

Master's graduations took place on Wednesday, June 22, 2022. At the same time, the Betlemská Chapel hosted a ceremonial award with the medals of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering of three outstanding personalities who, with their scientific, pedagogical or organizational activities, contributed to the development of our faculty. Dean of the faculty prof. Michal Přibyl handed over the medal personally to doc. Pavel Chuchvalec from the Department of Physical Chemistry, doc. Jitka Čejková from the Department of Chemical Engineering and doc. Vladimír Scholtz from the Department of Physics and Measurement Technology.

Teachers from our department spent two half days out of Prague to intensively discuss about topics related to education and research at our Department of Chemical Engineering.

The linked conference SSCHE 2022 and PERMEA 2022 was organized by the Slovak Society of Chemical Engineering with assistance of the Institute of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering of the Slovak University of Technology. The conference took place in Tatranské Matliare on 23 - 26 May, 2022. There was a poster competition and the winner was our PhD student Pavel Krýsa from the group of  Miro Šoóš. The title of his poster was "Modelling of Bubble Breakage and Coalescence in Stirred and Sparged Bioreactor Using the Euler-Lagrange Approach". The second place took Standa Chvíla from František Štěpánek group. The theme of his poster was "Screening, scale-up and preformulation tests of pharmaceutical drug nanocrystals". Congratulations!

Day 1:

• Ondřej Dupal (1st place)
• Lukáš Kamenský (2nd place)
• Lucie Večerková (3rd place)

Day 2:

• Dominik Králík (1st place)
• Lucie Pilíková (2nd place) 

Day 3:

• Filip Zavřel (1st palce)

Congratulations!

This year's defenses of the Process Projects took place on Tuesday, January 18, 2022 from 1:00 pm in the AII auditorium. Students presented the results of their work in the form of 15-minute presentations, followed by an equally long discussion.  Representatives of 15 companies formerly or now cooperating with our department also took part in the defense. 

The following 6 projects are summarized in the proceedings (in Czech only)

On Friday, December 3, 2021, the Study in Prague university consortium organized an award ceremony for the extraordinary scholarships of prof. Miroslav Vlček. Among the scholarship recipients at the Prague City Hall Mayor's Residence was a student of UCT Prague – Ashley George.

Miroslav Vlček's scholarship is awarded to commemorate a professor and longtime vice-rector for external relations of the Czech Technical University in Prague, who established and developed the Study in Prague project between 2015-2019. The merger of 7 Prague public universities contributed to a higher internationalization of the university environment and attracted hundreds of international students to the Czech capital.

This prize is presented to international degree-seeking students that, in addition to their study obligations, contribute to sharing the good name of universities in Prague. As a student ambassador, Ashley has been a long-term partner of the International Department. She is not only a reference point for prospective students, but also helps with the organization of promotional events, and participates in the integration process of incoming international students.

Study in Prague

At UCT Prague

Do you also want to get an internationally recognized degree? The admission procedure for English study programs at UCT Prague is open from January 15 to February 28, 2022. Visit our website study.vcht.cz for more information.

At other universities

If you are also interested in other fields of study at Prague universities, refer to the Study in Prague website directly.

Photo credit: Zuzana Markéta Macková, AMU

Many congratulations to a team of authors lead by Denisa Lizoňová for having their work titled “Multilobed Magnetic Liposomes Enable Remotely Controlled Collection, Transport, and Delivery of Membrane-Soluble Cargos to Vesicles and Cells” feature on the front cover of ACS Applied Bio Materials. The work described new multi-compartmental liposome structures that can transport both hydrophilic and lipophilic molecular payload by means of magnetic navigation. Crucially, the paper demonstrates the ability of these structures to deliver membrane-soluble substances to cancer cells with a high efficiency.

The head of our Department of Chemical Engineering, prof. Ing. František Štěpánek, Ph.D., is currently a visiting Fulbright Scholar at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Watch on a public talk "Trends and challenges of industrial pharmacy today" as a part of Czech Science Café New York.

Student of the second year of master's degree Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering Lukáš Šatura has - as a sole representative of UCT Prage - participated in student competition "SVOČ 2021" in mathematics and physics organized by the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering CTU Prague and with his work "Thermodynamically Consistent Modelling of Phase Separation Process" has placed third in section "Applied mathematics - numerical analysis and mathematical models of dynamics". Congratulations and all the best in your future career!

Many congratulations to our PhD student Martin Balouch on his publication “In-silico screening of drug candidates for thermoresponsive liposome formulations”, which has been selected for the front journal cover of Molecular Systems Design and Engineering, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The work, which was carried out in collaboration between VŠCHT Praha and Palacký University in Olomouc and supported by The PARC, reports on a computational methodology for the selection of active pharmaceutical ingredients that are suitable for encapsulation into liposomes based on stability, capacity and permeation rate. This computational methodology has the potential to accelerate the development process of new medicines, and improve the efficacy and bioavailability of active pharmaceutical ingredients via delivery in liposomal formulations. Well done all authors for this important piece of work!

Ivan Řehoř: Mikrorogel robots

Jitka Čejková - Robot 100: Sto rozumů (book)

Even in these difficult times, we decided not to break our tradition and held the regular The Parc symposium! We had 29 presenting PhD students, this time we were also joined by potential future applicants and representatives from the Pharmaceutical Faculty of Charles University, Faculty of Science of Masaryk University and Pharmaceutical Faculty of Masaryk University. We thank all the presenters and hope our guests had an enlightening experience! On the photos, you can see some of our members in their native environments...

22 teachers from our department spent two half days out of Prague to intensively discuss about topics related to education and research at our Department of Chemical Engineering.

This year master students visited three companies only virtually. MS Teams platform was used for the group meeting with the absolvents of our department and representatives of Evonik (Dr. Robert Jahn), Zentiva and The Parc (Dr. Jiří Dohnal, Dr. Pavel Kovačík and Dr. David Smrčka) and Škoda (Dr. František Plát and his colleagues).