27 May 2024 – The Czech Republic joined the EMBC, the international body funding EMBO, as a member state in 1994. Zdena Palkova, EMBC Delegate and group leader at Charles University, Faculty of Science BIOCEV, Vestec, sees membership as important for the life sciences in the Czech Republic with opportunities to expand.
“We have a good number of short-term stays and exchanges funded by EMBO, but still not enough long-term fellowships and grants – so we are aiming for more applications from the Czech Republic especially for the EMBO Young Investigator Programme,” she says. “We have a lot of applications to courses, and from my side I really appreciate the EMBO | EMBL Symposia because the quality of these meetings is always very high.”
The Czech Republic joined the initiative increasing participation in the EMBO Programmes in 2022. After two years, Palkova sees positive improvements but believes it is too early to fully assess the impact of the scheme. “The initiative will clearly increase the recognition of EMBC in the individual countries. But we will see the impact later – things take time to be organized,” she says. “Two dedicated training courses will be offered in 2024 – in Prague and Ceske Budejovice. For the organization of the courses in 2023 and 2024, we had more interested people then we have seats to offer.” Palkova has mixed views about the health of the life sciences in the Czech Republic, especially in terms of access to funding. “We have a good infrastructure, but there is often a lack of money for people. It is not easy to finance staff for labs – postdocs, PhDs, young scientists and others,” she says. “We have relatively well-equipped labs in life sciences in many institutes. I would like to see more support for basic research in our country. It’s difficult to get funding and it is becoming increasingly difficult.”
