Charles University gets two prestigious ERC starting grants ****************************************************************************************** * ****************************************************************************************** PRESS RELEASE Charles University Ovocný trh 5, Praha 1, 116 36 http://www.cuni.cz Prague, July 27th, 2018 – Two scientists associated with Charles University, Matyáš Fendry Faculty of Science and Ondřej Pejcha from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, have rec prestigious scientific awards of the European Research Council, the so-called ERC Starting StG). Matyáš Fendrych, Ph.D., studied Biology at the Faculty of Sciences of Charles University a PhD at the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Since he returned to the after having worked for several years with research institutes in Belgium and Austria, he a research team at the Faculty of Sciences of Charles University. “The ERC Starting Grant build a team and attract top students and researchers not only from abroad”, hopes Dr Fend Information on CELLONGATE Project: While cell migration plays a crucial role in animal cell development, plants build their b careful cell division and precise cell growth control. The reason is that the plant cells by a solid cell wall that resists the hydrostatic pressure inside the cells. Even though t cell growth is in the epicenter of plant development and their response to the ambient env molecular pathways steering the developmental cell growth onset, coordination and terminat elusive. This is also the case with the plant hormone auxin; although it is the central re cell growth, the molecular mechanism of its effect is unknown. The aim of the project is t molecular mechanism and understand how plants grow at the molecular and cellular level. “O is the root of the thale-cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), in which we will combine the search proteins with special microscopy that will allow us to see physiological processes in high resolution. A detailed understanding of plant growth mechanisms opens the door to understa essentials of the plant life”, explains Dr Fendrych. Mgr. Ondřej Pejcha, Ph.D., is a graduate of Bachelor’s and Master’s Studies at the Institu Physics of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University. He continued his State University, where he completed his PhD. Subsequently he worked for four years as a p Hubble and Lyman Spitzer Jr. Fellow at Princeton University. Currently he is working on a project at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics University and the Astronomical Institute of Charles University. “I think that Primus is a in the Czech Republic that gives the researcher a great freedom of scientific research”, a Information on Cat-In-hAT Project: The project, called in full The Catastrophic Interactions of Binary Stars and Associated T deal with interactions between binary stars that significantly change their parameters suc orbital time. In some cases, these interactions may also conclude in the merging of the tw one exotic object. These processes are important for explaining the origination of a numbe objects in astronomy, such as tight binary stars composed of white dwarfs, neutron stars a This category may also include binary black holes which can eventually merge emitting grav as recently discovered within the LIGO and Virgo projects. “The specific objective of my p development and application of new modelling methods to investigate this issue”, explains "With the ERC grant, I want to expand my existing team by postgraduate and postdoctoral st deal directly with this problem. Personally, I will be able to dedicate myself fully to sc for up to 5 years thanks to the grant”, concludes Pejcha. Both scientists admit that the training provided by the ERC University Coordinator Prof. Z helped them substantially through the grant procedures. “The newly earned ERC grants are a the successful and effective support that University employees receive and, above all, the scientific research at the University”, said Prof. Tomáš Zima, the Rector of Charles Unive In addition to the ERC grants, Matyáš Fendrych and Ondřej Pejcha are also holders of the P Primus is a Charles University programme which aims to support young scientists in setting scientific teams and laboratories. In highly competitive environment of dozens application of experts select twenty top-ranked projects of young researchers, consequently supported amounting up to three million CZK per year. One of the long-term goals of the competition the University's success in obtaining international grants, which now proves to be a succe Matyáš Fendrych has received the Primus project for the years 2019–2021 for Unraveling the network that steers cell growth in plant cells. Ondřej Pejcha has earned the Primus projec and observations of astronomical transients: core-collapse supernovae and stellar mergers, September 2017 to 2020 and deals with discoveries of “new” stars in the sky. The European Research Council (ERC) funds the “frontier research”, i.e. research leading b current horizons of knowledge, across all disciplines. It supports individual investigator Investigator, PI) and their research teams. The only evaluation criterion is scientific ex both the project design and the researcher him- or herself. This, in addition to previous field, assumes that the researchers set an entirely new and revolutionary hypothesis (that a continuation of their earlier achievements) which can greatly influence the given field its frontiers, or open new research perspectives. In recent years, the number of ERC grant informal measure of the quality of European research institutions. For further information, please see https://erc.europa.eu/ [ URL "https://erc.europa.eu/ "] https://erc.europa.eu/news/mini-organs-ultrafast-filming-erc-invests-early-career-research "https://erc.europa.eu/news/mini-organs-ultrafast-filming-erc-invests-early-career-researc PROCESSED BY: Mgr. Václav Hájek Public Relations Officer – Charles University Press and PR Office Charles University telephone: +420 224 491 248 GSM: 721 285 565 e-mail: pr(zavinac)cuni.cz [ MAIL "pr(zavinac)cuni.cz "]