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Experience BUT at Researchers' Night: Where Does Cutting-Edge Science Happen?
What lies behind the doors of laboratories that are normally off-limits to visitors? This year’s Researchers’ Night will open the doors of CEITEC BUT’s cleanrooms, showcasing five state-of-the-art instruments acquired as part of the centre’s recent modernization.
One of the best facilities in the world. That is how Michal Urbánek describes CEITEC Nano, a facility that provides equipment for the preparation, examination and analysis of samples down to the nanometre scale. “During Researchers’ Night, we will guide visitors through our laboratories, where we will present the five largest, most significant and most expensive instruments. Each of them is worth around CZK 50 million,” he reveals.
During the tour, visitors will discover what these unique instruments are used for, what kind of research they enable, and why it makes sense to bring cutting-edge technologies together under one roof. Brno University of Technology is the host institution of the CzechNanoLab research infrastructure, whose facilities operate as shared laboratories accessible to a much broader community of researchers than is usual for technologies of this scale and value.
According to Michal Urbánek, who has headed CEITEC Nano for the past ten years, only a handful of universities and research institutions worldwide have access to such advanced equipment. Even fewer make it available through a shared laboratory model. “What I enjoy most is that we make these extremely expensive instruments accessible to a much wider community of researchers. Every year, hundreds of users from fields ranging from physics and chemistry to biomedicine come to work here. At the same time, we ensure that the instruments remain in excellent condition with minimal downtime,” he adds, noting that the facility is used by researchers, students and companies from both the Czech Republic and abroad.
This modernization was made possible thanks to a major investment. In 2023, the CzechNanoLab+ project secured CZK 361 million and was ranked as the best among all submitted projects. This year, that investment has taken tangible form in the newly installed instruments that visitors to Researchers’ Night will have the opportunity to see with their own eyes.
And what does Urbánek hope visitors will take away from the event? “That world-class science is expensive, but we do everything we can to ensure that every investment delivers the greatest possible value,” he concludes.
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Researchers’ Night takes place on Friday, 25 September, with all faculties and institutes of Brno University of Technology taking part. Laboratories, classrooms and research facilities will open their doors to the public, offering a programme full of experiments, interactive demonstrations and opportunities to meet researchers. More information is available on the European Researchers’ Night website. Come and discover how technologies that shape everyday life are created – and experience BUT for yourself! |
Author: Lenka Hubáčková
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