Euro: Monika Řasa Vondráková writes about the treasure that does not lie underground

Our country's greatest treasure lies in its people, and we have to look for it properly. "We have to tell young people that curiosity is not a childish trait to be 'grown out of'. It is the ability that makes you grow. We have to connect the academic world with business. And we have to stop thinking that prosperity will come of its own accord. It will not. We have to discover it, support it and bring it into the light," writes Monika Řasa Vondráková, director and co-founder of the Neuron Foundation, in an opinion piece for Euro magazine, a partner of the business paper The Financial Times.

People have dreamed of finding treasure since time immemorial. Gold coins buried under a spreading willow. An oil well with an endless supply of energy. Lithium hidden somewhere beneath the Ore Mountains. Something you only have to discover and extract to become rich. But the Czech Republic has to admit it: we are not a country of inexhaustible raw material reserves. Our real treasure does not lie underground. It walks among us. It sits in schools, in laboratories, at universities… That treasure is clever, curious and courageous people.

And it is exactly such people that the Neuron Foundation has been trying to discover, support and show to the world for more than sixteen years. It does not rely on public funds. It brings into top-class science the private money of people who succeeded thanks to ideas, courage and enterprise. Dalibor Dědek, Václav Dejčmar, Libor Winkler, Jaroslav Řasa, Ondřej Bartoš, Josef Průša, Jan Barta, Jaroslav Beck and others. Every name a powerful business story! And proof that those who have built successful companies know well that without talent, science and knowledge a society will not move forward.

Science as the engine of civilisation

Science is not a distant world of "white coats". Science is energy. The engine of civilisation. Thanks to it, new drugs, new technologies, new materials and new ways of understanding the world around us come into being. If, for instance, controlled thermonuclear fusion can be brought into everyday life, it will be an enormous breakthrough for all humanity. And similar breakthroughs await in biomedicine and technology. But for such discoveries to happen, we need people who ask the right questions.

And this is where the Czech Republic is now running into trouble. The latest data from the Czech Statistical Office show that fewer and fewer people are heading for a scientific career. The number of doctoral students is the lowest in more than two decades. At first sight this may look like a concern for universities and academics. In reality, though, it is a warning for the whole country. If we lose young talent, we lose future discoveries, new companies, patents, treatments and new opportunities. We lose a piece of our future.

When a single question can change a life

I lived for years in Israel, a country that has earned the label Start-up Nation. And there you learn one thing: when you see a problem, you do not wait for someone else to solve it. That is why at our foundation we do not just want to describe the fact that there are fewer and fewer young people in science. We are trying to change that unhappy trend. That is also why the campaign "Start with Why" came about. We want to show young people that science is not just formulas, memorising and long hours over a textbook. Science is above all curiosity. The ability to look at the world and ask: Why? Why does a cell stop obeying the system? Why is the universe expanding?

One question can change a whole life. And sometimes the world. That is why we want to show science differently. As an adventure where courage, imagination and the freedom to think all meet. For pupils and students we are preparing meetings with Neuron Award laureates and programmes that bring together a talent for research and a talent for business. We believe that combining science and enterprise is a way for the Czech Republic to grow. We have to tell young people that curiosity is not a childish trait to be "grown out of". It is the ability that makes you grow. We have to connect the academic world with business. And we have to stop thinking that prosperity will come of its own accord. It will not. We have to discover it, support it and bring it into the light.

Perhaps our greatest treasure does not lie beneath Klínovec. Perhaps it is sitting in a classroom right now, with a question in its head, a little afraid to ask it out loud, and with no idea that one day it may change the world.

Published in Euro magazine 10/2026 (18 May 2026), page 56