HN: How Neuron now supports young Czech scientists too

Monika Řasa Vondráková, director of the Neuron Foundation, talked about top-class science and its support in the Morning Briefing for Hospodářské noviny. Editor-in-chief Jaroslav Mašek himself asked about the newest Neuron Award 2025 laureates, the foundation's patrons and its latest developments. What did he want to know?

HN: Let us first recall who won your main award this year, and why.

Our main award went to Professor Eva Kubala Havrdová, who has changed the lives of thousands of people. She works at the Department of Neurology of the First Faculty of Medicine of Charles University and is among the doctors who have fundamentally changed the shape of care for patients with multiple sclerosis, both in the Czech Republic and internationally — and she was in fact there at the birth of modern biological treatment, which helps those patients enormously. And that is exactly what spoke to us so strongly. She is also the very first woman to receive this highest award, so we are delighted about that.

HN: Who decides on that "first"?

We have our own scientific council. And because this Neuron Award is the highest, everyone from every field has to agree on that one single name, so it is an enormous advantage that it has to pass through all the fields. And then we have confirmation through Neuron's international scientific council, which has the last word that yes, this is someone who is known worldwide and has really done something groundbreaking.

HN: This year you also presented an award for young scientific talents at an early stage of their career for the first time. It is called the Neuron Rising Star — why did you introduce it?

This award actually came about spontaneously. It was after I first met Václav Verner to congratulate him on his international success in winning a gold medal at the chemistry olympiad. He told me then that he had worked at it all year, that it had been incredibly complicated and hard, that he had put a lot of time and effort into it, and that in the end he had brought home a medal but that was more or less all there was to it — and I thought it would be wonderful to support someone at that early scientific stage financially and in the media as well. To give him wings so that he reaches genuine world-class science even faster, and so this idea was born. Then I looked for someone to fund it, for a patron for this new category. And it occurred to me to approach the businessman Jaroslav Beck, who does a great deal to support young people and talents. It worked out and we are enormously pleased about it.

HN: And can we say something more about Václav Verner?

Vašek Verner is a chemist. What is unique is that at the age of seventeen he loved chemistry so much that he already wanted to study at university, but unfortunately the law does not allow it. Without a school-leaving exam you cannot study at university until you have one. And because Václav is so curious and pursues what he wants, with real passion in him, he of course found a way round it and started attending the University of the Third Age, where he began collecting credits, so that when he passed his school-leaving exams he went straight into the second year. He is simply amazing, he is superb.

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Listen to the whole interview here: https://podcasty.hn.cz/c1-67837790-jak-neuron-podporuje-nove-i-mlade-ceske-vedce-a-kteri-mecenasove-se-letos-k-ceskym-nobelovkam-pridali

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1cnpl2XiWk2U61tva54KrJ