The administrative board has two new members

The physicist Tomáš Jungwirth and the entrepreneur Alexandra Kala are the new members of the administrative board of the Neuron Endowment Fund. They join Petr Šimůnek and Monika Vondráková. The new board will take part in the fund's further development and in the preparations for the ceremony presenting the 2022 Neuron Awards.

The new members of the administrative board of the Neuron Endowment Fund. The physicist Tomáš Jungwirth and the entrepreneur Alexandra Kala.

The outgoing board member prof. Jan Konvalinka remains chair of the scientific board, and Dita Stejskalová will go on working with Neuron on selected projects.

"Great thanks are due to both of them; with their help we launched a new chapter for the endowment fund and found in them both inspiration and practical support," says the chair of the administrative board Monika Vondráková. "It is wonderful that their work will be taken up by two more figures who have been connected with Neuron for a long time and who are outstanding in their fields. I welcome Tomáš Jungwirth and Alexandra Kala and look forward to working together for Czech science."

The founder of a new field

Prof. Tomáš Jungwirth has been part of the Neuron scientific community since 2018, when he received the Neuron Award; he is now the guarantor for the field of physics on the scientific board of the Neuron Endowment Fund and a member of the administrative board.

He received the Neuron Award in the field of physics for the discovery of what are known as antiferromagnets, which allow data to be written up to a thousand times faster than ordinary storage media. With that he laid the foundations of a new field — antiferromagnetic spintronics. His discovery holds out the promise of a revolution in information technology. Prof. Tomáš Jungwirth is also one of the four members of the international team of physicists that announced the observation of the spin Hall effect.

He studied physics at Charles University and spent his further studies in the USA. Today he is head of the department of spintronics and nanoelectronics of the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and lectures at the University of Nottingham. Prof. Jungwirth is co-author of a dozen patents, the holder of domestic and international grants and the author of two hundred specialist publications.

A philanthropist of science and education

"The significance of Czech science for us and for the world is considerable. And this wealth is precisely a fundamental resource for our future," says Alexandra Kala. For the owner of the company Profimed the main goal is to teach Czechs proper oral hygiene. Profimed first imported and distributed instruments for dental surgeries; today it represents the best-known dental brands, body care products and cosmetics. At the same time it has long supported non-profit activities focused on science and education.

Profimed has been a partner of the Neuron Endowment Fund since 2019 and its contribution forms part of the personal financial award for Neuron Award laureates. Alexandra Kala is an active participant in our meetings and now also a member of the fund's administrative board.