"TV Nova: the Neuron Foundation came into being so that we would keep talent here"

The Neuron Foundation has been honouring exceptional scientists in the Czech Republic for more than fifteen years. What motives lay behind its founding and what was new about this year's awards? That is what the chemistry student Václav Verner, the laureate of the new Neuron Rising Star award, and the foundation's director Monika Řasa Vondráková revealed on 25 January in the programme Naše Česko for TN.cz (TV Nova).

The foundation's director begins by explaining that she decided to found Neuron seventeen years ago, at a time of economic crisis. "The decision had just been taken to cut subsidies for basic research. And I personally was extremely sorry that a great many talented people were leaving for other countries because they no longer felt the necessary support here," Řasa Vondráková says.

"So we thought about how best to support them, and in the end we decided we would start giving them awards. So that they would gain in prestige as a result, and so that the general public would also understand why it is important to have such clever people here and to value them," the director of the Neuron Foundation stresses.

Vondráková is of the view that the popularity of young scientists among the Czech public is constantly growing. "I am delighted about it. It can be seen, for example, in the well-known 30 under 30 ranking, where scientists appear in the top places more and more often," she says.

New at the Neuron Foundation this year was the presentation of an award called Neuron Rising Star for great scientific talents starting out. It was won by the promising chemistry student Václav Verner. "For more than two years now I have been working at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB of the Czech Academy of Sciences), where among other things I work on developing new potential medicines. That is probably what I enjoy most, and I am also pleased by the prospect that my work might one day help someone," Vašek Verner confides.

Although the young student carries the label of a brilliant child, he admits that he too used to have problems at school. "At secondary school it was chemistry above all that I was good at, whereas in subjects I did not enjoy I often floundered. I was enormously lucky that everyone supported me on my path. Whether at secondary school or at university, where for instance they tolerated my absences, which I used to have mainly because of chemistry competitions," Verner says. And he concludes: "And I would like to stress that a lot of talented people who have become known in some way came out of the various natural science olympiads, which their organisers hold in order to popularise science among young people."

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Watch the whole programme here: https://tn.nova.cz/zpravodajstvi/clanek/639232-vondrakova-nadace-neuron-vznikla-abychom-u-nas-udrzeli-talentovane-lidi-a-dari-se-to