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5. May 2023
The city of Brno appreciates talented doctoral students in engineering and natural sciences and has been supporting them for years. At today's meeting, Brno councillors recommended that the city council approve a grant of CZK 8.25 million for the next year of the Brno Ph.D. Talent programme. The follow-up project JRGL, which is under the CEITEC BUT research centre, will also continue.
Brno Ph.D. Talent Scholarship Programme. Talent is the result of cooperation between the public, academic and non-profit sectors. The City of Brno financially supports the programme, the South Moravian Centre for International Mobility (JCMM) organises it and local universities promote the programme among their talented students.
"The main objectives of the Brno Ph.D. Scholarship Programme are to promote the development of the Brno Ph. Talent are to motivate and support promising students to successfully complete their doctoral studies. Thanks to the scholarship, young scientists can fully devote themselves to their university activities, which they can continue after their studies in various scientific institutions in Brno. The success of the programme is evidenced by the number of applications we receive for each year. On average, there are up to two hundred of them," said the Mayor of Brno, Markéta Vaňková.
An independent expert committee selects the best 25 students from the applications. They will then receive financial support for three years in the total amount of CZK 330,000 and can benefit from other positive aspects of the Brno Ph.D. Talent programme. These include, for example, the offer of courses for the development of soft skills and, above all, meeting other award-winning students.
"The Brno Ph.D. Talent Project" is a project that will help students to learn more about the skills of the Brno Ph.D. Talent has run 12 competitive years since 2009 and supported several hundred talented male and female students. Of the completed years of the project, approximately 70% of the supported PhD students have stayed in Brno in scientific positions. Many of them come from other regions or even countries, and without the Brno Ph.D. programme, they would not be able to attend the Brno Ph. Talent, they would not have come to Brno to study and work at all," said Anna Putnová, a vacant councillor in charge of cooperation with research organisations.
Another project called JRGL (short for Junior Research Group Leader) aims to increase the number of excellent research teams in Brno. This support is conceptually linked to the Brno Ph.D. scholarship programme. Talent. The grant is intended for the creation of four junior research groups with the potential to form spin-offs. The groups focus primarily on innovative research in the field of nano, micro and biotechnology or material sciences. The Brno City Council today recommended to the City Council to extend the contract for the programme with the Brno University of Technology by an amendment. The new JRGL should operate until the end of August 2026, instead of the original deadline of 31 August 2024.
"We very much appreciate the cooperation with the City of Brno on the JRGL pilot project, which specifically supports excellent research. We have had great success in bringing two foreign research groups to Brno during the course of this cooperation. Both leaders of these groups have won prestigious ERC grants, which means that Brno's investment has already been evaluated several times. We expect that both groups will additionally fulfil the original objectives of the project and contribute to the establishment of new technology startups in Brno," says Radimír Vrba, Director of CEITEC BUT.
(Translated)