The fantastically successful year of Professor Jana Roithová of the Faculty of Natural Sciences continues. The number of awards and prizes this exceptionally gifted chemist received this year was in November augmented by the Ignaz L. Lieben Award, also known as the Austrian Nobel Prize. Professor Roithová received it in person on Wednesday, November 12, at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
“I feel very well now. But it is also a large responsibility. I mustn’t let down the people who nominated me,” Professor Roithová smiled. “I would have never thought of running for this prize because I never thought I could possibly win. I was nominated by my colleagues from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Letters of recommendation were then written by Professor Josef Michl of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and Professor Helmut Schwarz, with whom I did my postdoc. Currently, he is President of the Humboldt Foundation in Germany. I think the letters of recommendation contribute very much to being chosen,” Professor Roithová remarked.
Ignaz L. Lieben Award is awarded to scientists under 40 years of age who work in physics, chemistry, or molecular biology research and come from the Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, or Slovenia. The winner is selected by a special committee of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Professor Roithová received the award for her research in physical organic chemistry, in particular the use of mass spectrometry in combination with infrared spectrometry to study chemical reactions and properties of individual reacting particles.
Ignaz L. Lieben Award was given to talented sciences since the 1860s as a legacy of the benefactor Ignaz L. Lieben. The tradition, however, was interrupted by the WWII and renewed only in 2004. Professor Roithová is the first Czech to receive the Lieben Award. The award comes with a financial prize of 36,000 USD (app. 800,000 CZK).
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Prof. Mgr. Jana Roithová, Ph.D., (born 1974) studied organic chemistry at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Charles University. She continued with her doctoral studies at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague. Then she left to the Technical University in Berlin, where she worked as a postdoc in the Professor Helmut Schwarz’s team. Upon her return to the Czech Republic, she worked first in the Institute of Physical Chemistry of Jaroslav Heyrovský of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Then she accepted a position at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Charles University, where she currently heads the Department of Organic Chemistry. By using mass spectrometry in combination with infrared spectrometry, Professor Roithová and her team study chemical reactions and especially the properties of individual reacting particles. Her research may lead to explaining the detailed progress of particular reactions, thus enabling intentional and precise interventions in those reactions. In practice, this could lead to improvements in production technologies of various chemical products. ¨ Professor Roithová received a number of scientific grants and her research won many awards. In 2005, she received Josef Hlávka Prize, which is regularly given to best university graduates and young researchers. Three years later, she became a recipient of the L’Oréal Scholarship for Women in Science. In 2009, he work in science was awarded by the Dean of the Faculty of Natural Science. A very important award and financial support for her research came in 2010 when she won the ERC Junior Grant (Grant of the European Research Council) to fund her project ‘Ion Spectroscopy of Reaction Intermediates’. The European Research Council released for her project a sum of 1.29 EUR, which are to be used by the end of 2015. This year, too, has been a very successful one for Jana Roithová. In the spring, she was appointed professor. On May, 14, she received the Neuron Award for Promising Young Scientists for outstanding research in chemistry and a week later, she received the Award of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic for Young Scientists. This year, her research was supported also by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic and now, in the final quarter, also by the Austrian Academy of Sciences which granted her the Ignaz L. Lieben Award. |
Source: iForum
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