Zeolites are widely employed in adsorption and catalysis due to the combination of their porous structure, confinement effects, and surface chemistry. Among their different functionalities, hydroxyl groups play a central role in determining molecular interactions and catalytic reactivity. Understanding their nature, local environment, accessibility, and evolution under working conditions is therefore essential for establishing molecular-level structure–activity relationships. In this lecture, in situ and operando FTIR spectroscopy will be used to illustrate three complementary approaches to the study of hydroxyl groups in zeolites: i) understanding their molecular environment, ii) controlling their properties through catalyst engineering strategies, and iii) monitoring their evolution under reaction conditions.
Particular attention will be devoted to silanol groups in MFI zeolites, where FTIR spectroscopy combined with probe molecules reveals distinct hydroxyl environments and hydrogen-bonding networks. Their concentration and distribution can be rationally modified through controlled post-synthesis treatments, providing a strategy for tuning molecular adsorption and catalytic behavior. Operando studies of methanol conversion further demonstrate that silanols should not simply be regarded as structural defects, but can directly participate in catalytic processes, with their local environment determining their reactivity.

The discussion will then be extended to other zeolitic systems to illustrate how FTIR spectroscopy can follow active sites, adsorbed species, and structural responses directly under working conditions. Examples involving Brønsted acidity in SAPO-34, Ge-containing MFI zeolites, and flexible RHO nanozeolites will highlight the versatility of this approach for connecting surface chemistry with adsorption properties, catalytic pathways, and material dynamics. Overall, the lecture will show how FTIR spectroscopy provides a bridge between the molecular identification of active sites, their rational modification, and their direct observation during adsorption and catalysis.

Plasma gasification has a "simple promise": don’t use fossils but electricity to create an intense heat source, convert difficult waste into syngas, and melt its inorganic fraction into slag. The engineering reality is less simple. Past projects have shown that demonstrating the chemistry is not the same as operating a reliable & economic plant. At Millenium Technologies, our question has therefore changed from "Does it work?" to "Where can it work reliably, at what scale, and for which wastes?" We are engineers rather than plasma physicists, and our work focuses on reactor development, real-wastes testing and transition from R&D to commerce. This presentation will introduce our technology and development journey, revisit past industry lessons on scale-up setbacks, share what our experiments have taught us, and explain why we see the strongest near-term case in smaller, difficult-to-treat waste applications. Practical engineering trade-offs & challenges, and the conditions required for plasma gasification to become commercially credible can be discussed during open discussion.

Heterogeneous catalysts are key players in the current energy transition. The structure of their active sites and the mechanisms they catalyze remain the subject of intense debate. Atomic-scale calculations can help decipher these aspects when combined with relevant characterization techniques and kinetic measurements. In this talk, I will illustrate recent insights gained from density functional theory calculations into the behavior of protonic zeolite catalysts and of platinum-based catalysts supported on γ-alumina. Comparing computed infrared and NMR signatures with experimental data allows the structure of surface sites to be defined more precisely. Ab initio molecular dynamics, accelerated by machine-learning interatomic potentials, opens the way to understanding the mechanisms of reactions such as alcohol dehydration and cycloalkane dehydrogenation.

Emissions control catalysis is one of the most quietly transformative technologies of the modern era. In just a few decades, catalytic converters have cut toxic pollutants from vehicles and engines by more than 95%, turning once‑polluted cities into breathable environments and preventing millions of premature deaths worldwide. This success didn’t happen by accident - it came from relentless innovation in catalyst design, materials science, reaction engineering and advanced characterisation. But the job isn’t finished. As new fuels, hybrid powertrains, distributed energy systems and global megacities emerge, the demands on emissions‑control catalysts are becoming more complex. Even with the advent of electric vehicles, emissions control catalysts will remain extremely important in some sectors.

Protein-protein interactions in solution are often dominated by electrostatics, yet the underlying protein charge is remarkably hard to pin down. Direct experimental methods require complex setups and report only a model-dependent effective charge, so computational prediction methods are commonly used instead - yet these frequently disagree with one another, making their reliability difficult to assess. Here we show that the effective protein-protein pair interaction potential (PIP), measured in the native solution environment by cryogenic electron tomography and predicted from an amino-acid-level coarse-grained model, provides a quantitative benchmark for these methods. Across three globular proteins and a range of pH and buffer conditions, we find that
the orientationally averaged PIP is, to within our resolution, principally governed by the net charge. The predicted net charge is thus the dominant determinant of the modeled PIP, and comparison with the measured PIP makes it possible to assess the schemes that assign charges to the protein. The comparison is sensitive enough to detect subtle, buffer-specific shifts, which we independently trace to direct buffer binding by NMR. Our approach turns the measured PIP into direct experimental feedback on charge prediction and offers a route to refining coarse-grained models of protein interactions.

Photoredox catalysis has re-emerged as a powerful platform for synthesizing high-value molecules academically and industrially. This lecture discusses photochemical systems that harness, transduce, regulate, or transfer visible-light photon energy to drive challenging transformations, enabling activation of inert bonds—including simultaneous activation of two bonds—and new bond-construction strategies such as heteroarene insertion into carbon–heteroatom bonds. Visible-light-driven nickel photoredox catalysis is presented for general C(sp²)–(hetero)atom cross-coupling: the adaptive AD-HoC platform enables systematic categorization and predictable coupling of diverse nucleophiles, demonstrated across nine bond-forming reactions (C(sp²)–S, Se, N, P, B, O, C(sp³/sp²/sp), Si, Cl) spanning hundreds of examples, with reaction centre and conditions adaptable via nucleophile choice and, if needed, an inexpensive amine base. Finally, a complementary two-electron regime enables alkene dicarbofunctionalization with organic halides and CO₂, yielding carboxylic acids via two C–C bond-forming events: combining halogen-atom transfer (XAT) and single-electron transfer (SET) activates aryl/alkyl halides beyond conventional reduction limits, with XAT generating carbon radicals and SET promoting carbanion formation and CO₂ incorporation, giving carboxylated products in yields up to 94% across fifty-plus examples.

We would like to invite you to a seminar presented by Dr. Labuta from National Institute for Materials Science in Japan and his colleagues, Dr. Takai and Dr. Uto.

Dr. Labuta: Porphyrins in diverse sensing applications

Dr. Takai: Molecules on the Move: Self-Assembly Design for Dynamic π-Systems

Dr. Uto: Engineering Spatio-Temporal Biomaterials for Materiobiology

Wednesday May 20

12:00–14:00 Arrival and accommodation

14:00–14:15 Opening and foreword

14:15–15:30 Postdoc Lectures (10 min + 5 min discussion): Vyshakh Panakkal, Hale Umatai, Banerjee Palash, Ayoub Benaddi, Parthiban Velayudham, Raju Kumar Singh

15:45–16:15 Coffee, tea and other beverages break

16:15–17:00 Towards Habilitation and Future Plans of Assistant Professors (a.k.a. JP’s table, 5 min): Lucie Nová, Chris Heard, Pavla Eliášová, Jan Přech, Michal Mazur, Junjie He

17:00–19:00 Volleyball, botanical excursions and other free activities 

         ≈19:00 Prof. Jiří Zima (rector of Charles University): Discussion about future of Charles University

19:30–24:00 Dinner at the fire (if weather permits)

Thursday May 21

  9:00–10:00 Dr. Manmatha Mahato (PřF UK): "Antagonistic Nanoengineered Organic Frameworks for Flexible Electrochemistry”

10:00–10:30 Postdoc Lectures (10 min + 5 min discussion): Martin Kubů, Monika Remzová

10:30–11:00 Coffee, tea and other beverages break

11:00–12:00 Lectures of PhD students (1^st year students 5-10 min + 5 min discussion, other 10 min + 5 min):  Tereza Benešová, Tuba Ayca Tunca Arin, Michaela Vaňková, Guilherme Brígido Rosa

12:00–14:00 Lunch

14:00–15:30 Lectures of PhD students (1^st year students 5-10 min + 5 min discussion, other 10 min + 5 min):  Peter Illés, František Krakl, Adéla Olšovská, Kundan Patel, Marek Plachý, Klára Veselá, Marek Živný, Syamantak Ray Sarkar

15:30–16:00 Coffee, tea and other beverages break

16:00–17:00 Dr. Katarína Pšenáková (PharmTeon): “Building Bridges Beyond Academia and Biotech – From a Global Hub to a Local Engine of Innovation”

17:00–19:00 Volleyball, botanical excursions and other free activities 

19:00–21:00 Dinner

Friday May 22

  8:00–10:00 Breakfast and Departure

Highly efficient antimicrobial polymer nanofiber membranes and nanoparticles that use inactivation of a pathogen via photosensitized generation of singlet oxygen will be presented. The antimicrobial mechanism includes excitation of the photosensitizer encapsulated or externally bounded to nanomaterials by visible light, formation of its triplet states followed by energy transfer to triplet oxygen leading to short-living singlet oxygen formation. Since singlet oxygen is a great oxidant of biological targets, the antibacterial and antiviral effect is very powerful. The singlet oxygen-sensitized delayed fluorescence of a photosensitizer can be observed and used as a sensitive tool for detection of oxygen, imaging of singlet oxygen and distribution of a photosensitizer. Modifications of nanomaterials enabling size selective inactivation of pathogens, generation of singlet oxygen via thermolysis of endoperoxides or photoproducing NO radical or I₂ with the aim to increase their antimicrobial effect will be also mentioned.

Molecular building blocks provide a versatile platform for exploring the exotic quantum phases and complex many-body physics. Here we demonstrate a showcase system based on pure-carbon, defect-free, charge-neutral fullerene networks, which can be constructed from a molecular synthon with quantised spins due to symmetry. We report a rich variety of condensed matter models that are challenging to realise, including antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 chain in Janus fullerene nanoribbons, ferromagnetic Haldane fullerene monolayers, and altermagnetic Shastry-Sutherland fullerene networks that can be continuously tuned into a quantum spin liquid phase. Our findings open new a frontier for exploring quantum phenomena based on scalable, chemically-stable, molecular building units can potentially operate at room temperature.

3D zeolites play a central role in heterogenous catalysis and separation technologies owing to their microporosity and chemical robustness. More recently, their 2D counterparts—zeolite nanosheets—have attracted growing attention. While often valued for improved surface accessibility and reduced diffusion limitations, 2D zeolites offer possibilities that extend beyond conventional applications. Their ultrathin architecture enables integration into ordered films and hybrid materials, opening perspectives in areas outside the common zeolite applications, such as assembly of hybrid materials, optics or electrochemistry. This lecture will present recent advances in the synthesis, exfoliation, and assembly of 2D zeolite nanosheets into uniform thin films (~ 2 nm ≡ 1 unit cell), highlighting research carried out during a two-year stay in Japan. These films are facile to prepare and deposit and can be tailored not only for catalytic and separation processes but also as ultrathin corrosion-resistant coatings or for construction of hybrid functional materials.

Proteins are essential building blocks of biogenic materials, forming both purely protein-based structures and composite materials where they mediate specific interactions with other biopolymers or mineral surfaces. Using single-molecule force spectroscopy, our goal is to establish fundamental sequence-structure-mechanics relationships of protein-protein and protein-surface interactions, and to utilize these for the bottom-up assembly of bioinspired materials. Focusing on a diverse array of structural protein motifs found in nature (e.g. coiled coils, chitin-binding and magnetite-binding proteins), we have unraveled the molecular factors that govern their mechanical stability and binding strength. This knowledge is used to build libraries of mechanically calibrated protein motifs, which serve as building blocks for mechanoresponsive materials with tunable properties. Ultimately, we aim to translate these molecular-level insights into materials with self-healing and self-reporting functions.

Flexible electrochemical technologies–bendable batteries, wearable sensors, and soft robots–demand a rare combination: fast electronic transport for efficiency and ion-driven chemistry for energy storage, catalysis, and actuation. Most materials force a trade-off. Conductive Networks such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, and MXenes shuttle electrons rapidly but often offer limited redox-active chemistry. Many metal oxides provide high ionic charge storage and rich redox reactions, yet their poor conductivity constrains performance, especially in thin, flexible devices. This seminar presents a strategy to break this bottleneck using nano-engineered metal–organicframeworks and covalent–organic frameworks–crystalline, porous molecular scaffolds programmable at the building-block level. By tuning pore architecture, redox-active sites, and charge-transport pathways, we create frameworks where electrons and ions operate synergistically rather than competitively. The result is a versatile platform for high-density energy storage (batteries and supercapacitors), electrocatalysis, and electrochemical transduction in soft systems. We conclude with a real-world demonstration: near‑zero‑voltageartificial muscles–flexible actuators capable of lifting ~34× their own weight–highlightingopportunities for ultra‑low‑power soft robotics, responsive textiles, and multifunctional wearables.

• AI boom
• AI today
• How AI works and how to (co-)operate with it
• AI across the sciences
• ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini
• How to leverage AI in programming
• The future of AI

The centrosome presents a material science paradox: how gigapascal-stiffness microtubules might be structurally anchored within a seemingly soft, viscoelastic hydrogel matrix. In the proposed talk, I will describe this organelle as a potential "supramolecular reactor“ and suggest how self-organization can confine reactants to modulate catalytic polymer nucleation. Furthermore, we discuss the hypothetical role of the centriole in guiding the orthogonal geometry and maintaining spindle integrity in cell division.