MIT is one of the biggest American universities when it comes to the amount of money spent on research. It attracts very successful researchers as well as brilliant students from all over the world. To support their mobility, MIT awards the Global Seed Funds each year to connect its research groups with scientists abroad. Czech Republic, although being a small country in the middle of Europe, is very popular among MIT researchers and they are greatly interested in cooperating with Czech scientists, says the author of the winning grant proposal Lukáš Grajciar.
His group from the Faculty of Science of Charles University will establish cooperation with the group of Prof. Rafael Gomez-Bombarelli on the project called “Understanding crystallization with ML-powered simulations.” What are they exactly planning on doing? “The group of Prof. Bombarelli has a broad know-how in machine learning, we, on the other hand, have much more experience in computational chemistry, which we can use to work together to better understand molecular mechanisms,” explains Lukáš Grajciar, “a short-term goal could then be publishing a review on this field.”
Even though MIT is one of the most prestigious scientific institutions, the competition for funding is not as big as one could expect according to Lukáš Grajciar. This year, the grant was awarded to three Czech groups in total but there were only 12 proposals. “The chance of getting awarded the funding is relatively good, moreover MIT plans on broadening the support for the Czech Republic as the proposals here are of very high quality,” says Lukáš Grajciar to encourage those interested, “the only thing that you need, besides a high-quality proposal, is some contact at MIT. You need to submit the proposal with a specific research partner.”
Thanks to the support, which is $ 20,000 in total, researchers and group leaders, and mainly students will have the opportunity to travel to Boston and complete a research stay at MIT. They will thus get the chance to try working in one of the best universities in the world during their studies, which will give them an important experience for their future career. In the same way, American students will be able to join the Czech research group for some time and gain insight into the work process abroad.