Innovative Prague XXIV
Prague is not only an amazing historical city with a wealth of monuments, excellent gastronomy, cordial residents, and a wide range of events. It is also a modern and innovative science hub. Prague excels in many fields, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, biomedicine, low-carbon technologies, data technologies and selected creative industries, providing ideal opportunities for holding conventions and conferences with the matching topics.
The 24th edition of Innovative Prague informs how Prague's scientific facilities and talented individuals are gaining ground in Pan-European research to an unprecedented extent, how Prague companies engage in tracking down traces of crime, finance the rescue of endangered animal species, or protect patients in the largest Czech hospital.
Remarkable Success of Prague Researchers on European Scale
At the end of last year, a new Center for Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing in System Brain Research – CLARA – opened in Prague. The interdisciplinary centre of excellence operates as an autonomous department of the International Neurodegenerative Disorders Research Center (INDRC) in Prague and focuses on a new generation of artificial intelligence applications with the ambition to push the boundaries of neurodegenerative diseases research, especially Alzheimer's disease. Apart from the coordinating INDRC, other scientific and academic institutions in the Czech Republic and Europe, such as CIIRC CTU in Prague, participate on the project, which receives funding form the EU's Horizon Europe programme.
Through the aforementioned Horizon Europe programme, the EU also finances grants to support the development of projects of selected young scientists. In this year's round of European Research Council (ERC) Consolidation Grants, a record 10 applicants (there were only two in 2023) from the Czech Republic were successful, of which up to 8 work at workplaces located in the capital city! The server wired reports about the unprecedented success of the young Czech researchers, and presents their mini-profiles.
Prague Companies in Service of Good
A valued partner of such organizations as the FBI, CIA, MI5 and Interpol is the Prague-based company Compelson. Its software helps with crime and accident investigation. The software they have developed for data mining, including data already deleted, from mobile phones or smartwatches and even from preserved parts of devices or from cloud services. In practice, Compelson products have already been able to convict perpetrators, refute suspicions, or retrieve details needed to determine the cause of an accident. Thanks to successful cooperation with international security leaders, the company is growing rapidly and is expanding to America and Asia. The story of Compelson and its founders was brought by the Czech version of wired magazine.
Another socially and especially environmentally beneficial project is the Tehanu Interspecies Money of Prague-based Blindspot Solutions company. The project won a special award from the expert jury in the Visionaries 2024 competition for spreading the good name of Czech innovations abroad. Tehanu Interspecies Money uses AI to identify needs and then make payments for the protection of endangered species to local communities living in the species range areas. The first interspecies financial transfer took place in August 2024 in Rwanda: a family of mountain gorillas received a digital identity and wallet. The BusinessInfo.cz informs about the Visionaries 2024 project, its organizer CzechInno and this year's awards.
From Prague... Back to Prague!
How do products of the local enterpreneurs help in their home town? For example, the HAIDI technology tool developed by Datlowe has been deployed in live operation by the Faculty Hospital of Motol – the largest medical facility in the Czech Republic. HAIDI helps doctors and healthcare staff interprete data and identify risks of possible hospital-acquired infections. In this way, every day it can save up to 80% of the time experts would spend detecting them. The Hrot24 website writes about HAIDI and other Datlowe products.
Would you like to learn more interesting facts? Browse through the previous three issues of Innovative Prague: