One of the <a href="https://marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/postdoctoral-fellowships">Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-FP)</a> schemes that supports the training of early career scientists with an emphasis on comprehensive professional and career development helped <a href="https://www.ceitec.eu/william-shakespeare-morton-ph-d/u94475">William S. Morton</a> from <a href="https://vacha.ceitec.cz">Robert Vácha’s research group</a> to fund his research at <a href="https://lcms.labrulez.com/companies/36">CEITEC</a> Masaryk University. The new call for MSCA-FP applications opens on April 10, 2024, so we wanted to learn first-hand from both William and Robert about pros and cons of this funding and find out more about this young American scientist’s motivations to do science in Brno, as William travelled across half of Europe from his last posting, and money did not play a major role.
<h5>William, when we met you told me you were doing “fake biology” and “fake physics”. Can you explain what you mean by “fake”?</h5>
If we wanted to see what happens when we drop a plate of spaghetti on the floor, we could use pasta. Instead, we could use pieces of string that are the same size, or maybe cut up elastic bands. These wouldn’t be the same as using pasta, but it would be an approximation. We could then control the conditions by tuning the exact length or material. My job is similar. Scientists at CEITEC perform a lot of cutting-edge research on proteins, and I make representations to isolate a specific property. Then we figure out if theories about our fake proteins are comparable to the real thing.
<h5>How did your journey to Brno and CEITEC begin?</h5>
I came here for an internship in 2022, during peak COVID times. My supervisor had worked with Robert when they were both at Cambridge and thought he would be the expert to help me with some computer simulations. Later, Robert mentioned the possibility of me coming to CEITEC for a postdoc. I was halfway through writing up my thesis when we called for the interview. We talked for a while and eventually I asked when he would like me to start this project. We were chatting on Thursday, and he said, ‘Monday would be great’. I thought he was kidding; he wasn&#39;t.
 Robert Vácha: Recommendations within the scientific community are extremely important. I always try to find new members of my group through someone I can rely on to recommend a good candidate. At that time, William was working with Stefano Angioletti-Uberti, who was doing simulations with polymers and nanoparticles. William had become interested in nanoparticles in contact with membranes and we have a lot of experience with that. Stefano put us in touch so that William could learn how to simulate such systems and so he came to us for an internship. A year later, we were starting a project in which the experiments were already done but the simulations with a model at the level William was working on were missing. Therefore, he was an ideal candidate and it was also an opportunity for him to get involved in an already running project. But we needed to get the simulations done as soon as possible, so I was in a hurry for his arrival.
<h5>What was the one thing that made you decide to come to Brno?</h5>
There were multiple aspects: The first one was being able to work continuously with Robert and his group, a collection of fantastic scientists. I already knew that I liked the culture and environment around Brno, everything here is very accessible, and there’s plenty of outdoor activities. The last aspect was that moving here terrified me. To put myself in the middle of a whole bunch of real biologists who are all speaking Czech? But eventually I thought, ‘cool, I think I can do this’.
<h5>At what point did the MSCA funding come into play?</h5>
It will likely come in May, I&#39;ve not signed the contract yet, the European Union still has it. But to be precise, my research will be funded by European Research Agency (ERA) as part of the Horizon Wider Area Talents program. The MSCA-PF reviewers give your grant a score from 0–100. If your score is above the cutoff for the category you’ve applied to, you earn the MSCA. This year for life sciences, the cutoff was 94.4%. If you receive above 90% on an application for the Czech Republic (the exact value varies in each area), then your grant will be funded by the ERA as part of the Horizon Wider Area Talents program. And that was my case.
<h5>How did you learn about the MSCA grant?</h5>
As soon as Robert hired me, he mentioned this. He had so many ideas of things that I could do. He pushes his group to do more for ourselves, and for CEITEC – like developing and teaching courses. It’s a great quality in a supervisor because it&#39;s hard to remember to care about all of those things at the same time, so it’s good to be reminded.
Robert Vácha: There were several reasons why I recommended the MSCA-FP grant to William. First, the MSCA-FP grant is a &quot;brand&quot;, so in addition to getting funding for his own research, the grant is a visible item on any scientist&#39;s CV, and second, it gives a young scientist a taste of what grant writing is like (and writing a first grant is always the most difficult). William and I talked about the time it would cost him, but I knew it would be time well invested because I was convinced that William had a very good chance of getting the funding. In addition to his talent and knowledge, I knew he would be a great fit for the group on a personal level. That&#39;s why I&#39;m thrilled that he has received the grant and will be able to work with us here. After all, my goal is not only to have a group of great scientists, but to make a great team that will be a pleasure to work with.
<h5>Was it difficult to administer the application?</h5>
Actually, I wasn&#39;t going to apply for the grant, originally. I didn&#39;t have enough time because I started this position while finishing my PhD. I also didn&#39;t know if I would still want to be here after a year. Then a week before the deadline, I was applying for a different grant, and thought I was already writing one anyways – so I wrote it up quickly and e-mailed the grant office. Thankfully the grant office wasn’t too mad at me, but I know it put them under extra pressure. But the whole team there is amazing, and I’m still thanking them for helping me out.
<h5>What will be covered by the funding besides your relocation?</h5>
It covers my salary, which is probably the most important part for researchers considering this grant. But the great thing is you get a pool of resource money for research. With computer simulations, it can be easy to build something bespoke: custom. When it comes time to purchase something, say a peptide, that could mean that it is expensive. Having your own resources allows you to make these purchases, without the fear that your experiment may take away funds from someone else&#39;s.
Along the way, we can also help support master students who work for us by giving them some stipend. It&#39;s something that we can do to help the community at CEITEC – bring in master students to start learning these skills.
<h5>What are the requirements you must fulfill for the funding?</h5>
To meet the requirements, I must make good on everything I promised in my application. Writing the grant feels like a fever dream, so I had to look up what I wrote once I got the news. Apparently, I promised to publish three papers but also share my research at various levels throughout the scientific and local community. Reaching out to the local community is much harder but so much more worth it, and CEITEC offers a lot of opportunities for that. I think that is going to be the goal that I care about the most. I&#39;m really excited about the Sip of Science events in TED-talk style here at CEITEC MUNI. Me and my other colleagues were already talking about how to put our research into simple terms because that is the key to a good scientific speaker. And that, I think, is often unfortunately the last thing on anyone&#39;s priority list.
I also leaned into one of the stated goals for the horizon project, which is translation to industry. Opening this type of communication can be difficult in practice but is also part of my engineering background, so it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. I’m excited to start a project from scratch with the intention of making it translatable to an industrial field. Usually that’s an afterthought. I think this helped to set my application apart from the others.
<h5>Is being “different” an advantage for getting a grant?</h5>
In every example I saw, the focus is always on the scientific part, which intuitively makes sense. But there are other questions to consider: Is the research impacted by any gender issues? Do underrepresented populations have any place in your research? These aspects tend to get marginalized. I tried to produce arguments for how my research could impact and recognize different people. This is the hardest part to write because you want to be genuine but not pandering. I sent this part to most of my friends, academics or not, just to get as much feedback as possible. Getting their feedback won’t hurt, and even if there’s nothing you can change, you can at least be aware.

Scientists should ask themself what impact science has on different people, says applicant for prestigious MSCA-FP funding

Luděk Sehnal: I see the foreign experience as essential. In Australia, I found the scientific topic of a lifetime.

A groundbreaking study from the SPRINT project, funded by the European Union&#39;s Horizon program, has unveiled a concerning reality: pesticide residues are pervasive in both agricultural environments and residential settings, raising concerns for environmental and human health. These findings, which have significant implications for European Union decision-makers, emphasise the urgent need for comprehensive regulatory measures to address the potentially far-reaching impacts of the co-occurrence of pesticides.
For decades, pesticides have been employed globally to bolster agricultural productivity, yet the cumulative effects of their residues have been largely overlooked. The scientific community are increasingly unveiling an alarming trend: pesticide residues, often assessed for risk on a substance-by-substance basis, are in fact extensively mingling in ecosystems. This issue is not confined to agricultural fields and waterbodies but also in the very homes of farmworkers and of their neighbours.
The SPRINT project undertook a <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0259748">field sampling campaign</a> in 10 European countries that identified pesticide residues at all study sites . The first <a href="(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412023005536?via%3Dihub)">peer-reviewed paper</a> presenting the sampling results has recently been published. This unique dataset has raised concerns about the consequences of such a wide distribution of pesticide residues.
<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/Recetox_SPRINT_Rezidua_15ce9451b5/Recetox-SPRINT-Rezidua.jpg" alt="Recetox: New Research Reveals Pesticide Mixtures Widespread in Environment, Urging Enhanced Regulatory Measures."/>
The SPRINT team analysed 200+ pesticide residues in over 600 environmental samples from both organic and conventional farms. The sampled matrices included soil, water, sediments, crops, outdoor air, and indoor dust. Remarkably, the study reveals that 86% of the tested samples contained pesticide residues and 76% mixtures of pesticides. The total number of different pesticides detected in the different matrices ranged from 76 in outdoor air, 78 in crops, 99 in sediments, 100 in soil to 197 in indoor dust. Most of these pesticides are on the approved EU list, but recently and long banned residues represent a significant part of the pesticide mixtures. Glyphosate residues are the most frequently detected with high concentrations over all environmental samples studied.
The indoor dust findings are particularly striking, as this might have possible implications on the health of individuals living in farmhouses and rural areas. Dust in one house contained residues from 121 different pesticides. Although the study did not assess the specific level of exposure experienced by the inhabitants, it is concerning that over two-thirds of the residues identified in the dust are classified according to the Pesticide Properties Database (PPDB)*, as being “highly hazardous” to mammals and are linked to adverse human health effects. Based on the results, the study proposed a new prioritization hazard-based indicator of pesticides for ecosystem and human health assessments that may be applied in the achievement of the pesticide reduction goal of the Farm to Fork Strategy.
Professor Violette Geissen from Wageningen University &amp; Research, SPRINT project coordinator, underscoring the far-reaching significance of these findings, said &quot;Our research highlights that the issue of pesticide mixtures transcends the agricultural field areas; it reaches the very households of those working on farms and their neighbouring communities. The results show that not only are mixtures of pesticide residues rather common in both agricultural and residential settings, but also that they can be highly complex, and variable in these settings. We need a more nuanced understanding of the impact of chemical mixtures in the field and related exposure-response data to better understand the ecosystem and human health risks. We urgently require integrated risk assessments that mirror the real-world complexity of these widespread pesticide mixtures.&quot;
The SPRINT project&#39;s next phase will delve into assessing ecosystem and human health risks posed by the identified pesticide mixtures. Equipped with the comprehensive data, the project aims to develop a novel indicator tailored for regulatory purposes, thus providing EU decision-makers with information to support tools to tackle the mounting challenges posed by pesticide mixtures.
About the SPRINT Project: The SPRINT project, funded by the European Union&#39;s Horizon program, stands at the forefront of scientific inquiry into the impacts of pesticide mixtures on agriculture and human health. With a multidisciplinary approach and unprecedented data collection efforts, the project aims to develop a Global Health Risk Assessment Toolbox to assess the impacts of pesticides on environmental and human health and to propose several transition pathways to reduce the use and risk of pesticides.
*The Pesticide Properties Database (PPDB) is a comprehensive relational database of over 1800 pesticides and their metabolites. It has principally been developed to support risk assessments. Data held includes registration information, physical chemical properties, toxicological endpoints, human health data and commercial information.

New Research Reveals Pesticide Mixtures Widespread in Environment, Urging Enhanced Regulatory Measures

A new study recently published by an international team of scientists has uncovered a significant yet previously overlooked environmental concern. It revealed that soils, particularly in populated and industrialized areas, are not just passive repositories for polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) but active contributors to air pollution and its transport to remote locations. This phenomenon contributes to the deterioration of air quality and enhances its adverse effects on human health and the ecosystem in both populated and remote locations.
<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/RECETOX_Study_reveals_soil_s_role_in_air_pollution_and_human_health_hazard_bf2388c78f.jpg" alt="RECETOX: Study reveals soil&#39;s role in air pollution and human health hazard"/>
PACs (PAHs, oxygenated-PAHs, and nitrated-PAHs) are widely distributed toxic air pollutants that are products of combustion processes ubiquitous in human and industrial activities. These air pollutants are eventually deposited and stored in soils. Mostly in summer, they volatilize from the soils and re-evaporate into the air. That way, the direction of air-soil mass exchange is reversed, soils become secondary sources of these pollutants in the air, and the pollutants are transported further away from their source region to previously unpolluted remote locations.
<a href="https://www.recetox.muni.cz/en/research/principal-investigators/prof-gerhard-lammel">Gerhard Lammel</a> from RECETOX Centre emphasizes the importance of these findings: “Such re-emissions might add significantly to the concentrations of PACs in ambient air of source areas, albeit this contribution is not yet quantifiable. Despite European efforts to reduce PAH emissions over recent decades, this study indicates that emission inventories may overlook one type of emissions i.e., secondary emissions.”
Furthermore, the research highlights the &#39;grasshopper effect,&#39; where these toxic compounds can travel long distances from their source areas, extending their hazardous impacts on the environment and human health.
For more information, please <a href="gerhard.lammel@recetox.muni.cz">contact</a> prof. Dr. Gerhard Lammel.
The research was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (20-07117S); the Max Planck Society; Research Infrastructure ACTRIS-CZ (No. LM2023030) and RECETOX (No. LM2023069) financed by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, and the OP RDE (the CETOCOEN EXCELLENCE project No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/17_043/0009632).
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170495">Link</a> to published article.

Study reveals soil's role in air pollution and human health hazard

The international conference on environment and health in Central Europe, organized on the occasion of the Czech Presidency of the Visegrad Four (V4), took place on Monday, 11 March 2024, at the library of the Masaryk University campus in Brno, Czech Republic. Organised jointly by the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Health in cooperation with the RECETOX Centre of Masaryk University, the conference brought scientists and experts from nine Central European countries (extended V4+ format) to Brno, together with representatives of the best European research institutes dedicated to research on environmental exposures and public health, as well as high level representatives of the World Health Organisation and director of the European Environment Agency.
More than 100 participants agreed that to protect people&#39;s health in the Central European region from the negative consequences of chemical exposures, we need to strengthen cooperation between the environment and health sectors, share available data and use it in decision-making processes. However, it must also be acknowledged that there is a lack of data in this region, which has many historical and cultural specificities, and the problems of Central Europe are not visible at the European level.
It is therefore necessary to strengthen cooperation among Central European countries and to formulate common regional priorities and strategies. Further, It is possible to use ongoing projects and partnerships to promote these priorities at European level, but also to seek financial resources at national and international level. The countries agreed on the need for long-term investment in research infrastructures for long-term environmental and population studies, laboratory capacities and database systems.
<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/RECETOX_Lukas_Ryznar_Konference_V4_o_zivotnim_prostredi_a_zdravi_ve_stredni_Evrope_1_2a1a05d189.jpg" alt="RECETOX/Lukáš Rýznar: Conference on Environment and Health in Central Europe."/>
The need to restore trust in science, which is declining with the development of new communication channels and social networks, was also strongly voiced. There is a need to educate youth and children and to make them literate in environmental and lifestyle issues and their impact on human health and the functioning of society, but especially in critical thinking and the ability to sort information.
In order to do this, new multidisciplinary educational modules need to be developed not only for children but also for teachers in primary and secondary schools. However, there are also gaps in university education, because in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, there is virtually no training of experts in epidemiology and environmental health, areas that are essential for the development of a comprehensive concept of public health, but also for the development of precision medicine.
<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/RECETOX_Lukas_Ryznar_Konference_V4_o_zivotnim_prostredi_a_zdravi_ve_stredni_Evrope_2_a91c7f00b9.jpg" alt="RECETOX/Lukáš Rýznar: Conference on Environment and Health in Central Europe."/>
In order to develop a personalised approach to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of chronic conditions, a better understanding of the relationships between genetic predispositions, environmental and social stressors and individual behaviour is needed. Collaborative efforts are also needed in the region to develop this education. There is an opportunity to jointly develop not only bachelor&#39;s or master&#39;s degree programmes, but also training modules for use in the lifelong learning of professionals in public health, occupational medicine and clinical medicine.
<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/RECETOX_Lukas_Ryznar_Konference_V4_o_zivotnim_prostredi_a_zdravi_ve_stredni_Evrope_3_efc95ab291.jpg" alt="RECETOX/Lukáš Rýznar: Conference on Environment and Health in Central Europe."/>
Much attention was paid to participatory programmes and public involvement in research activities that can be used not only to obtain data on population health and behaviour, but also to educate children and adults. The use of new smart technologies, such as personal sensors and samplers, is useful for this purpose.
The Czech Republic, for example has one of the oldest biomonitoring programmes in Europe operated by the National Institute of Public Health in Prague, and in Brno itself, whose Living Laboratory has been running not only the CELSPAC population studies for many years, but also participatory programmes for school children and adults, were cited as examples of good practice at these meetings.
The RECETOX Centre at Masaryk University, which has been coordinating for several years the building of the EIRENE global infrastructure for research on the effects of environmental exposures on human health, has also contributed to this.
<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/RECETOX_Lukas_Ryznar_Konference_V4_o_zivotnim_prostredi_a_zdravi_ve_stredni_Evrope_5_74d85940a8.jpg" alt="RECETOX/Lukáš Rýznar: Conference on Environment and Health in Central Europe."/>
The conclusions of the conference were presented yesterday at a follow-up meeting of Central European Environment Ministers, where the priorities of the individual countries were further discussed. One of the topics discussed at both conferences was the possibility of promoting a European research mission on the healthy physical and mental development of children and young people in the face of complex environmental, socio-economic and political crises.
This conference represents an important step towards strengthening international cooperation and dialogue between different sectors to ensure a safe and healthy environment for the citizens of Central Europe.
<img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/labrulez-bucket-strapi-h3hsga3/RECETOX_Lukas_Ryznar_Konference_V4_o_zivotnim_prostredi_a_zdravi_ve_stredni_Evrope_6_08f3581092.jpg" alt="RECETOX/Lukáš Rýznar: Conference on Environment and Health in Central Europe."/>

V4+ Conference on Environment and Health in Central Europe

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RECETOX (Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment) is an independent department of the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University in Brno, which has been established in 1983. RECETOX is focused on the research and education in cross-cutting area of Environment and Health. It addresses interactions among chemicals, environment, and biological systems, including consequences at local, regional, and global levels.

RECETOX - Centrum pro výzkum toxických látek v prostředí

Since its establishment in 2011, CEITEC has quickly developed into a cutting-edge infrastructure for research which performs highly alongside the best institutes in Europe. Among the main priorities of CEITEC are the promotion of a motivating and dynamic international scientific environment, the provision of state-of-the-art research infrastructure, and the policy of open communication and equal opportunities.

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