The national award Česká hlava (Czech Mind Awards) is the most prestigious award for scientists in the Czech Republic. It has been awarded since 2002. The purpose of the initiative Czech Mind is to create awareness to the effect that the country can only prosper if it can bring up new scientists, such as the famous Czechs Otto Wichterle, the inventor of the contact lens, or the Nobel Prize winner, chemist and inventor Jaroslav Heyrovský, and if it knows how to provide them with proper materials and social recognition. One of the laureates of the Czech Mind is chemist Pavel Hobza, works at Palacký University’s Faculty of Sciences.
Prof. Ing. Pavel Hobza DrSc., FRSC, dr.h.c
He was the recipient of the national award Czech Mind in 2008 for his lifelong work and research in Computational Chemistry - the field of noncovalent interactions and their applications in biology. He is one of the academic pillars of the UP Faculty of Science and the Olomouc-based Regional Centre of Advanced Technologies and Materials. He placed in the top one percent of cited chemists in the world in the years 2014 and 2015, according to the Web of Science databases. More about prof. Hobza.