Brain Awareness Week is a series of events held around the world to increase public awareness of the brain. Top Czech scientists attracted more then 1,300 students with lectures as part of the annual Brain Awareness Week that took place in the administration building of the Czech Academy of Sciences extending from 10-13 March 2008. and Gabriela Adámková.
The mission of the conference held from 7 to 10 October 2008 was two-fold. The first was to focus on these women from all over the world who discussed their own experiences, both good and bad. The participants promoted their own individual research, as well as established contact with international colleagues in an effort to have greater access to funding for continuing their research. The second aspect of the conference directly addressed a problem of the low numbers of women entering the field of physics. Delegates discussed efforts to promote women in physics in their own country as well as promoting women in physics on the international scale. and Raji Heyrovska, Jarmila Kodymova, Vera Hamplova.
In this issue, we feature an interview with the president of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (AS CR), Prof. Jiří Drahoš. The interview focuses on funding science and research at AS CR and the methodology that has become the universal tool for distributing money to the whole Czech science as a whole. On the basis of this government-conceived tool, the institutional financial grant for the AS CR should be reduced by about 50 percent by 2012. and Marina Hužvárová.