Czech-BioImaging celebrates its 10 year anniversary!

In 2025, Czech-BioImaging celebrates its 10th anniversary. Czech-BioImaging is the national infrastructure that brings together 16 leading imaging centers across the Czech Republic, including all the facilities that make up Euro-BioImaging’s three Czech Nodes. In honour of this milestone, a celebratory meeting was held in Prague on March 18, 2025. The event brought together key representatives from Czech-BioImaging, Euro-BioImaging, and the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic, and the scientific community to discuss the sustainability of large research infrastructures. All three Euro-BioImaging Directors attended the event to celebrate the achievements of this amazing imaging infrastructure. It was also the occasion to visit the CAPI Node, a multimodal imaging centre in Prague.  

A key infrastructure in the European landscape 

One of the key principles of Czech-BioImaging is providing open access to top-tier technologies for biological and medical imaging, allowing not only academic institutions but also industrial partners to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies. They also run a very active training program on a wide range of imaging technologies.

In this, Czech-BioImaging’s mission fully aligns with Euro-BioImaging’s mission, and Czechia is a founding member of Euro-BioImaging ERIC, participating in the preparatory phase since 2009. Today, Czechia has three Nodes, the Advanced Light & Electron Microscopy Prague Node, the Advanced Light and Medical Imaging Brno Node, and more recently, the Centre for Advanced Preclinical Imaging (CAPI) Node. With state-of-the-art infrastructure and helpful expert staff, the three Czech-BioImaging Nodes together are the fourth most requested national Nodes by Euro-BioImaging users. In addition, Czech researchers are the 8th largest national user group at Euro-BioImaging, taking advantage of open access to imaging via Euro-BioImaging.  

Important contributions to Euro-BioImaging

Aside from high quality service provision, Czech-BioImaging Node staff are active members of different Euro-BioImaging’s expert groups and make important contributions as presenters and attendees to Euro-BioImaging organised events such as the Virtual Pub, the All Hands Nodes Meeting, the User Forum, the Image Data Community Days and other Image Data events. In addition, Czech Node staff actively participated in the EVOLVE Job shadowing programme, by hosting visitors from other Nodes and by visiting other Nodes to learn new skills. 

A day of celebration

Pavel Hozak, Director of Czech-BioImaging and active member of Euro-BioImaging’s Advanced Light and Microscopy Prague Node invited the Euro-BioImaging Directorate to participate in their celebration on March 18. The event comprised an afternoon workshop on "Long-term Sustainability of Research Infrastructures" hosted by the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IMG-CAS) with presentations focusing on the topic of Research Infrastructure  impact and evaluation. Many familiar faces were there. The agenda featured the following insightful talks: 

• The Journey of Czech-BioImaging Over the Past 10 Years (Pavel Hozák, Director, Czech-BioImaging)
• Czech-BioImaging’s Position and Impact in the European Roadmap (Euro-BioImaging General Director - John Eriksson) 
• The Role of ESFRI and Euro-BioImaging in Shaping the Future of Bioimaging in Europe  and Evaluation of European RIs (Euro-BioImaging Bio-Hub Section Director– Antje Keppler)
• Strategic Long-Term Support for Research Infrastructures in Czechia: Insights from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (Marek Vysinka, Head of the Department for RIs; MEYS representative)
• Evaluation of Research Infrastructures: Best Practices for Assessing Quality and Impact (International Advisory Board representative – Julia Fernandez Rodriguez, Head of CCI, University of Gothenburg)
• Collaboration with Hosting Organizations, Vision for the Future and Final remarks (Supervisory Board Chair – Julius Lukes)

In the evening, there was a social event for networking with the Czech imaging community as well as ministry representatives. It was a great celebratory moment, after a day packed with lots of insights on the best way to measure impact of research infrastructures and ensure their future. 

Read the full article on the Institute of Molecular Genetics (IMG Prague) website.

A visit to the CAPI Node 

Linda Chaabane, the section director of the Med-Hub, took the opportunity while in Prague to visit Euro-BioImaging’s Center for Advanced Preclinical Imaging (CAPI) Node, led by Ludek Sefc, Head of the department at the Charles University in Prague. 

Together with Pavla Francova, senior imaging scientist at CAPI, they discussed facility developments and challenges and had a tour of the imaging facility which includes multiple advanced imaging techniques: High-Field MRI, CT, PET, Magnetic Particle Imaging, optical Imaging and more. 

“It was amazing to learn how CAPI staff push forward their imaging instrumentation through internal developments of innovative solutions by young scientists,” remarks Linda. “The CAPI Node is highly active in supporting user projects by providing all their expertise in the field of in vivo preclinical imaging which is specifically important for Cancer Research projects.” Read the story about Dr. Mohamed Elgendy’s cancer metabolism project which nicely highlights CAPI’s ability to support cancer research.

All in all, the visit to Czechia was very insightful and inspiring. We want to thank Czech-BioImaging for the invitation and keep up the good work!