Dear students,

choose your ombudsman! On the initiative of student senators of the Academic Senate of the Faculty of Science UP, elections for the student rights defender (i.e. ombudsman) were announced. The ombudsman will act as an advisor, mediator or negotiator between students and teachers (e. g. in case of harassment or disagreements between students and teachers).

Students always nominate a pair from among the teaching staff (female and male). Candidates for the ombudsman must be members of a teaching staff or professors emeriti who must be from another field of study (mathematics and computer science, chemistry, physics, biology and earth sciences). The nominated candidate cannot hold the position of dean, vice-dean or head of the department. He also cannot be a senator or a member of an Ethics and Disciplinary Committee.

Every student can nominate the ombudsman by midnight on October 31, 2021 by sending a scanned nomination sheet by e-mail to the chairwoman of the student part of the senate, Mgr. Viktorie Nesrstová (viktorie.nesrstova@upol.cz) or by submitting the nomination sheet (in Czech) to the mail box of the Academic Senate on the ground floor of the Faculty of Science (next to the Student Affairs Office) or to specially established ballot boxes. These will be located on the ground floor of the main building of the Faculty of Science (17. listopadu 12) and in the premises of the Faculty of Science in Olomouc – Holice (building no. 47).

During the first week of November, profiles of candidates will be posted after the nominations. An electronic poll will take place in the second week of November, in which students will vote for the couple for the position of ombudsman and his/her deputy. Based on the results, student senators will propose a selected pair of candidates to the Academic Senate of the Faculty of Science for approval.

HR Award
Palacký University received the prestigious “HR Excellence in Research Award” from the European Commission in the field of quality care for human resources in science and research. The certificate confirms that UP guarantees European standards of employee care for scientists and researchers, support for their professional development and transparency of the selection procedure. More information here.

Dean's Award for authors of prestigious scientific publications
The Dean of the Faculty of Science will award the authors and author groups of teaching and popular science texts, monographs and original scientific publications. Submitting the publication will be possible from October 1, 2021. Newly, the publication (file of publications) is submitted by the author via a web form on the Portal. You can find the application form here https://elf2.upol.cz/Formular/Typ/Ostatni-formulare. If the publication is already listed in OBD, it is possible to use automatic retrieval of data from OBD when filling it out. The printed and signed application must be delivered by internal mail to the Department for Science and Research of the Faculty of Science UP to Bc. Barbora Krudencová no later than November 15, 2021.

Submitted publications must meet the following conditions:

• Scientific journal where the paper is published, in a given subject class, according to the Web of Science, is in the 90th percentile or above.
• The proposed scientist is an employee of the Faculty of Science with workload of minimum 50 %, and he/she presents the affiliation of the Faculty of Science as the main workplace.
• The main or corresponding author of a given publication must be an employee of the Faculty of Science UP.
• The publication was published in print in 2021. Papers published in 2020 can also be submitted if they were not entered in the competition in the previous year.

GA ČR Call for submission of Polish-Czech projects (with the beginning of implementation in 2023)
The Czech Science Foundation (GA ČR) has announced a call for projects based on the Lead Agency evaluation principle, with implementation expected to begin in 2023. The call concerns projects funded in cooperation with the Polish National Science Center (NCN) under the Weave initiative. In this call, the Polish agency NCN acts as the Lead Agency, i. e. it evaluates project proposals and the GA ČR takes over the results of the evaluation process.

The competition period begins on September 15, 2021. The Czech part of the application can be submitted no later than December 22, 2021, i. e. within 7 days after the official deadline on December 15, 2021 (until 16:00), which was set for Polish applicants by NCN.

If you are interested in submitting this international grant, please contact the Department of Project Support employee Miriam Delongová (miriam.delongova@upol.cz). No later than December 17, 2021, a form “zelená košilka” must be submitted together with the project proposal containing at least the name of the project, an abstract, a composition of the research team and a budget.

The text of the call, tender documentation and other information (e. g. on the concurrence of project proposals) can be found on the provider's website (in Czech). Faculty deadline: December 17, 2021. Contact person: Miriam Delongová (miriam.delongova@upol.cz).

Scientific-research projects 2021/2022
New selected calls to support scientific-research projects with a view to the period 2021/2022 can be found at https://www.prf.upol.cz/zamestnanci/projekty/ (in Czech). The dates for opening the calls are updated to September 2021 and may change during the year.

If you have any questions, please contact Mgr. Silvia Šavrňáková (silvie.savrnakova@upol.cz).

MIT – Czech Republic Seed Fund
MIT - Czech Republic Seed Fund was launched in 2021 and is a new joint project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague), with funding provided by the IOCB Prague subsidiary MOVB Tech. Through the annual call for proposals, the fund supports exchanges between MIT, member research institutions of the Czech Academy of Sciences and all universities in the Czech Republic. The fund is open to all disciplines with a subsidy of up to 25,000 USD. Applications must be submitted by December 13, 2021.

Priority will be given to projects that propose a balanced exchange between MIT and Czech participants; involve students and young scientists; are new or entering a new phase; are likely to be sustainable even after the grant period. More information can be found on the websites of FS projects (in Czech) in the section Ministries and Funds / MIT - Czech Republic Seed Fund. If you have any questions about MIT – Czech Republic Seed Fund, please contact Ing. Tea Pokorná (tea.pokorna@upol.cz).

Hosting of American academics
Fulbright Czech Republic renews the Fulbright Specialist programme for short-term 2-6 week stays of American experts. Applications for 2022 can be submitted until September 30, 2021. All information, including program descriptions, online applications and instructions, is available at https://bit.ly/Specialist2022.

Fulbright-NARA
We would also like to inform you about the new Fulbright-NARA scholarship in fields related to the protection and preservation of cultural heritage, interdisciplinary heritage science, which represents a complex of scientific disciplines from humanities to highly specialized technical fields. The grant is awarded for a stay at the Heritage Science Research and Testing Lab in College Park, Maryland. The programme for 2022/23 ends on October 15, 2021. Details of the program content, disciplines, and application are available at https://bit.ly/Fulbright-NARA.

The meeting of the Academic Senate FS UP will take place on October 27, 2021 at 13:00. Detailed information and materials for the senate are published on the website https://www.prf.upol.cz/o-fakulte/fakultni-organy/akademicky-senat/ (in Czech).

Dean’s Award for the Best Teacher
The Dean of the Faculty of Science has announced the Dean’s Award for the Best Teacher. Students of third and higher years of Bachelor study and students of the Master study can participate by choosing the best teachers by vote. Each student can nominate up to three teachers, who will be assigned votes with a weight of 1,0, 0,7 and 0,5, respectively. In order to vote, it is required login to the Portal, the vote itself is anonymous. Voting takes place on the website until September 30, 2021. The best teacher for each of the five fields (mathematics and computer science, physics, chemistry, biology and ecology, earth sciences) will be awarded.

Plans of study for academic year 2021/2022
The lists of courses (plans of study) for the academic year 2021/2022 can be found on the faculty websites.

Online confirmation of study
You can print your confirmation of study online directly from your Portal.

Individual study plan of the doctoral students in their first year
Students in the first year of the doctoral study programmes have to submit their individual study plan by September 30, 2021 to their Student Affairs Officer. The plan has to be signed by the student, his/her supervisor and the chairman of the Subject-area Board.

UP Crowd
UP Crowd student association, which unites everyone interested in popularizing science, greets all students and announces the recruitment of new members. If you have an idea or a project that you want to support or just want to embark on something (we have a wide range of our ongoing popularization activities), you will be warmly welcome! Contact us at the e-mail address upcrowd@upol.cz.

Park of the Year 2021
If you like and enjoy the park of the Science and Research Center of the Faculty of Science UP in Olomouc – Holice, vote for it in the Park of the Year 2021 competition. You can vote on this website (in Czech).

Board Games
The DoUPě Olomouc board games club opens again! Come and play modern board games every Tuesday and Thursday (always from 16:30) in classroom 1.037 in the main faculty building. There are about 200 games available on site, and if you can't find one there, you can also inquire about the home supplies of regular participants in game meetings or bring your favorite game and teach it to others. More information at https://www.facebook.com/groups/DoUPeOlomouc/ or by e-mail kdholomouc@seznam.cz.

Don't judge. Help!
The Gratia Endowment Fund supports studying and single parents. Therefore, it is looking for volunteers from the field of IT, online marketing, students of pedagogical, economic, social and legal fields, nannies and teachers of children's activities. More information at www.nadacnifondgratia.cz (in Czech).