Ruth Tachezy receives the CELSA 2022 Award
News — 24.11.2022

Ruth Tachezy receives the CELSA 2022 Award

The CELSA Award is presented annually and aims to recognize university public figures who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to serve society and humanity in general. This year, the CELSA Board awarded two prizes, one of which was presented to Ruth Tachezy, Ph.D., of the Department of Genetics and Microbiology. She was recognized for her involvement in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, both during the initial testing period and later in communicating with relevant institutions, the media and the general public.

In particular, Dr. Tachezy has used her years of experience in diagnosing viral infections, which she has combined with her organizational talents.  She became the main test coordinator at the BIOCEV centre, a joint workplace of the 1st Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Science of the Charles University, the Institute of Biotechnology of the CAS and the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the CAS. Dr. Tachezy reorganized part of the BIOCEV laboratories to meet the highest requirements for working with infectious biological samples. These laboratories have been dedicated and specially equipped and modified for testing. She also organized the BIOCEV staff, mostly PhD students and postdocs, on a volunteer basis and passed on her enthusiasm to them. The workers were not only properly trained, but already had years of experience in isolating RNA samples and operating state-of-the-art PCR instrumentation. At BIOCEV, the virology laboratories and research infrastructures involved in testing were unified under Ruth's leadership.

A support and administrative team consisting of scientists and technical staff of the BIOCEV Centre has also been assembled. The entire infrastructure participated in an academic initiative to accelerate population testing for SARS-CoV-2 during the first period of the pandemic. An international scientific team from the BIOCEV Centre, led by Ruth Tacheza, performed high-throughput testing, quality control and quality management on more than 1,000 samples daily. In March 2020, IOCB Tech, a technology transfer subsidiary of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the CAS (IOCB), donated a sum of 7 million CZK to Dr. Ruth Tachezy for the research and development of new diagnostic tests for covid 19.

After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Tachezy frequently commented on related events for a number of Czech media (Czech Television, Czech Radio and a number of newspapers and magazines), as well as for the academic community. At the turn of 2020 and 2021, she became involved in the newly established civic initiative "Sníh", which supports the protection of human health from COVID. Since March 2021, she has been a member of the Interdisciplinary Group on Epidemic Situations (MeSES), a scientific advisory body to the Ministry of Health. This interdisciplinary group issues opinions, reports and recommendations based on current scientific knowledge, integrating perspectives from different disciplines including economics, humanities and law.

For more information, click here: https://celsalliance.eu/

Source: Faculty of Science, Charles University

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