Ambassador of the Neuron Junior programme
Matyáš Boháček
“We need more role models, deeper interaction with scientists for pupils while they are still at school, and programmes that would open science up to those who want to try it.”
Although he only recently sat his school-leaving exams, he already has successful applications and lectures overseas to his name. He is now researching artificial intelligence and its possible pitfalls with scientists in the USA. Thanks to Nadace Neuron, Matyáš Boháček went on a placement at Artificial Intelligence Research at the University of California, Berkeley. He now studies at Stanford, the place where the world's greatest technological minds are born.
Matyáš Boháček is becoming an ambassador of the Neuron Junior programme, where he will support students in their passion for science and motivate them to gain as much scientific experience as they can while still at secondary school.
“People often say that our society cannot grow without productive science. In the context of climate change, massive political polarisation and the new risks connected with AI, though, I believe that without first-rate science our society could not even hold its present shape,” Matyáš says of the importance of science. “Neuron cultivates first-rate science in our country, and with it our collective ability to understand and face these threats.”
That is one reason why he feels strongly motivated to popularise science and to try to win new enthusiastic talents for it. “To me science is essentially a structured fascination with the world and a desire to understand it, which to some degree is innate in all of us. From my own experience, though, I know that many students who develop that fascination further never even think that they could become scientists themselves — often because they cannot picture anything concrete behind ‘being a scientist',” he adds. “We need more positive role models, deeper interaction with scientists for pupils while they are still at primary and secondary school, and programmes that would open science up to those who want to try it.”
That is exactly why Matyáš Boháček became, in 2024, an ambassador of the Neuron Junior programme, which focuses on those students and offers them a helping hand on the way to first-rate science.