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Picture: Radimir Vrba. Photo by Jitka Janu, © CEITEC

Founded just 15 years ago, on June 6, 2011, the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) is already considered one of the leading institutions in the field of basic technical research. CEITEC is an educational and research institution in Brno, Czech Republic. It specialises in life sciences, advanced materials, and nanotechnology research and attracts doctoral students from around the world. TELI Board Member Peter Knoll spoke with Professor Radimir Vrba, Director of CEITEC BUT, about CEITEC’s successful strategy.

Peter Knoll: Professor Vrba, there is a striking number of international doctoral students at CEITEC, including some from outside Europe. Which advantages does CEITEC offer compared to other universities? 

Radimir Vrba: CEITEC is a research institute, founded by a consortium of six universities and research institutes coordinated by Masaryk University, where Masaryk University (MU) and Brno University of Technology (BUT) have played key roles in the consortium. All consortia partners can be found on www.ceitec.eu. Now we are speaking only about a part of the whole CEITEC located within BUT, with approximately 470 employees and around 130 doctoral students. Its main mission is research, with a strong connection to PhD education.

What CEITEC offers doctoral students is a highly international, research-focused environment, access to state-of-the-art infrastructure, and the opportunity to work in interdisciplinary teams and competitive European research networks. For young researchers, this combination of advanced facilities, international supervision, and close involvement in research projects is a major advantage.

Peter Knoll: The Czech Republic has seen an average inflation rate of 6.9%* over the past five years alone, through the end of 2025. According to consistent reports from students here, housing and restaurant costs in particular have risen dramatically. What steps have been taken to ensure that they can still afford to live here?

Radimir Vrba: You are right that the cost of living in Brno has increased, especially housing and everyday expenses. In response, the guaranteed doctoral income has been increased approximately at 60% compared with the previous level. Many doctoral students receive more than this, especially when they are involved in funded research projects. At present, we consider this level of support sufficient to allow doctoral students to cover reasonable living costs, although we are aware that affordability must remain a priority.

Peter Knoll: The Czech Republic has a long and illustrious tradition as an industrial hub; it was once considered the industrial heartland of the Habsburg Monarchy. Nevertheless, during the discussion between EUSJA delegates and CEITEC members, they mentioned an alarming study showing that only few female high school graduates are considering a STEM degree, 21 percent. That is significantly lower than in Germany and other EU countries. 

What has happened here? Where is this trend leading? How does CEITEC plan to address this?

Radimir Vrba: I should clarify that I was unfortunately not present during that part of the discussion, so I cannot comment on the exact study or figures that were mentioned. My understanding is that the point referred more generally to lower interest in STEM studies among high-school students in the Czech Republic compared with countries such as Germany.

The reasons are complex and would require a broader sociological analysis. My personal view is that one important factor is economic: starting salaries in many STEM professions in the Czech Republic are still not always competitive enough, especially when compared with Germany or with some other career paths within the Czech labour market. If young people do not see a clear economic or social reward for choosing demanding technical or scientific studies, their motivation naturally decreases.

If this trend continues, it could weaken the future talent pool for research, engineering, and innovation. That would be a serious problem for a country with such a strong industrial and technological tradition.

At CEITEC, however, we see a more encouraging picture. More than 52 % of our doctoral students are women, which is something we are proud of. Our role is therefore to provide an open, international, and supportive research environment, to make successful female scientists more visible, and to show young people that STEM can offer meaningful and attractive careers. At the same time, broader changes in education, salaries, and public perception of technical professions will require action beyond CEITEC alone.

Peter Knoll: Rankings like the Global University Rankings for many years tell us the same story: Universities in the U.S. and the UK are supposed to be far ahead of the best universities in the EU. What changes would policymakers need to make?

Radimir Vrba: Rankings are useful, but they do not tell the whole story. The university systems in the U.S., the UK, and continental Europe are built on very different financial and social models. Some top Anglo-American universities operate with enormous budgets and endowments, but this is also connected to a system in which many students leave university with substantial debt. That is not a model Europe should simply copy.

At the same time, we should be honest: in several indicators — Nobel Prizes, breakthrough research, start-up creation, private investment, and the ability to attract global talent — Europe still lags behind the strongest U.S. institutions. A major reason is scale. Very few, if any, European universities operate with budgets comparable to the leading American universities.

For policymakers, the key question is how to strengthen excellence without losing the European principle of accessible education. In my view, this means more stable long-term funding, greater institutional autonomy, less administrative burden, more flexible hiring conditions, and stronger links between universities, research institutes, industry, and investors. Europe does not need to imitate the U.S. model, but it does need to give its best institutions the conditions to compete globally.

Peter Knoll: According to the latest available figures from Eurostat**, the Czech Republic is among the EU countries that invest less in education than the EU average, relative to their share of gross domestic product. How does this affect your work as a university?

Radimir Vrba: Figures expressed as a percentage of GDP are important, but they can also be somewhat misleading if viewed in isolation. They do not fully reflect differences in salaries, living costs, national economic structures, or the way education and research are financed in each country.

That said, the situation in the Czech Republic is certainly not ideal. More stable and predictable public funding would help universities and research institutes plan strategically, invest in people, and maintain high-quality infrastructure. For a research institute such as CEITEC, limited institutional funding means that we must rely heavily on competitive grants and international projects.

At the same time, financing is only part of the issue. Structural changes are also needed, including improvements to the Czech higher education and research funding framework. Despite these limitations, CEITEC’s total income has been steadily growing, mainly because we have become more competitive internationally and more successful in obtaining grants. This is encouraging, but long-term excellence requires both strong external competitiveness and a stronger national foundation.

Peter Knoll: By investing billions of euros in universities of excellence and research networks, Germany has managed to ensure that at least some universities are ranked among the top 50—or even the top 20—including my university, TUM. Does CEITEC aim to become a world leader, and if so, when?

Radimir Vrba: In a way, the question already contains part of the answer. Germany has achieved this position through long-term, large-scale investment in universities of excellence and research networks. The overall Czech national university budget is, of course, not comparable with the resources available to institutions such as TUM or RWTH Aachen.

For CEITEC, the realistic ambition is therefore not to become a global leader in every field, but to become a world-class institute in selected areas where we have a clear competitive advantage. Modern science is strongly linked to access to funding, infrastructure, and the ability to attract excellent people. Without resources on the scale available in Germany or the United States, one has to be strategic. But I dare say that, per unit of invested money, CEITEC has higher performance in its research specialisations than the aforementioned foreign universities.

So yes, CEITEC aims to be among the leading international institutions in specific research areas. In some of them, we are already highly competitive. The goal is to strengthen this position over the coming years through focused investment, international collaboration, and recruitment of outstanding researchers.

Peter Knoll: Thank you very much, Professor Vrba!

* https://www.laenderdaten.info/Europa/Tschechien/inflationsraten.php

** https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/educ_uoe_fine06__custom_17707850/bookmark/table?bookmarkId=8e443487-2f8d-445b-8e65-9d3bd7aec0e0&c=1754910983970

Peter Knoll

Munich, April 24, 2026 – At the invitation of Dr. Matthias Röschner, head of the archives at the Deutsches Museum, a delegation from TELI met with him in the museum’s archives. Topics discussed included possible approaches to making the TELI files accessible to the general public as soon as possible, the reappraisal of TELI’s history, and research trips.

The TELI archive is located at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. From the museum’s perspective, TELI’s history is so unique that it is archived in the same way as the histories of companies such as Messerschmidt or Junkers. The head of the Deutsches Museum’s archive showed the TELI delegation the 15 meters of shelving currently occupied by the documents, some of which have yet to be cataloged.

In addition to documents, the TELI archive at the Deutsches Museum includes, among other things, an ancient typewriter and old pins of honor. A random sample from 70 years ago revealed an interesting clue: even back then, reader analysis was a major topic that TELI was engaged in. The tour of the archives and reading room was attended by TELI board members Arno Kral, Wolfgang Goede, and Peter Knoll, as well as Helmut Scheel, who has already been heavily involved in the preparations for the 100th anniversary celebration.

TELI is the oldest association for science and technology journalism worldwide.

A toolbox to help journalists to report about the search for life in space.

Finding life beyond Earth would be one of the most profound research discoveries of all times.

Many astrobiologists now think that extra-terrestrial life exists, and some believe we will find the first evidence of it in the next couple of decades.

So, are journalists ready to cover what would likely be a Nobel-prize winning discovery in a responsible and ethical way, without hype, errors or misleading claims?

This toolbox aims to equip media professionals to do so. It is inspired by a 2026 academic white paper, The Search for Life Elsewhere: Avoiding Hype and Fostering Public Understanding, written by Danilo Albergaria from the University of Leiden, and colleagues. The toolbox is written by Mićo Tatalović, while visiting the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, on the Maria Leptin/EMBO Science Journalism Fellowship, and was reviewed by Albergaria.

It is based on insights from several recent academic papers that have called for more effective communication in this field; on discussions with academics; and on an open consultation with international science journalists via International Science Writers Association, European Federation for Science Journalism, and European Union of Science Journalists’ Associations.  

Both academics and journalists are keen to communicate findings in this area responsibly and accurately, but both also have incentives – related to how academia and media work – that lead to dangers of hype and sensationalism from both sides. This has led to previous unsubstantiated and/or retracted claims about discovery of life beyond Earth, and some experts fear there will be further unrealistic expectations and false promises, overstatements, sensationalism, and over-simplification of the research effort.

This document aims to address the academic concerns, while staying relevant to the journalistic priorities and realities of working in the media. It is envisaged as a start of an important discussion in this ever-evolving field, not as a final prescription.

Scientific principles and their media implications

Evidence of life will likely be subtle or unfamiliar, and be revealed in stages, meaning false starts and dead ends are to be expected.

Such setbacks are often a productive part of the scientific process, and even the false positives can often lead to interesting scientific discoveries that could also yield media stories.

Proving beyond reasonable doubt that ET life has been discovered will likely be a complex process spread over several years, rather than a singular event of discovery. It will require separate lines of evidence, independent verification and a lot of patience.

This gives an opportunity to portray the incremental process of science, thereby increasing the public understanding of science, while also producing interesting media stories.

Because of huge distances from Earth, astrobiology data are often poor quality and can be interpreted in different ways. So, any evidence will raise questions about the quality of data, and the uncertainties in their interpretation.

Realistically, the evidence for ET, if it emerges, will most likely not be clear cut nor detailed (such as a picture or a video of life thriving on another planet), but will instead be a faint data point on a computer screen that will be widely open to different interpretations.

The discovery may initially be based on messy and unclear data, which will require lots of processing, so it is good to ask what the actual data are and what they look like (i.e. Instead of pictures of an alien, they will more likely be something like pixelated pale dots on a screen).

It is good to ask what assumptions, filters and interpretations have been made to yield the final result that is said to be indicating life.

Such data come from complex machinery and instruments, so it is also good to ask what the detection limits and errors are on those. An important question is what can and what cannot be determined by a given set of measurements conducted, and with what confidence.

General principles of responsible science journalism apply here, too, such as critical thinking, a healthy dose of scepticism, and a questioning stance. Namely, asking what the evidence is, how it was generated, whether it has been independently verified, as well as asking about any conflicts of interests, and reaching out to other experts in the field for unbiased comment.

Key questions to consider could be: are the results presented by researchers with relevant background and track record in the field; are the results being published/presented in/at a good quality journal/conference after having been peer reviewed; and are there any vested interests that could be affecting the announcement?

Also: are the instruments used sensitive enough to detect such evidence as claimed; is the detected signal free of contamination or confounding factors from other sources or from the instruments/methods used; and have all the abiotic (non-life) explanations been ruled out; how theory-dependent is the interpretation of the data; were other competing theory-dependent interpretations ruled out after independent analysis by other researchers? Has the result been repeated or corroborated by independent observation?

Peer review, while important, is not a fault-proof process, and the true test of the results is likely to come in the weeks and months following the initial publication, through open scientific discussion and peer criticism.

Initial discoveries of signs of life will likely need to be followed by more data, or even by more advanced detection instruments (that may not yet exist, prolonging the uncertainty over results).

This will likely involve corroboration of the initial result by independent lines of evidence, and the dismissal of alternative hypotheses developed in response to the initial result.

It is important to treat any follow-up results, whether they are in agreement or disagreement with the original, with the same degree of scepticism and attention to detail.

Even if the data are judged by the relevant community of researchers to be good enough, they may still not be able to rule out a non-living – abiotic – source of that data, which points at current limitations of knowledge and uncertainty in science. For example, just because we don’t know of any abiotic processes that can produce certain bio-signatures does not mean that there aren’t such processes yet to be discovered.

Another limitation is epistemological: we still don’t have the full understanding of life nor of how and where it emerges, which limits our conceptions of the necessary and sufficient conditions for life on other worlds.

Indeed, some experts point out the problem of unconceived alternative explanations: the unknown unknowns which limit our confidence in detecting alien life, as well as our ability to quantify our level of uncertainty. Just because there is no known abiotic explanation for a potential bio-signature, for example, does not mean that such an explanation does not exist – it might just mean we haven’t discovered it yet. It would then be premature to jump from saying ‘we don’t know of abiotic processes that can produce such a signature’ to the conclusion ‘it must be life’.

So, life detection is unlikely to be instantaneous or unambiguous.

To help avoid sensationalism, media could take care to portray appropriate nuance and uncertainty in the data, as well as the complex nature of the scientific process behind the data, especially when the data are preliminary, or not yet published in a peer review paper or exposed to independent verification.

History of science abounds with claims of discoveries of alien life, including high-profile hoaxes, which highlight the need to be sceptical and questioning about such claims, and also to provide examples of how initially credible results are often disproved with further inquiry.

Scientists often worry about the accuracy of the reporting and about being misquoted, especially in such sensitive stories. There are ways for journalists to fact-check technical parts of the story and to show the scientists their quotes, without sharing the entire article or agreeing to unnecessary changes.

Visuals of exoplanets and hypothetical alien life forms can help explain complex science, but it is helpful for this to be clearly marked as fictional and/or artists’ impressions, and acknowledge when they were produced using AI. It could be useful to present also the real data/imagery the visuals are based on, as well as to explain what rendering has been done to come up with the visual in order to avoid misunderstandings. One could also present the public with different artistic impressions that are equally consistent with the exoplanet being covered – e.g. an Earth-mass exoplanet could resemble Earth, but also Venus, or Mars, or something even more alien and inhospitable.

If life is detected, initial details will likely be scant and it will be hard to get more information, which might be unsatisfactory and will leave room for speculation which might be fun but is different to serious, data-based discussions.

Another relevant question is: how will the public react to such news and what will it mean for our societies and the way we think about life and our place in the universe? Some evidence suggests many people already believe that aliens have visited Earth, and previous false positive reports about life beyond Earth have left us largely unfazed, suggesting many may find a real discovery anti-climactic, too.

Scenarios of life detection

Different scenarios for life detection beyond Earth exist, each with its own set of issues. For example, bio-signatures in atmospheres of exoplanets or on icy moons of our solar system, signs of life in samples returned from Mars or other space bodies or those from meteorites, and techno-signatures such as radio signals from other worlds. But two basic initial questions apply to all of them: 1) is the signal real (rather than being an artefact of a contamination), and if so, 2) does it really indicate life (or can it be explained in another way without invoking life).

Also, scientists distinguish between ‘life-as-we-know-it’ which would be organic life with processes similar to those seen by life on Earth, and ‘life-as-we-don’t-know-it’ which by definition could be very exotic and perhaps even more difficult to detect and interpret.

Academics are working on a set of procedures that would help them evaluate claims of life detection, as well as the level of confidence we can have in such claims, in a systematic way.

One of these is called a Ladder of Life Detection, a set of proposed rules to help determine whether the evidence represents life or not. This includes several steps and requirements, such as that measurements are sufficiently sensitive, free of contamination and repeatable. And that the signs of life are sufficiently detectable, preserved, different from abiotic signals, and compatible with what we know about life, as well as there not being a known abiotic way of explaining them.

Another one of these is called Confidence of Life Detection scale, an example of which is shown below (from Green et al. 2021), which illustrates the different steps one would need to go through to claim detection of life at high levels of confidence.

There are other similar frameworks, one has been proposed by the Network for Life Detection and the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, which sets five questions as guidelines to help determine if any bio-signature has in fact been detected, and if so, whether it has been properly interpreted.

These are not universally accepted, but they all underscore the complexity and difficulty of determining whether any new evidence does actually come from life, and point to some questions to consider when reporting on the issue.

In other words, life detection results may likely be a matter of probability, not a purely yes or no proposition.

(Image credit: Green et al. 2021; see reference below)

Helpful definitions

Bio-signature: A detectable sign of biological life (either current or extinct), not proof for its existence. It can easily be mistaken for natural phenomena unrelated to life. The uncertainty in using it as a definitive sign of life comes from possible measurement errors, contamination of samples, and lack of understanding of the environment and abiotic processes.

Techno-signature: Any sign of technology that can be used to infer the existence of intelligent life. Many such signs could easily be mistaken for natural phenomena unrelated to life. They could also come from extinct life.

Habitable: A feature meaning that a space body may have conditions conducive to life, but this doesn’t mean it has life or that it is habitable to humans.

Earth-like planet: an exoplanet similar in size and composition to Earth, sometimes referred to as Earth-sized planet, Earth twin, Earth 2.0, or Earth analog, but conditions may be wildly different to anything we know on Earth and may not be hospitable to life, especially not to humans.

Literature consulted

Albergaria D et. all. 2026. The Search for Life Elsewhere: Avoiding Hype and Fostering Public Understanding.

Albergaria D, Russo P, Smeets I, Heenatigala T, Vetter D (2025) Communicating astrobiology and the search for life elsewhere: Speculations and promises of a developing scientific field in newspapers, press releases and papers. PLoS One 20(7): e0328766. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0328766

Albert Harrison. 2011. “Fear, pandemonium, equanimity and delight: Human responses to extraterrestrial life.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0229

Denning, Kathryn, and Dick, Steven J. 2019, Preparing for the Discovery of Life Beyond Earth. Astro2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics, APC white papers, no. 183; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 51, Issue 7, id. 183 (2019)

Green J, Hoehler T, Neveu M, Domagal-Goldman SD, Scalice D and Voytek M. Call for a framework for reporting evidence for life beyond Earth. Nature 2021; 598:575–579. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03804-9

Haqq-Misra, Jacob, A. Berea, A. Balbi, C. Grimaldi. 2019. “Searching for Technosignatures: Implications of Detection and Non-Detection.” Astro2020 Science White Paper.

Meadows V, Graham H, Abrahamsson V, et al. Community Report from the Biosignatures Standards of Evidence Workshop. 2022; doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2210.14293.

NASA Technosignatures Workshops Participants. 2018. NASA and the Search for Technosignatures: A Report from NASA Technosignatures Workshop. arXiv:1812.08681v2

Neveu M, Hays LE, Voytek MA, New MH, and Schulte MD. The ladder of life detection. Astrobiology 2018;18(11):1375-1402.

Vickers, P, Cowie, C, Dick, SJ, Gillen, C, Jeancolas, C, Rothschild, LJ & McMahon, S 2023, ‘Confidence of Life Detection: The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives’, Astrobiology, vol. 23, no. 11, pp. 1202-1212. https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2022.0084

Wright, J T, 2019, Searches for Technosignatures: The State of the Profession. arXiv:1907.07832