This action, PLANTECON, based at SINOFON, a research centre unit hosted by the Department of Asian Studies, Palacky University, aims to investigate the sociocultural formation of price along Mongolian medicinal plant (MP) supply chains. Within recent history, and intensively since the spread of Sars-Cov-2, MP supply chains--trade networks that move a product from its site of origin to a consumer market--have proliferated across Central Asia. In Mongolia, otherwise-unemployed poor rural populations gather wild-growing plants and sell them at negotiated prices--the agreed-upon economic value that solidifies the exchange of the plant from one actor to another--into trade networks that move the plant to consumers in urban Mongolia or China. The action has the following objectives: 1) identify the breadth and extent of the proliferating MP trade in two plants, Fang Feng and Liquorice Root, in Mongolia; 2) identify the diverse sociocultural factors that impact price negotiations in situ, following the process of price formation across a chain to identify how sociocultural considerations affect prices in the aggregate; and 3) establish the equitability potential of MP supply chains as rural development strategy. Academically, this action will advance economic anthropology on pricing; and environmental, medical anthropology on the globalised traditional medicinal plant trade with potential for future cross-geographic ERC or Twinning grant proposals. Economically and culturally, the action will draw attention to the booming, unregulated medicinal plant trade in Central Asia to increase cultural heritage and plant conservation action, but also inspire international funding bodies to either design value chain development projects that are equitable to rural populations or consider the implementation of plant benefit-sharing programmes.

The project will develop a synthetic and exhaustive study of the Early Modern theory and methodology of Franciscan mission to China (late Ming and early Qing dynasties, cca. 1580-1660). Due to the cultural, historical and spiritual idiosyncrasies of the Middle Kingdom, ecclesiastical authorities could not directly transfer their missiological methodology, employed in the Indies and in other parts of the world, to the Chinese Apostolate. They had to design specific, unique and novel strategies; the problem is that several religious orders were operating in China in the first phase of evangelization, and they all developed fairly different and sometimes directly conflicting approaches towards the mission. Modern scholarship has devoted its attention almost exclusively to the policy of the Jesuit order, failing to recognise the importance of the mendicant orders in the evangelization of China. The project aims at filling in this void: it will focus on the Franciscan order, and more specifically on the first 80 years of its presence in the empire, crucial for the China Apostolate. It will thoroughly examine this Franciscan evangelization project, as developed in a body of theological, missiological and official Church documents, historical accounts and epistles (written mainly in Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian). It will then explore not only its basic theological assumptions, but also its ideological, spiritual, and symbolical underpinnings. It will analyse the ways in which the Franciscan missionaries attempted to introduce Christianity to a civilization that was, in many aspects, alien to the Christian message, and in which ways they tried (or resisted) to reconcile Christian spirituality and doctrine to the specific Chinese spiritual and cultural idiom.

The mantra ‘Automation + Miniaturization = Acceleration’ is successfully applied in many research areas and technologies, but not in synthetic chemistry, which is largely believed to be not automatable. However, with the potential to accelerate discoveries while flattening costs, increase safety, streamline data generation, enhance reproducibility, and lower the environmental footprint, automation and miniaturization are two promising approaches to synthesis and are worthwhile to invest in. I will engineer and validate a comprehensive, technology platform, AMADEUS (Automated, MiniAturizeD, and acceleratEd drUg diScovery), which is able to synthesize in a fully autonomous manner thousands of small molecules per day in nano- or picolitre volumes, based on hundreds of chemistries, efficiently screened and optimized for properties using artificial intelligence. The AMADEUS process will be achieved by interfacing four different modules: a synthetic part based on acoustic droplet ejection technology, coupled with a UPLC MS QC and purification module, and a flexible mounted screening unit. A machine learning module will retrieve and process all relevant synthesis, QC, and screening ‘real-time’ data and automatically guide the iterative optimization cycle. AMADEUS will be showcased with several medicinal chemistry, catalysis, and organic chemistry projects. With my project, I want to challenge the early drug discovery process, which for over 50 years in pharma companies around the world has (almost uniformly) been pursued and comprises two blocks, 1) a high throughput screen relying on millions of curated and stored compounds and 2) the subsequent hit-to-lead optimization phase often called the ‘design, make, test cycle’. AMADEUS will contribute to the accelerated discovery of drugs for unmet medical needs and ultimately reduce drug costs for patients. AMADEUS is a highly sustainable synthesis platform. AMADEUS will help democratize drug discovery.

CROSS is a project of an experienced historian of “Research Freedom” in Religious Studies. 7 years ago, he entered the forum of discussions in Central and Eastern Europe, which reveals itself as particularly vibrant today. Now, he seeks to launch a major project located at the University of Olomouc in Czech Republic, next to a leader of this debate. CROSS is also a project of an historian who, after 3 decades of research, feels the limits of academic barriers, and wants to move over the borders of the scholarly studies. The acronym means “Communication for ReligiOus StudieS”. CROSS aims to reach out, to improve public understanding of Religious Studies by the way of a documentary film. The project is located at the University that hosts the major Science Documentary Festival in Europe. After a period of training in Film Studies and Media Studies, a collection of interviews of 30 scholars in 10 countries in Central and Eastern Europe will be recorded in order to let the free voice of Religious Studies scholars be heard. CROSS will use personal story-telling on the topic “Freedom of thought and expression” which shall serve as life lessons, not academic lessons. It will explore how personal, not strictly scientific experiences, even of public concern in everyday life, can become stories to which people can relate to and through which connections can be established and awareness raised. The project will involve students in training-workshops for processing the documentary, and for laying the basis of a laboratory for future research. CROSS addresses the first principle of the European Charter for Researchers: “Research Freedom”. It is an interdisciplinary project for a new research profile “Communication for Religious Studies”: a new way to communicate research, an innovative guidance, and the first-ever documentary on Religious Studies.