Pavel Hobza: “The key to success is wanting to do the best science possible”

You come to IT4I with your team of four from the Czech Academy of Sciences. What are you going to do?

I come from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, where my team and I deal with non-covalent interactions in bio- and nanosystems. In Ostrava, I will work with a smaller team on the second part, i.e., the non-covalent interactions in nanomaterials.

In what ways is the IT4I infrastructure important for your research?

Besides a desk, the computational chemist needs only one thing for his job: a computer, or a supercomputer, which is the alpha and omega of our daily work.

Apart from the much-needed infrastructure found in Ostrava, our theoretically oriented research is closely linked to the experiments of Professor Radek Zbořil's team from VSB-TUO, with whom I share the prestigious EXPRO grant. In practical terms, Professor Zbořil will be conducting the experiments in his laboratory, and us based at IT4Innovations will be doing the computations. Working as closely as possible with the experiment is extremely important to us.

At IT4Innovations, you have used almost 49 million core hours for 12 projects so far. Can you tell us which one of them was personally the most interesting for you and which one was the most beneficial for society?

Most of the computational resources we were awarded at IT4Innovations as part of the Open Access Grant Competition were dedicated to one topic, namely the computer-aided drug design – In silico drug design. I admit that these projects consume a great deal of computational resources, but the results achieved may be of major importance for society. That is why there is widespread support for our projects.

Your entire career is closely tied to supercomputers – there were once CDC or IBM computers, now you have much more powerful machines at your disposal. Being currently installed in Finland, the LUMI supercomputer will also be accessible by Czech scientists. Will you apply for LUMI's computational resources?

I most certainly will. One thing is that there is no machine for computational chemistry that is fast enough. Even the projects we are working on in Ostrava in cooperation with Professor Zbořil are extremely demanding for computational resources. The new generation of more powerful machines is always very welcome among computational chemists. We are looking forward to the Finnish machine. It would be great if we could use this new supercomputer as soon as possible.

Where did your fascination with chemistry come from?

I had a great high school chemistry teacher who stirred up interest of half of my classmates in the subject. My interest in it has never ceased and I have been doing chemistry since then.

In one interview, you mentioned that there is a prevailing envy towards the successful ones in science making it impossible for good scientists to go further. Is this just a Czech phenomenon, or does it occur in the world as well?

I spent a specific part of my scientific life abroad, working in many laboratories and lecturing in various institutions. I can compare and say that envy knows no borders. However, there are mechanisms in place to prevent the bad effects of the phenomenon. Intolerance, envy, and hatred have taken on increasing proportions in recent years. It is neither good news nor good reputation for our scientific community. Surely it also has to do with the development of social networks and infinite anonymity they offer people.

You are the most cited Czech scientist with the Hirsch index above 100. That is a desired goal only few can really reach. What would you advise your colleagues who would like to get even close to that figure?

The key is wanting to do the best science possible, not to aspire to the highest H- or even other indexes or the number of citations. Every scientist's aspiration should be to work on key, forward-looking projects, the kind that will be interesting in five, ten years, and ahead of the time. It is important to do science that is interesting and rewarding. This is clearly the best recipe. Recognition comes naturally then.

Do you have any unfulfilled scientific dreams you would like to achieve?

Of course, I do, but I will keep it to myself. Without great goals and dreams, scientific life would not be interesting at all.

Being so busy at work, can you find time to relax? How do you rest?

I spend my free time at the cottage and going fishing. Add to that my five grandsons, I am pretty sure that you believe me that I do not have time to be bored.

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Pavel Hobza - profile

A computational chemist, the most cited Czech scientist who rewrites chemistry textbooks with his discoveries, the winner of both the Czech Head National Prize for lifetime scientific contribution in computational and theoretical chemistry and the prestigious Schrödinger Medal, awarded once a year by the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists for studies in the field of non-covalent interactions.

He has been surrounded by chemistry since his childhood - his father ran a pharmacy in Olomouc. A high school chemistry teacher, later turning out to be also his tutor, Rudolf Zahradnik, had a major influence on his future direction. It brought him to the subject of non-covalent bonds, to which Professor Hobza has devoted his entire scientific career. Pavel Hobza is the author of the groundbreaking discovery of the false hydrogen bond and is also involved in the computer-aided drug design.

Together with the Neuron Fund, he was involved in the production of the theatre play titled Elegance of Molecules, written for the Dejvice Theatre in Prague by Petr Zelenka. The play is about the history of the discovery of anti-viral anti-HIV drugs linked to the name of Antonin Holý from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.

Pavel Hobza leads the Non-covalent interaction group at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and is the professor of physical chemistry at Charles University in Prague and Palacký University in Olomouc.

 

Foto: Tomáš Třeštík