Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences
The IMG PhD Career Day is your chance to meet representatives from several companies and directly interact with them. Participants will have the unique occasion to ask about career options and companies’ opportunities and demands. Short pitch presentations will be followed by round tables with individual representatives.
You’ll have the invaluable opportunity to engage firsthand with representatives from companies such as Zentiva, DIANA Biotechnologies, and Cellbox Labs.
This event will be held in English. Registration is mandatory.
Zentiva is a pharmaceutical company based in Prague, Czech Republic. The company is developing, manufacturing and marketing a wide range of generic and OTC (Over-the-counter drug, without a requirement for a prescription) products. Zentiva employs around 5 000 people across Europe and has four manufacturing sites, in Prague, Bucharest (2×), and Ankleshwar.
Zentiva’s R&D team (200+ employees) applies cutting-edge methodologies to develop and actively manage the lifecycle of active pharmaceutical ingredients, drive innovation in drug product formulation and bring bioequivalent and value-added medicines to European regulators for review and approval.
Jiří Václavík
Head of Project Management in Development
Jiří studied pharmaceutical and organic chemistry at the University of Chemistry and Technology (UCT) in Prague and business economics at the Prague University of Economics and Business. He was awarded the Gaudeamus – Česká hlava for his master’s thesis.
During his PhD studies at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB), he spent two years in Switzerland. Since 2018, he has been working at Zentiva, currently holding the position of Head of Project Management in Development.
DIANA Biotechnologies, a. s. is a Czech biotechnology company with strong in-house research and development. The company was founded in 2018 with the aim of developing applications of the patented DIANA technology in diagnostics and drug development. It currently operates in three segments: 1) development and production of PCR products for academic laboratories and companies 2) development of antibodies for diagnostic and research laboratories and 3) provision of services for the pharmaceutical sector. The company is built on a team of top scientists with unique expertise in molecular biology, biochemistry, organic and medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and laboratory automation.
Alena Uvizl
Senior scientist
Alena Uvizl is a molecular biologist with a passion for cancer research and drug discovery. She gained her first scientific experience here at the Institute of Molecular Genetics in the group of Jiří Bártek and Zdeněk Hodný. After graduating from Charles University in Prague, she pursued her PhD at the Technische Universität Dresden, focusing on cell cycle regulation and its impact on tumorigenesis.
Currently, Alena works as a senior scientist in the Czech biotech company DIANA Biotechnologies in the Drug Discovery department. Her main research interest lies in the development of techniques to facilitate and accelerate the process of drug discovery, with a particular focus on kinases. This allows Alena to keep her scientific dreams unchanged, as she continues to seek involvement in pioneering research and innovation.
Cellbox Labs, a Riga-based biotech startup founded in 2020 in collaboration with the Institute of Solid State Physics (Latvia), specializes in industrial organ-on-a-chip technology. As CSO, Dr. Artūrs Ābols leads the company’s biological and scientific product development, with a focus on advancing drug development processes and minimizing the reliance on animal testing.
Cellbox Labs’ cutting-edge platform enables the creation of miniature, functional human organ tissue models, which are used to replicate complex physiological conditions and test drug efficacy and safety in a highly controlled, human-relevant environment. This technology provides a much-needed bridge between traditional in vitro models and clinical trials, aligning with the growing demand for more predictive and ethical alternatives in preclinical research.
The company’s innovations have garnered significant recognition. Cellbox Labs won the IMPACT category at the Latvian Startup Awards for its societal and scientific contributions. It was also selected as a semi-finalist in the prestigious EIT Health Catapult 2022–2023 competition, underscoring its status among Europe’s leading biotech startups. In 2023, Cellbox Labs was named Riga’s Entrepreneur of the Year in the Biomedicine Sector at the city’s annual Best Entrepreneurs awards, further highlighting its growing influence in the biomedical innovation ecosystem.
Artūrs Ābols
Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Artūrs Ābols is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Cellbox Labs, as well as the head of the Lab-on-a-Chip research group within the Extracellular Vesicle Research Unit at the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre (BMC) in Riga. He holds a PhD in molecular biology and has over 15 years of hands-on research and laboratory experience.
Throughout most of his career, he worked in the Cancer Biomarker Group led by Prof. Aija Line, where he gained extensive expertise in various in vitro models and transitioned into extracellular vesicle (EV) research. During his postdoctoral studies, Artūrs also established a close collaboration with the Micro and Nanodevices Laboratory at the Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia.
This interdisciplinary partnership inspired him to form his own research group, focusing on the application of Lab-on-a-Chip (LoC) and Organs-on-Chip (OOC) technologies in EV and disease-related research. His team uses models such as intestine-on-a-chip, lung-on-a-chip, and cancer-on-a-chip to study therapies and identify biomarkers for personalized cancer treatment and other disease therapies.
