Congratulations to our students on their awards at the NIVB Meeting 2025

From 4 to 7 November 2025, the final meeting of the National Institute of Virology and Bacteriology (NIVB) took place in Kutná Hora, where an expert panel evaluated the best student lectures and posters. We are delighted to announce that two students from the Laboratory of Arbovirology of the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences received prestigious awards.

Michaela Beránková was presented with the Best Lecture Award for her talk entitled “Seeing is believing”. She introduced an innovative approach to 3D visualisation of tick-borne encephalitis virus distribution in mouse brain tissue using a TurboGFP reporter virus and advanced tissue-clearing techniques. Her work provides a completely new perspective on how the infection spreads within the central nervous system.

Monika Čížková received the Best Poster Award. Her poster focused on the mechanisms by which the tick-borne encephalitis virus enters the brain, demonstrating that the virus is capable of infecting cells of the neurovascular unit and inducing inflammation without causing extensive disruption of the blood–brain barrier.

The success of both students is a welcome recognition of the high-quality work carried out in the Arbovirology Laboratory and across the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Their research contributes to a deeper understanding of arbovirus pathogenesis and opens up new avenues for further study.

We warmly congratulate Michaela and Monika and thank them for their excellent representation of our institute!