Breakfast with a Scientist Completes Its First Season Full of Life Stories and Inspiration
The format of regular grant breakfasts was transformed at the beginning of 2024 into Breakfast with a Scientist. These gatherings, open to a broad community of students and academics interested in science, have now completed their first season. So how did it go?
“We decided to open up the original, narrowly focused format of the project breakfast to the broader scientific community. In fact, it was the researchers themselves who inspired this shift by sharing their experiences from Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland, where colleagues would regularly meet over coffee and a bite to eat,” reflects Jitka Blažková, Head of the Grant Office, on the origins of the idea for regular meetings with interesting guests – full of energy and inspiration.
She is joined in organizing these informal coffee meetups in the university library’s conference rooms by colleagues from the Office for Research and Quality. “Scientists often tend to skip breakfast or lunch, so we thought – why not take care of their nutritional routine once a month and combine the pleasant with the useful? Over coffee and a croissant, they can hear inspiring stories from their colleagues, meet people they usually just pass by in the long campus hallways, and perhaps even strike up a fruitful collaboration,” adds Jana Sedláková, Head of the department.
The host of Breakfast with a Scientist, Tomáš Kašpárek, Vice-Dean for Research, PhD. Studies and Institutional Development, welcomed a total of twenty guests between February 2024 and May 2025 over thirteen breakfast mornings. Among them were some of the university’s top leaders, including the Dean, Martin Repko, and the Rector, Martin Bareš. These thirteen breakfasts offered a rich variety of life stories and perspectives on the beauty and challenges of scientific work – from funding and communication to finding a meaningful balance between professional and personal life.
The energy of these friendly morning meetings was fueled not only by the enthusiasm of the guests themselves but also by the engaged audience, who had the chance to ask their own questions. In the pilot season alone, they went through 350 croissants and twice as many cups of coffee. “I think my vision – to meet informally and talk about science and life with some of the remarkable people from our faculty, and in doing so make scientific topics more accessible to a wider audience – has truly come to life. I’m already looking forward to the next season as the host of these enjoyable mornings,” says Tomáš Kašpárek, looking ahead to the next series of Breakfast with a Scientist, which will kick off with the new academic year.
Breakfast with a Scientist photo and video gallery
