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Jana Musilová from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication at Brno University of Technology, succeeded in the competition L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science in the Czech Republic. With her innovative project focused on reducing animal testing, she gained recognition in a competition that annually honors outstanding scientific work by women from around the world.Illustrative photo. | Author: PixabayThis year, the young scientist entered the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science competition in the Czech Republic with her project titled “Pioneering in silico solutions to reduce animal testing.” Jana Musilová's research center is based on the Augusta tool – a sophisticated Python package designed for creating computational models of biological systems, which allows researchers to test their hypotheses and study biological processes without conducting experiments on live animals. Gene regulatory networks and Boolean networks are used for this purpose, which serve as digital copies of how a living organism functions.“To better understand this, we can imagine the human body as a complex machine where each cell receives different signals and decides what to do – whether to grow, divide, or produce certain substances. The Augusta tool can create a computational model of this decision-making and simulate how the organism would react to various stimuli or drugs,” explains scientist Jana Musilová. Thanks to Augusta, it is possible to test new treatments or study diseases directly on a computer without the need for laboratory animals.Jana Musilová made her tool available as an open-source project on GitHub. This openness allows the global scientific community to use and further develop the technology created at BUT. The name Augusta was chosen by the young scientist as a tribute to Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, who became famous as a mathematician and the first computer programmer in history.
The L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science program was established in Paris in 1998 as an initiative to support women in scientific fields. The program recognizes the achievements of established female scientists and provides support to young women scientists at the beginning of their careers. Since its inception, the program has honored more than 4,100 women from 110 countries. In the Czech Republic, the competition is held in cooperation with the Czech Academy of Sciences and is open to young female researchers under the age of 40 working at Czech institutions with a PhD.Jana Musilová's success represents an important contribution to more humane methods of scientific research. Augusta is an example of how modern technology and computer modeling can significantly influence biological research.Scientist Jana Musilová. | Author: archive of Jana MusilováSource: Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication