Czechast with Matouš Glanc

We’re diving into the world of Czech scientists working abroad and the fascinating journey of one man who’s helping them connect and thrive on the global stage.

Czechast’s guest is Matouš Glanc, a brilliant scientist whose career path has been anything but conventional. He began in the arts, enrolling in a competitive photography program. But as he soon realized, that wasn’t where his true passion lay:

"I managed to get into a photography program at the university, which was quite selective, so I was happy. But then, you know, very soon I realized that everybody who had been telling me I should do something with my mind, that they were probably correct, because I felt intellectually bored with the arts. And then I was lost, I didn't know what to do."

Eventually, Matouš found his way into science, where he thrived in a laboratory environment. But after years of working in research, he began to notice something was missing:

"One of the things I missed in that job was some diversity in the social interactions, so to say. Because in a lab environment, one always meets very similar kinds of people. It's the colleagues at work, they all do the same thing, and then you go to a conference and you meet more people doing the same thing, the same job as you, just somewhere else. And at some point, I realized I needed more diverse social interactions. Now, I get to talk to politicians, businesspeople, and lawyers as well as scientists, and somehow, I am energized by that."

These days, Matouš leads Czexpats, an organization that builds bridges between Czech scientists working abroad and their home country. It’s a mission fueled by his own experiences and a vision for tackling the so-called "brain drain" in a way that fosters innovation and connection:

"The image in the general public often is that we need to stop the brain drain by keeping people from leaving, by keeping the brains in Czechia. And we say this doesn't work; then we just reinforce this isolation, which hinders progress. “

“What we need to do is to encourage people to go abroad and then provide opportunities for them to come back and to attract elites from other countries to go to Czechia and to be supportive of people going both ways. That's the solution that we want to help implement."

In this episode of Czechast, Matouš shares more about his fascinating career journey and his mission to reshape how we think about mobility, innovation, and collaboration.