The Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic in order to promote the development of science and technology and to reward an exceptional achievements in this field annually awards the highest award in the field of science and technology “Science and Technology Prize”. For the year 2021, the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic awarded the Prize for Science and Technology in the following categories:
1. Personality of Science and Technology
2. Lifetime Achievement in Science and Technology
3. Personality of Science and Technology up to 35 years of age
4. Populariser of Science
5. Scientific and Technnical Team of the Year
The award ceremony took place on the 16th December 2022 in the building of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic in Bratislava. In the category of the Scientific and Technical Team of the Year, the award was received by the head of the EDEVIR team, Professor Renáta Oriňáková from the Institute of Chemistry of the Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, with the participation of team member RNDr. Ivana Šišoláková, PhD., also from the Institute of Chemistry of the Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. The EDEVIR team was awarded for the development of a new type of sensors for COVID-19. Our sincere congratulations!
The research team of EDEVIR is an interdisciplinary team focused on the development of a new type of electrochemical sensors for the diagnosis of COVID19, which is composed of top experts as prof. MUDr. Pavol Jarčuška, PhD. for Medicine, RNDr. Martin Panigaj, PhD. for Biology, prof. RNDr. Renáta Oriňaková, DrSc.; RNDr. Jana Shepa, PhD.; RNDr. Ivana Šišoláková, PhD. for Chemistry and Michal Lenko; Rastislav Šišolák for Informatics. The new type of sensor under development is aimed at high-precision and rapid detection of viruses based on the interaction of the virus with the biological component on the surface of the electrode, which is being developed at the Institute of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. It is the prepared biological component that ensures high specificity, allowing the virus to be detected in saliva without the need for a nasopharynx swab. As it is an electrochemical sensor, the speed of testing is only a few seconds and the testing itself is carried out by the scientists at the Department of Physical Chemistry of the Institute of Chemistry at the Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. Since the tests being developed are designed for self-testing without the need for complex instrumentation and highly skilled personnel, part of the team was focused on developing an application that converts the electrochemical response into simple positivity information, understandable to the end user, and also send the results to a forthcoming database. The research also includes clinical trials and a multicentre study, which will be conducted in collaboration with the Clinic of Infectology and Travel Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice.
The EDEVIR team is a young scientific team composed of scientists, physicians and computer scientists who are active in the scientific, educational and clinical fields. Despite the low average age of the team, 35 years, it has a high level of expertise, which is confirmed by a total of 245 publications in international journals registered in the WOS or SCOPUS databases with almost 3000 references. Team members are active principal investigators and co-investigators of domestic (APVV, VEGA, KEGA, ESET) and foreign projects (Visegrad fund). They have participated in a number of foreign stays, which resulted in high-quality collaborations with the top foreign universities.
