An essential part of the ESFRI roadmap to foster the European science in the field of large laser systems, the project ELI-Beamlines is to be built in the Czech Republic. The project has been submitted by the Institute of Physics to the European Commision and it is expected to be financed from the structural funds just due. The facility, which consists of several laser beamlines delivering a very high power density (up to 1023 W/cm2) on the target in a repetitive regime, should be ready by 2015. A smaller sister-project HiLASE should support the ELI-Beamlines by providing high average power repetitive ns lasers as an intermediate pumping element of the ELI laser chains, but, at the same time, of interest for various laser assisted technologies. and Karel Rohlena.
''In the middle of 1964 brought Dr. John to our laboratory a girl with quite torn eye retina. Neither classical surgery operation nor the Lichtkoagulator device was applicable. She had the only chance and that was the application of laser radiation ... '' remember nestors of Czech laser physics and quantum electronics Jan Blabla and Viktor Trkal. and ''V polovině roku 1964 přivedl MUDr. John do naší laboratoře děvče, které mělo zcela roztrhanou sítnici. Pro lékařský zákrok nebylo možné použít klasický postup operace, ani operaci pomocí nekoherentního Lichtkoagulátoru. Pacientka měla jedinou šanci, a tou byla aplikace laserového záření ...'' vzpomínají nestoři české laserové fyziky a kvantové elektroniky Jan Blabla a Viktor Trkal.