Dr. Zdeněk Pilát had his part of training in molecular genetics and he was proud of the molecular community’s advanced and ubiquitous free information-sharing, powering the molecular revolution. He recently finished his Ph.D. on Raman spectroscopy and he noticed that the Raman community consists of isolated islands of knowledge, with limited, inefficient flow of data, essentially limited to pictures of Raman spectra in publications. Moreover, he found the data-landscape is dominated by colossal international companies happily selling small Raman-spectral libraries for exorbitant prices. So, Zdeněk had developed a persistent dream about uniting the Raman community around a central informational hub. On the 4th of August 2017, he wrote a short manifesto, describing the concept of a free global data-sharing platform for the Raman-spectroscopic community and its potential impact, and he called it the Project Free Raman Library (FRL). However, he had no clue about how to realize such a complex task. And so, the idea laid dormant, waiting for the chance to realize itself.

While working at the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Dr. Zdeněk Pilát befriended a new colleague from a different department, Dr. Filip Plešinger, who has been working with machine learning. Filip had shown interest in Zdeněk’s Raman datasets, and they discussed the possibility to analyze them by machine learning algorithms.

Thanks to Dr. Mirek Srba, Zdeněk‘s long-time friend from his pre-gradual studies in Prague, Zdeněk has visited his alma mater, Charles University in Prague, for a Christmas party at the Department of Plant Physiology. There, he was introduced by Mirek to Jana Pilátová, a student and a namesake of Zdeněk’s mother, despite no familial relations. Serendipitously, Jana’s main interest and study topic is Raman spectroscopy of protists. During the ensuing exchange of ideas, it became clear that Jana and Zdeněk shared their frustration with regard to the fractured Raman-related informational landscape and discussed the possibility of establishing the informational hub.

Zdeněk, inspired by Jana’s can-do approach, asked Filip, if he could help him establish the global Raman-spectroscopic hub. Filip said yes, because at that time, he was freshly collaborating on a different project with Ondra Doskočil, talented young software engineer capable of building web-based applications. Ondra was the last missing piece that completed the puzzle. Raman Base was then established by the four founding members: Dr. Zdeněk Pilát, Dr. Filip Plešinger, Ondra Doskočil, and Jana Pilátová.

Jana has coined the name Raman Base, and she enormously helped with the initial steps of building the platform. However, after roughly one year of participation, Jana unfortunately left the project, greatly frustrated by its slow start. Without Jana, Raman base may still be just a dream, so we are thankful for the time she spent with us and her contributions will always be in the heart of Raman Base. Thank you Jana!

Raman Base has received its first grant support from AV21 program of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Filip Plešinger has put together the functional core of Raman Base: the similarity-based search mechanism, which ignores all noise and fluorescent background, allowing the user to search for spectra with similarities in their Raman peaks and the quantification of similarity on the scale from 0 to 1.

Our dear student colleague Darya Zhurauliova, supported from the finances from the AV21 project helped us by loading nearly 100,000 Raman spectra to Raman Base.

Raman Base has received its second round of grant support from AV21 program of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Raman Base has received an official status of public database by the committee for public databases of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

This year, Dr. Zdeněk Pilát has co-authored two scientific articles that cite Raman Base and the associated Raman spectra are easily accessible to all interested public via the DOIs of the articles.

At CSAC 2023 conference in Prague, Dr. Zdeněk Pilát presented a talk about Raman Base. It was the first time Raman Base was mentioned at an international conference.

Raman Base started collaboration with its first volunteer worker, software engineer form Germany.

Dr. Zdeněk Pilát, in collaboration with company IQS nano, has applied for OP TAK project regarding fabrication of SERS substrates and development of Raman Base. The proposal was successful and in December, we received confirmation of the funding - total of 30 million CZK, starting from 2024. Several millions of CZK will be invested in the development of Raman Base.

In January, we ordered new design of Raman Base logo, color scheme, font and esthetic elements for Raman Base from a talented designer David Valiášek.

In February, the registration into Raman Base was finally opened.

All Raman Base members participated together with colleagues from ETH Zurich and many world-class Raman scientists on a publication in Nature Microbiology, dealing with the establishment of MicrobioRaman open database of microbial Raman Spectra – an important step towards global open sharing of Raman spectra.

This summer, Dr. Zdeněk Pilát will participate at the world’s biggest Raman-themed scientific conference – ICORS 2024 in Rome, Italy, with a talk titled: Raman Base: it´s high time for revolution in handling and sharing of Raman spectroscopic data. We hope for a big audience and a great deal of new Raman Base users, investors, etc.

In April, we received all the new design elements for Raman Base, and we ordered also the new design of web-elements. Thank you David!

In April, Raman Base team was strengthened by another volunteer, talented software developer František Jánoš, welcome in RB team!

In April, Raman Base team was further strengthened by Josef Krušina, talented young software developer, welcome in RB team!

On the 2nd of May, Raman Base team was yet further strengthened by Dr. Anežka Vaníčková, a talented senior software developer for the frontend, welcome in RB team!