In his new role, V. Bryja plans to further improve communication and infrastructure sharing across the biomedical sciences on campus. You can read more about this biologist, whose research includes cell signalling, in the summary below.
*3. 7. 1977 in Vítkov
V. Bryja studied molecular biology at Masaryk University’s (MU) Faculty of Science (1995−2000). In 2004, he received his PhD in the field of neuroscience (First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague). In 2014, he was appointed Associate Professor, and in 2019, he was promoted to Professor of Animal Physiology at the MU Faculty of Science. His scientific orientation was greatly influenced by a three-year (2004−2007) post-doctoral internship at the Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden). After returning, he joined the Cytokinetics Department led by A. Kozubík at the Institute of Biophysics, Czech Academy of Sciences in Brno, as a researcher. That same year, he also joined the Animal Physiology Group at the Department of Experimental Biology, MU Faculty of Science, where he worked as a senior researcher, later acting as Head of Department between 2018 and 2023.
Since July 2023, he has been Director of the Department of Experimental Biology, taking over from Prof. Jan Šmarda. In his new role, he would like to further strengthen the Department’s teaching and scientific excellence. At the same time, he wants to strengthen both the department’s and faculty’s international prestige and, under the banner of the Preclinical Centre, contribute to improving the infrastructural background at the Bohunice University Campus for the wider field of biomedical sciences.
V. Bryja has built his own working group at the Department, where he studies issues related to cell signalling, especially related to molecules from the Wnt family in human “normal” and tumour cell populations. He has contributed significantly to several fundamentally new discoveries in his field and has authored or co-authored one hundred and thirty articles published in prestigious international journals (e.g. Cell, Nature, PLOS Biology, PNAS, EMBO, Blood, Stem Cells, and Nature Communications), which have been highly cited by other scientists (more than 5000 citations on WoS). Fundamental discoveries include the identification of some new components of the Wnt pathway (a signalling cascade whose deregulation leads to many disorders) and elucidation of their molecular functioning. Since components of the Wnt pathway are involved in the development of several diseases, the results of his basic research serve as the basis for further preclinical research with practical benefits in biomedicine. Some of the results have already been patented at home and abroad, forming the basis for the establishment of the university spin-off company CasInvent Pharma.
V. Bryja has built a network that includes top national and international organisations. The social dimension of this network pushes the boundaries of knowledge thanks to the effective coordination and integration of international scientific cooperation. Some of the results of this networking include i) the KI-MU project (a collaboration between the Karolinska Institute and Masaryk University in the field of biomedicine), which successfully introduced researchers and PhD students at MU with some of the best science in the world; organisation of international conferences, such as the EMBO Conference ‘Wnt Meeting’, held in Brno in 2016; and the organisation, and since 2018, coordination of the prestigious Life Sciences Seminars in Brno.
V. Bryja is an active teacher. Over the last fifteen years he has taught many students and, since 2018, he has been the guarantor for the Physiology, Immunology and Developmental Biology of Animals PhD programme. His versatile activities and results have been rewarded with prestigious awards, such as the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) Installation Grant (2007), The Award of the Minister of Education, Youth and Sports for extraordinary results in research, experimental development and innovation (2012); The Prize of the Chairman of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (GA CR, 2014); The Neuron Impulse Award (Neuron−fund for the support of science; 2016) and the Neuron Award for extraordinary connection of science and business (2021).
Openness and a close connection between quality teaching and excellent science are important to him. You can read more about this chemist, who studies luminescence methods, in the summary below.
At the Department, he would like to strengthen the level of communication between disciplines, as well as between academics and students. You can read more about this mathematician, whose main scientific interest is equations, in the summary below.
