Dies Academicus 2026: Masaryk University Highlighted the Importance of Education, Collaboration, and Human Rights

The first to address the packed auditorium was Jiří Hanuš, Vice-Rector for Personnel Policy, Academic and Cultural Affairs, who served as the master of ceremonies for the academic ceremony. He announced that Masaryk University would be awarding four MU Gold Medals, four MU Silver Medals, and one MU Bronze Medal. He also highlighted the Masaryk University Rector’s Award, which is presented annually in several categories for outstanding achievements in science and research, sports, teaching, the arts, and civic engagement, noting that 24 university figures would be receiving it.

In his speech on the occasion of Dies Academicus 2026, Rector Martin Bareš combined a reflection on the state of Czech higher education with an assessment of the past academic year and a vision for the further development of universities. He noted that while Czech higher education has seen “modest progress within the limits of the law,” it continues to face challenges such as insufficient funding, a fragmented system, the absence of a long-term strategy, and inadequate legislative modernization. He emphasized the need for a new Higher Education Act that would strengthen university autonomy, support their diversification, internationalization, high-quality evaluation, and stable funding, so that Czech universities can hold their own in international competition and respond to rapidly changing societal challenges. At the same time, he highlighted specific achievements of Masaryk University in the 2025/2026 academic year—budget growth, success in attracting top-tier researchers and grants, the development of strategic investments, as well as growing interest.
The central message of the speech, however, was a call for responsibility toward the whole, for overcoming narrow interests, and for the ability to collaborate across the university. “It demonstrates an extraordinary ability to work for the benefit of a larger whole than a department, institute, clinic, division, or faculty. An extraordinary ability to look beyond the boundaries of one’s functional mandates,” the rector summarized. According to the rector, it is precisely this ability that represents one of the main reasons for Masaryk University’s success and, at the same time, a prerequisite for its further development in a demanding and rapidly changing world.

In his speech, Petr Najvar, Chair of the MU Academic Senate, drew attention to the growing influence of social media on society and democracy. Alongside their benefits, he warned against a phenomenon he termed the “uprising of the uneducated”—that is, a situation where public opinion is increasingly shaped by superficial messages and emotions rather than knowledge and values. He identified high-quality education based on humanistic and democratic principles as a long-term response to this trend. He then focused on the quality of higher education and emphasized that, with the growing diversity of the student population, universities must pay greater attention to how they educate. He presented his own model of quality in higher education teaching based on three principles: relevance, rigor, and collegiality. Teaching should be meaningful in content, appropriately challenging, and take place in an environment of mutual respect and cooperation between teachers and students.

According to him, the university’s goal is not merely to impart knowledge, but to create a nurturing environment for future experts, scientists, teachers, and politicians. He concluded his speech with the traditional Latin phrase “Quod bonum, felix, faustum, fortunatumque sit!”, which can be translated as: “May it be good, happy, auspicious, and successful.”

This was followed by the award ceremony.

MU Rector's Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement

iGEM Brno Team– Matej Zámečník (graduate of the Department of Experimental Biology), Matúš Grieš (Department of  Experimental biology), Miroslav Rosputinský (Department of  Experimental biology), Hana Slámová (RECETOX), Tereza Slančíková (Department of  Experimental biology), Michaela Prokopová (Department of  Biochemistry), Jonáš Pospíchal (Department of  Biochemistry), Barbora Gavendová (Department of  Experimental biology), Matěj Bryja (NCBR), Ľubomír Gallo (Department of  Biochemistry), Zdenka Vilhanová (Department of  Biochemistry), Klára Pěchoučková (RECETOX), David Kopecký (CEITEC MU), Michal Šimčák (Department of  Experimental biology), Marko Mećava (Department of Biochemistry), Ondřej Švanda (Department of Botany and Zoology) and Peter Schmidt (ECON MUNI).

For winning the Overgraduate Grand Prize at iGEM, the world’s most prestigious and largest competition in the field of synthetic biology. The team presented a project focused on more efficient cultivation and utilization of duckweed as livestock feed on local farms. They complemented this biological breakthrough with the design of a cultivator and an autonomous system enabling the cultivation of duckweed with minimal human intervention.

MU Rector's Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Grant Competition

Tomáš Fiala, Department of Chemistry

In 2025, he received an ERC Starting Grant focused on developing new chemical tools for the targeted modification of proteins at the level of individual proteomers. Tomáš Fiala’s ERC project is unique in that it develops chemical tools for studying biological problems where traditional methods of molecular biology fall short.

MU Rector’s Award for Outstanding Research Achievements for Young Scientists Under 40

Natural Sciences and Medicine: David Bednář, RECETOX

He studies the relationship between protein structure and function. He is the author or co-author of 92 publications in high-impact journals, as well as the author or co-author of 14 bioinformatics tools and 3 databases that are widely used by the scientific community.

MU Rector’s Award for Innovation in Teaching

Teaching Category: Markéta Holá, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, MU

She is receiving the award for a conceptual and sustainable transformation of laboratory instruction in analytical chemistry. The innovation is based on the concept of blended learning, which combines laboratory instruction with online study support and elements of inquiry-based learning and gamification.

MU Rector’s Award for Outstanding Students in MU Master’s Programs

Pavla Procházková, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science, MU, Mathematics

MU Rector’s Award for Outstanding Students in MU Doctoral Programs

Anoop Kumar Yadav, Department of Experimental Biology, Faculty of Science, MU, Department of Experimental Biology, Faculty of Science, MU, Molecular and Cell Biology and Genetics

Photo: Martin Indruch