This new internal MUNI grant is intended to facilitate the return of researchers to scientific work, e.g. after parental leave.
Six researchers from Masaryk University (two of them from our faculty!) have now received a Career Restart grant, which was announced by the MU Grant Agency in September. This is a grant for scientists who have interrupted their career in research, perhaps due to parental leave or for other reasons, will be awarded on a regular basis.
The successful scientists, who will start working on their projects from January, have received support amounting to half a million crowns a year for a period of two years. The evaluation criteria for the grant consider the potential for future achievement in a leading research position and the benefit for the workplace. In other calls, researchers with a Doctorate who already have significant scientific achievements and who worked at MU before the end of their career can also apply for a grant.
Michaela Kuchynka
Michaela works at the Faculty of Science’s Department of Analytical Chemistry, where she is involved in imaging the distribution of elements and proteins in tissues. Over the next two years (the period for which she received the grant), she will study the effectiveness of anticancer drugs using the LA-ICP-MS method, which enables the imaging of metals and, more recently, proteins in tumour tissue. The efficacy of certain drugs will also be examined, particularly as regards their ability to target the tumour. In addition to allowing Michaela to return to work after parental leave, the grant will also allow her to link her research at the Faculty of Science with that at the Faculty of Pharmacy MU. In the future, she wants to create her own research team within the Faculty of Pharmacy, which will deal with anticancer drugs and diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Andrea Kraus
Andrea works at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the Faculty of Science MU, where she focuses on mathematical and applied statistics. As part of her work, she helps colleagues from other disciplines with the selection and application of appropriate statistical methods for the analysis of their data and develops new methods for data that cannot be satisfactorily analysed using existing methods. In the near future, she will focus on the further development of a methodology for monitoring epidemics with similar characteristics to those we see in the ongoing coronavirus epidemic. The grant will enable her to become a full member of the international scientific community in her field once again.
A team of botanists has revealed significant changes in the distribution of species in the Czech flora. Their study, published in the international scientific journal Biological Conservation, analyzed the decline and increase of individual plant species in the Czech Republic since 1960.
In March, meetings were held between faculty representatives and students who are members of the programme councils. Why are they essential for addressing feedback from the course opinion poll? We asked Vice-Dean Markéta Munzarová.
