Professor Jana Klánová, Director of the RECETOX Centre at the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University, was awarded an honorary doctorate (doctor honoris causa) at Örebro University in Sweden. On this occasion, she presented her research at a public lecture and discussed collaboration with several research teams.
"I have been following Jana Klánová’s work for a long time," says Åke Bergman, Professor Emeritus at Stockholm University and Professor at Örebro University, "Her impressive intellectual skills, competence, and creativity make her one of the key figures in current chemical pollution research at the global level. Her outstanding achievements have led to my proposal for an honorary doctorate being unreservedly supported by our Faculty and approved by the university administration. I see this as a crucial step towards closer cooperation between Masaryk University and Örebro University," said Professor Bergman.
The Conferment ceremony took place on 6th May 2023, and, in addition to Jana Klánová, three other scientists from the USA, Canada, and the UK were awarded honorary doctorates. In addition to the highest officials of Örebro University, several political figures attended, including ministers, representatives of the Swedish Parliament, and diplomats. The Czech Ambassador to Sweden, Anita Grmelová, brought a personal congratulatory message from the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Markéta Pekarová Adamová.
"I appreciate that the proposal came from Professor Bergman, one of the ancestors of European environmental chemistry," says Jana Klánová. "But I was also impressed by the event's atmosphere and the university's spirit. Although Örebro University is one of the youngest universities in Sweden, it has quickly entered the top five of all university rankings and is very successful in winning prestigious grants. The current rector, Johan Schnürer, is a very open-minded person who is sincerely interested in environmental issues and supports the development of inter-faculty cooperation in building the Platform for Sustainability. That is why he is also very keen to cooperate with Masaryk University, to get to know our "Sustainable MUNI" and the concept of the Brno "Living Lab" better. He also spoke about the need for cooperation between all democratic countries in his speech at the gala evening. To strengthen scientific cooperation with the Czech Republic, he also got members of the Swedish Parliament, who coincidentally recently visited Prague. I hope we will soon welcome Rector Schnürer and the Director of the Platform for Sustainability, Frans Prenkert, to Brno," adds Professor Klánová.
A new bioinformatic tool, BGC Atlas, was developed by a consortium of bioinformaticians. It identifies and clusters biosynthetic gene clusters from publicly available datasets, offering a centralised database and a web interface for metadata-aware exploration of BGCs and gene cluster families (GCFs).
On Tuesday, December 10th, the President of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, appointed new university professors. We are very pleased to announce that among them is Martin Bobák, a representative of the RECETOX center at Masaryk University.
