Prof. Julie Dobrovolná
(previously Julie Bienertová-Vašků)
PI of "Environmental physiology" research programme

Julie Dobrovolná (previously Bienertová-Vašků) completed her Ph.D. in Pathophysiology in 2009 at Masaryk university and has been Associate Professor of Physiology and Pathophysiology at the Masaryk university since 2013. In 2003 and 2008, she took the visiting researcher position in INSERM Unit U781, Necker Hospital, Paris and where she collaborated on the project supervised by Dr. Agnes Rötig and Prof. A. Munnich. Since then, she has developed multiple international collaborations with excellent institutions (Dr. D. Fairweather at Mayo Clinic, US; prof. T. Lotti at University of Studies Guglielmo Marconi, IT, dr. P. Joshi at University Edinburgh, UK, the team of prof. Vandesompele at Center of Medical Genetics at Ghent University, Belgium and others).

Her expertise lies mainly in the assessment of environmental influences on human health outcomes, with special emphasis on changes in adipokine expression under different environmental conditions and on their involvement in molecular pathophysiology of obesity. Her current programme is mainly focused on identification of associations between environmental exposure and alterations in adipose tissue in humans. She has additional interest in development of novel methodology for measurement of stress and in re-definition of general concepts of stress.

She has published more 74 WOS articles, has >780 citations in WOS, h-index 15. Prof. Dobrovolná served as editor to and co-authored several monographies and monography chapters focused mainly on body fat and its role in pathophysiology of complex diseases. Prof. Dobrovolná has also a EPO/Japanese patent: EP2888275 A1- B-cell activating factor for increasing mucosal immunity of infants as well as sucklings and a preparation containing this factor that is based solely on the findings of her team.

Prof. Dobrovolná received numerous prizes: 2014 - Masaryk University Rector’s Award for the Young Scientist; 2009 – 2nd place in the Prix de Pharmacie national competition held under the auspices of the French Embassy of the Czech Republic and Sanofi-Aventis company; 2003 – 1st place in the Prix de Medecine national competition held under the auspices of the French Embassy of the Czech Republic; 2003 – Masaryk University Rector’s Award. Also, she mentored and supervised multiple future awardees of these awards (Martin Horak, Ivo Necesanek, Jan Novak) and for years has been participating within the jury of these awards.

She teaches numerous courses both at the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Sciences MU, including Pathological Physiology, Genetics, Human Molecular Biology, and Obesitology. She is also a member of the doctoral board in the field of Pathological Physiology. She has successfully supervised the total of 14 MSc/BSc students who successfully defended their theses in Biochemistry, Nutritional Therapy and Molecular Biology and currently supervises the total of 8 Ph.D. students with one successfully having graduated already.

Prof. Dobrovolná is also participating in numerous PR activities of the Masaryk University and organization thereof: annual organization of the Scientists’ Night and annual round of Children’s University (MjUNI) and is a recognized speaker (TEDx talk, ScienceCafé, ScienceSlam activities, promotion of autism awareness). She is also a guarantor of the “Healthy people” part of the strategy Brno2050 in the framework of smart-cities project in her residental city of Brno.