Jan Konvalinka was awarded the Prize of the Chairwoman of the Research, Development and Innovation Council

Prof. Jan Konvalinka, director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the CAS and member of the Learned Society, has been awarded the Prize of the Chairwoman of the R&D&I Council Helena Langšádlová for the promotion and popularisation of research.

The award ceremony will take place at the end of the year in Prague. 

"I am very pleased to be able to award this prize from the position of the chairwoman of the R&D&I Council to Professor Jan Konvalinka, who has been instrumental in making scientific knowledge available to the public for many years and was also very active in doing so at the time of the coronavirus pandemic," says Minister Helena Langšádlová.

Photo: Dominik Bouma

Jan Konvalinka studied biochemistry at the Faculty of Science of Charles University. From 1987 to 1991, he undertook his postgraduate studies at IOCB Prague, where her would return in 1997 after completing research internships in London at Birkbeck College, at Cardiff University, and in Heidelberg and Hamburg. He heads the Proteases of Human Pathogens research group as Distinguished Chair.

From 2014 to 2022, he served as Vice-Rector for Science and Research at Charles University. He is a member of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic and other scientific organizations, and he is also the Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Neuron Endowment Fund.

In May 2022, based on a recommendation by the IOCB Board, he was appointed the new director of IOCB Prague for a five-year term. He took office on 1 June 2022.

Prof. Konvalinka has been popularizing science for many years and regularly appears on Czech Radio programmes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the regular programme "Coronavirus with Jan Konvalinka" with Barbora Tachecí on ČRo Plus had a high listenership; equally popular were appearances in news and discussion programmes on Czech Television on the topics of COVID-19, the development of virostatics, vaccines and the course of the epidemic. He is a co-author of the popularization books Viry pro 21. století (Academia, 2011), Von Parasiten und Menschen (Springer Verlag Stuttgart, 2023) and Spánek rozumu plodí příšery (Prostor, 2020). He is the recipient of the AFO 2021 Science Popularization Award.