prof. Ing. Petr Dvořák, CSc.

Petr Dvorak, born in Brno, Czech Republic in 1956, is professor emeritus in Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Masaryk University (MUNI). He was a head of Department of Biology at the Medical School and from 2011 till 2019 he also served as a vice-rector for research at MUNI. Since 2014, he was a member and later on 1^st vice-chair of Research & Development Council of the Czech Republic. Additionally, he served as chairman of the Committee for the Evaluation of Research and chairman of the Bioethical Committee of the Czech Republic.

He is interested in growth factor signalling in human pluripotent stem cells (both embryonic and induced) and several specific research topics related to their self-renewal, differentiation, genomic stability, and use for drug development and/or disease modelling. His work was helping to understand how stem cells regulate, in general, their pluripotency and differentiation.

Petr Dvorak has a track record of internationally recognized research. Over the past 20 years he has published more than 70 highly cited research articles and reviews (April 2021 >5200 citations; e.g. Nature Biotechnology, New England Journal of Medicine, Stem Cells, Journal of Cell Biology, FEBS Letters, Leukemia) and he has worked, often as a coordinator, on many national and international projects, mostly focused on development of tools for medical application of stem cell research and contextual regulatory issues (e.g. highly successful and visible European project Platforms for biomedical discovery with human ES cells - ESTOOLS, European hESC registry, EuroStemCell, EU ERA Chair).