Prof. MUDr. Jiří Forejt, DrSc.

He studied at the Medical Faculty of Charles University in Hradec Králové. In 1991, he defended his dissertation on Genetics of Mouse Germ Cell Cells and obtained a Doctor of Science (DrSc) degree. In 2002 he was appointed associate professor and in 2006 professor of genetics at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague. From 1993-94, he was a visiting professor at the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University in New Jersey, USA. He heads the Department of Mouse Molecular Genetics at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He discovered the first 'speciation' gene in mammals which restricts gene exchange between closely related species. His projects have received repeated support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), USA, and from the FP programs, EU. In the years 2007-2013 he was the holder of the Premium Academiae to support scientific excellence in the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He has organized several international conferences and is an elected member of the European Molecular Biological Society and the Learned Society of the Czech Republic. He has won a number of awards, including the Gregor Mendel Medal and the Jan Evangelista Purkyně Medal of Honor of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, the National Award of the Czech Government ‘Czech Head’ and the Silver Medal of the President of the Senate of the Czech Republic.