The election of the new Dean of the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University took place on 20 October 2025. Senators chose from three candidates seeking to succeed Tomáš Kašparovský, whose second term was coming to an end. After two rounds of voting, Luděk Bláha secured the required majority.
You first ran for dean eight years ago against the now former dean Tomáš Kašparovský. You later became part of the faculty leadership. What do you bring from that period into your role as dean?
With a bit of exaggeration, I would say I gained some humility and realised that there will never be a “world according to Bláha”. But seriously – I learned that a university is a very large institution. It may not function like a corporation, but it still has to follow many rules. I also realised that academic self-governance may not speed things up, because issues have to be discussed thoroughly, but at the same time it provides important feedback to leaders. It acts as a brake and a reminder that a university is not just about their personal ideas and decisions. In short, I learned that it is better to take a consensual approach and that gradually convincing people of what you see as important is more effective than simply presenting ready-made solutions without proper explanation.
During the debates before your election, it was said that the faculty lacks a coherent strategy. What do you think about this and what kind of strategy would you like to set?
The Faculty of Science has a very diverse structure – some of our departments are larger than entire faculties elsewhere, while others have only a few dozen staff. Telling large departments what they should do is simply unrealistic, and I respect their autonomy. At the same time, we all need to move in the same direction as a faculty. Our faculty strategy should be an agreement on where we want to go in the long term. For me, this mainly means ensuring strong and respected leaders in the five core areas in which we teach and conduct research. I also want us to acknowledge, clearly and calmly, that some parts of the faculty naturally focus more on teaching, while others focus more on top-level research. We also need to agree that both roles are essential to how the faculty works, and that neither is superior to the other.
How will this differentiation of roles affect academic staff?
Let’s be honest – it is unsustainable for every associate professor and professor to do everything: be a top researcher, secure major grants, lead a large group, teach, and sit on countless committees. I would therefore like to start a targeted discussion within our departments about having people who focus more on research, drive it forward and pass on up-to-date knowledge to their colleagues and students, as well as people who focus primarily on high-quality teaching. It is important to understand that this arrangement benefits everyone.
After your election, you mentioned that you would like to increase the faculty’s international visibility. How do you plan to do that?
If we want strong international visibility, we need strong personalities. As I said, we should have one or two strong leaders in each of our fields who are internationally recognisable figures. This is not just about publishing in prestigious journals – I think we can all manage that. What we need are people who get invited to conferences and are sought out for collaboration by their peers from other countries and whose presence will attract other talented researchers to Brno.
How are you going to find them?
Finding them is, of course, not easy. However, there is another essential condition we must meet first: we must get rid of the provincial mindset that strong personalities will harm us, that they will take away our positions or our funding. The opposite is true. We need to realise that these are the kind of people who pull the whole institution forward and help others grow. My goal is to create an environment at the faculty where such leaders are welcome and have excellent conditions for their research and for teaching their younger colleagues.
You also mentioned the need to change the faculty’s attitude towards the Rector’s Office. What exactly do you mean?
I think we need to rethink the reserved mindset that sometimes prevails at our faculty, where we hold our noses up in the air and see the Rector’s Office merely as a burden. This rhetoric achieves nothing and only creates unnecessary barriers. In recent years, I have participated in the efforts to reform the doctoral studies at the university level and I have come to understand that centralisation in many areas is a major advantage of our university, something that many others envy. Think, for example, of the information system or well-designed unified standards. I would like our faculty to see that the Rector’s Office is not a boulder blocking our development, but that we are part of a large university that, with a positive approach on both sides, helps us in many ways.
Can you introduce the vice-deans you plan to work with in the coming years?
My election was followed by intensive negotiations. I am glad that I can now count on the support of a team of eight vice-deans. The current dean, biochemist Tomáš Kašparovský, will serve as Vice-Dean for Development, and biologist Pavel Lízal will continue as Vice-Dean for Undergraduate Studies. The remaining six names are new, and I want to discuss them first with the Academic Senate. I expect to work with two new vice-deans from the departments of chemistry and geology, who will be responsible for teacher training and social issues. I am also looking forward to the new energy that four vice-deans from the biology and physics departments will bring to their areas: education strategy, research, doctoral studies and internationalisation.
Let’s talk now for a minute about your professional background. You studied microbiology at Masaryk University and now work at RECETOX as an environmental toxicologist. What led you to a career in research?
I wanted to be a researcher from an early age and I loved nature. I tried to read everything that was available back then – during the final years of socialism. Over time, I gravitated towards biology and made a pragmatic decision to study microbiology, knowing it would offer career options outside research, in case that did not work out. During my studies, I met Professor Damborský, my thesis supervisor, and working with him cemented my determination to be a scientist.
What do you do at RECETOX, and has this experience helped you in your role as vice-dean and now dean?
I coordinate one of the five large research programmes that deliver the centre’s ongoing strategic projects, involving around 40 people. At the same time, I lead my own research group of 15 people, working on several projects including EU-funded grants. That’s where I gained experience in leadership and coordination, and my role as vice-dean helped me develop a realistic sense of what can be achieved in a university setting.
This prompts the next question: how will your new position as dean affect your research work?
Significantly – and I am prepared for that. But I enjoy trying new things. If our team achieves success in a particular area, I am happy to hand it over to younger colleagues. At RECETOX, I can rely on an excellent team, where my colleagues take over ongoing projects and run them independently. Even though I will have to reduce the time I devote to research, I believe I can still manage a large team meeting once a month and individual meetings with each student every two weeks.