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MU honours PhD students for their outstanding work

The MU Vice-Rector’s award for excellence in doctoral studies was received by 31 graduates, their supervisors and consultants.

On 7 November, Vice-Rector for Research and Doctoral Studies Šárka Pospíšilová presented the award to the PhD graduates, who were selected on the basis of several criteria, at Masaryk University’s Karel Engliš Auditorium. These include the successful completion of studies within the standard period of four years extended by a maximum of one year with high-quality research results included in their doctoral thesis. This year, thirty-one PhD students were awarded, along with their supervisors and thesis consultants who made significant contributions.

“PhD studies are one of the keys driving our university forward. You have completed your studies with excellent results. You know when you need to work hard, and the need is constant. You know how to take setbacks and turn them into ultimate success. You live according to Masaryk’s maxim that the world is cultivated by work – small and everyday work,” said Martin Bareš, Rector of Masaryk University, in his opening address. He also thanked the supervisors and consultants for their work: “It is very difficult to bring everything to a successful conclusion, and we are thinking how to make this even better.”

After thanking the students, Vice-Rector Šárka Pospíšilová recalled that last year less than 2,500 doctoral students studied at Masaryk University, out of a total of 20,000 in the Czech Republic; 137 of them graduated within five years of starting their doctoral studies, and about three hundred received their doctorate. “We are slowly increasing the percentage of those who finish their doctoral studies on time. However, there is still a high failure rate of over 50 per cent,” reminded the Vice-Rector, adding that MU is trying to improve the financial remuneration of doctoral students. Last year, MU guaranteed them a minimum income of CZK 16,000.

For the academic year 2023/2024, the Vice-Rector awarded the following teams (listed alphabetically, with indication of their study programme):

Vasileios Apostolopoulos and Pavel Janíček 

Surgery and Reproductive Medicine. Apostolopoulos has demonstrated theoretically, experimentally and clinically that two types of knee replacement implants, which differ in material and cost, are of equal quality.

Radovan Coufal and Michal Horsák

Ecological and Evolutionary Biology. Coufal researched the biodiversity of peatlands and springs and their resilience to climate change.

Veronika Fedorová and Dáša Bohačiaková

Biomedical Sciences. As part of her thesis, Fedorová studied the early development of the human nervous system and its capacity for self-renewal.

Michael Teodor Grey and Ivan Rektor 

Neuroscience. Grey studied the consequences of the increase in the volume of white matter lesions both due to age and in patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Jakub Holuša and Daniel Nývlt

Physical Geography. Thanks to the broad interdisciplinary scope of the applied scientific approach, Holuša comprehensively described the main factors behind the formation and morphological characteristics of the “Moravian Sahara” eolian complex during the last Ice Age.

Pavla Hujová, Tomáš Freiberger and Přemysl Souček 

Biomedical Sciences. Using a wide range of methods, Hujová experimentally investigated factors affecting splicing aberrations of genes, which are mutations that are among the common causes of Mendelian genetic disorders.

Jakub Chini and Martin Kvizda 

Economic Policy. Chini’s research focused on the competition in the rail passenger transport and energy industries.

Lucia Janáčová and Pavel Bouchal 

Biochemistry. Janáčová studied the molecular mechanisms of solid tumour metastasis and the possibility of targeting them therapeutically.

Tomáš Janoš, Pavel Čupr and Lucie Bláhová 

Na fotografii zleva jsou prorektorka Šárka Pospíšilová, rektor Martin Bareš, Pavel Čupr a Lucie Bláhová.

Environmental Health Sciences. Janoš assessed the health risks associated with human exposure to chemicals.

Miroslav Jurčík and Kateřina Lojdová 

School Pedagogy. In his work, Jurčík studied professional identity types of Montessori school teachers and significantly contributed to the understanding of the specifics of Montessori pedagogy.

Michal Kiaba and Adam Dubroka 

Physics. Kiaba studied the properties of ultrathin layers of metallic materials and experimentally confirmed their behaviour as predicted fifty years ago.

Matej Kosiba and Norbert Werner 

Physics. Using machine learning, Kosiba analysed galaxy clusters and catalogued extragalactic sources contributing to the cosmic X-ray background.

Kamil Kovaříček and Radek Ruban

Theoretical Legal Sciences. Kovaříček studied the influence of the system of capital preservation on the functioning of capital companies and the functioning of their basic corporate institutions.

Denisa Krásná and Martina Horáková

Literatures in English. In a variety of North American cultural and literary contexts, Krásná traced the complex relationship between colonialism and various forms of real or metaphorized violence, particularly in relation to minority groups.

Barbora Lofajová Danielová and Petra Goláňová

Archaeology. Danielová studied human activity in the landscape of north-western Slovakia from prehistoric times to the beginning of the Migration Period.

Petr Macháč and Jiří Pinkas 

Chemistry. Using a wide range of methods, Macháč studied the synthesis, porosity and thermal stability of porous materials with applications in catalytic chemistry.

Felizardo Armando Muianga and Světlana Hanušová
 

Na fotografii zleva jsou prorektorka Šárka Pospíšilová, rektor Martin Bareš a Světlana Hanušová.

Didactics of Foreign Language. Muianga’s research focused on formative assessment in English language teaching in Mozambique, and in particular on teachers’ readiness to deliver this type of assessment.

Vojtěch Mýlek and Lenka Dědková 

Psychology. Mýlek’s research focused on young people’s use of the Internet for social interaction, especially online communication and face-to-face meetings with people they met online.

Jana Navrátilová and Zuzana Šalamounová 

Educational Sciences. Navrátilová studied the issue of pupil differentiation within primary schools.

Jana Nenadalová, Luboš Bělka and Jakub Cigán

Study of Religions. In her research on religious experience, she studied the sense of the presence of a supernatural agent at the elementary sensory level.

Martina Novotná and Alena Pospíšil Macková 

Media and Journalism Studies. Novotná studied online political discussions and the perception and consequences of impoliteness and intolerance in communication. 

Tereza Novotná and Jakub Harašta

Theoretical Legal Sciences. Novotná analysed the judicial decisions of the Czech Republic’s highest courts using natural language processing methods that straddle the boundary between law and computational linguistics.

Pavel Ostrý and Vladimír Richter 

Music Theory and Pedagogy. Ostrý focused on the study of the life and work of Jiří Ignác Linek as a representative of the phenomenon of Czech and Moravian school-masters of the 18th century.

Karolina Poredská and Vladimír Zbořil

Internal Medicine. Poredská studied Crohn’s disease and its reappearance after surgical removal of the affected part of the intestine.

Tereza Prokopová, Andrea Pokorná and Jan Maláska

Anesthesiology, Intensive Medicine and Pain Management. Prokopová studied the phenomenon of moral distress in healthcare workers not only in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also in the context of palliative care and its delivery in intensive care.

Michal Racyn and Josef Šaur

Philological Area Studies. Racyn studied the development and transformation of the ideological and political movement of Eurasianism during the 20th century among Russian exiles, and examined the transformation of selected aspects of Eurasianism in the Soviet academic environment.

Kamila Říhová, Petr Beneš and Jarmila Navrátilová

Molecular and Cell Biology and Genetics. Říhová investigated the signalling pathways involved in bone development, whose deregulation contributes to bone tumour formation.

Ondřej Schindler, Radka Svobodová and Tomáš Raček

Biomolecular Chemistry and Bioinformatics. As part of his doctoral project, Schindler studied the development and availability of empirical methods for calculating partial atomic charge. 

Kamil Sobek and Zdeněk Losos

Geology. Sobek studied solid solution systems in minerals.  

Michaela Šaradín Lebedíková and David Šmahel

Media and Journalism Studies. Lebedíková studied the effects of adolescent exposure to sexually explicit content.

Samuel Žilinčík and Lubomír Kopeček

Political Science. Žilinčík explored the possibilities of using contemporary knowledge of emotions to better understand military strategy.