For the seventh time, Masaryk University awarded its internal grant, the MUNI Award in Science and Humanities (MASH), which is designed to support the recruitment of outstanding researchers to MU. The recipient this year is Professor Karola Dillenburger, an expert in behavioural analysis and education from Queen’s University Belfast.
“Cutting-edge science requires not only excellent ideas, but also conditions in which strong personalities and teams can develop and grow. This is why Masaryk University wishes to attract established experts as well as promising young researchers who have the ambition to succeed in international competition. In practice, the MASH programme has proven itself as a tool that helps bring new impetus to the university, achieve research excellence and, at the same time, create an environment in which projects with a global reach can be implemented,” said Šárka Pospíšilová, Vice-Rector for Research.
Karola Dillenburger is heading to the Faculty of Education, where she will work on a project to establish the MUNI-ARC Lab, or Building Pathways for Early Intervention, Education, and Social Inclusion across the Lifespan. The project focuses on supporting people with autism throughout their lives – from early intervention through education to support for autonomy, employment and social inclusion in adulthood. It will bring together experts from the fields of special education, psychology, social work, neuroscience, and information and communication technologies.
Karola Dillenburger is a specialist in Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) who has collaborated with the Faculty of Education for many years. In 2024, she was awarded the Gold Medal of MU for her significant contributions to the development of behaviour analysis at Masaryk University. “Securing the MASH grant is an extraordinary opportunity for both the Faculty of Education and the Institute for Research in Inclusive Education. It will enable us to establish an international research centre that will combine expertise in special education, psychology, behaviour analysis and information technology that will strengthen Masaryk University’s position as one of Europe’s centres of excellence in autism research,” said Karel Pančocha, head of the Institute.
The MASH grant requires recipients to work directly at MU. They will then receive up to five million CZK a year for five years from GAMU, the university’s grant agency, to implement their project.
Grant for promising young researchers
In addition to the main MASH grant, Masaryk University has also awarded MASH StG/CoG grants for promising young researchers. This specific call is intended for experts who wish to apply for a European Research Council (ERC) grant in the Starting or Consolidator category under the auspices of Masaryk University. Thirteen applicants were successful this year and will receive funding of three million CZK a year for their projects for a period of four years.
The following successful applicants for the MASH StG/CoG grant have already agreed to join their respective faculties and departments:
Dominik Dold will be working on the project “mosAIc: The hidden geometry of spiking neural networks” at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the Faculty of Science. His project will address issues related to and the potential applications of spiking neural networks (SNNs). These are artificial neural networks which, unlike classical neural networks, process information using sparse, time-based pulses, enabling more realistic and energy-efficient computations.
Katja Fahrion will join the Department of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics of the Faculty of Science, where, as part of the DISCO – Distances from Star Cluster Observations project, she will focus on verifying a new method for calculating distances in space.
Zdeněk Prudil will also be working at the same department within the Faculty of Science. He will focus on uncovering how the Milky Way’s disc and bulge formed. This will provide a new perspective on the early development of our Galaxy and establish Masaryk University as a centre for galactic archaeology.
Petra Vojáčková will join the Department of Chemistry of the Faculty of Science, where she will work on identifying new approaches in selective catalysis by leveraging stabilising interactions with open-shell intermediates and radical transition states. The aim is to develop catalytic systems for the enantioselective abstraction of hydrogen atoms.
Vojtěch Kundrát, who also works at the Department of Chemistry of the Faculty of Science, has been successful with his project ActlTube: Encapsulation of Actinide Oxides in Inorganic Nanotubes. As part of this project, he intends to specialise in finding solutions to the long-standing and re-emerging problem of fixing highly active elements arising as waste from the nuclear industry. Specifically, he will focus on the possibility of encapsulating uranium oxides.
Michaela Dzurov Krafčíková is researching mitochondria at the Department of Biochemistry of the Faculty of Science. In the MITOCODE project, she intends to investigate the molecular signals that trigger and regulate intercellular mitochondrial transfer, which is critical for tissue regeneration, immune responses and tumour progression.
Tomáš Janovič works at the National Centre for Biomolecular Research of the Faculty of Science. As part of the ENDVISION project, he intends to focus on telomeres, the complexes safeguarding the ends of chromosomes and ensuring genome stability. His aim is to create the first structural model of human telomeres, which will reveal telomere-specific vulnerabilities that can be exploited for cancer therapy, whilst also establishing a widely applicable framework for studying chromatin-protein complexes in their natural environment.
Silvia Steininger will be based at the Judicial Studies Institute of the Faculty of Law, where she will focus on the issue of remittances, i.e. money transfers made by people working abroad to family and friends in their home country. Despite the fact that global remittances exceeded 904 billion USD in 2024 – surpassing foreign direct investment and development aid combined – legal scholarship has so far not addressed how remittances are regulated and how the law shapes migrants’ ability to support their families and communities. This project will spearhead the first comprehensive socio-legal study of remittances.
Alena Salašová will be able to establish her own research group at CEITEC MU. Her main research objective is to understand how cells of the central nervous system establish their identity, connectivity and structural integrity during embryogenesis, and how disruption of these fundamental processes increases cellular susceptibility to internal and external stressors later in life.
Anna Schulten will also establish a research group at CEITEC MU, focusing her research on epigenetic modifications of DNA. These modifications support cellular identity and regulate growth and development, including in response to environmental signals. She is primarily interested in elucidating the mechanisms underlying epigenetic memory.
Edith Bouton will be based at the Department of Educational Sciences of the Faculty of Arts, where she will establish an independent research group focused on improving classroom discourse through the development of an internationally validated tool for its systematic coding. This tool will help overcome the current methodological fragmentation in the field and create a standardised framework for comparing and synthesizing research findings across cultural and linguistic contexts.
The other two successful grant applicants will focus, respectively, on developing a tool that can be used to estimate the prevalence of dementia in populations, and on researching EU antitrust law.