University of Pardubice, Faculty of Chemical Technology, Department of Physical Chemistry.
I have been working at the Department of Physical Chemistry of the Faculty of Chemical Technology, University of Pardubice, for almost 25 years. At the moment I hold the position of Professor. In the quarter of a century of my employment here I have gained a lot of experience with teaching in bachelor and master as well as doctoral study programmes. For many years I taught various laboratory classes and theoretical seminars, but I was also lucky enough to get the opportunity to start lecturing when I was young. Apart from courses of physical chemistry, which I took over from my older colleagues, I introduced eight completely new courses according to my own liking, not only in the field of physical and material chemistry, but also courses such as History of Chemistry, so I can boast of rich experience in this area.
I have been focused on scientific work since the beginning of my doctoral study. I specialize in heterogenous catalysis and adsorption phenomena in porous materials. At present I concern myself with adsorption phenomena in molecular sieves and with aimed preparation and use of nanoporous inorganic materials with controlled porosity as solid catalysts for the conversion of alkanes to alkenes by dehydrogenation or oxidative dehydrogenation.
At the Department of Physical Chemistry, I have gradually built an international research team, which now ranks among excellent teams of our university. At the beginning of my scientific career I also shortly worked at the Academy of Sciences in the group of Dr. Blanka Wichterlová (Jaroslav Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry, Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic) and I still have extensive cooperation with the institutes of the Academy, just as I do with colleagues from home (Faculty of Science of Charles University, University of Chemistry and Technology, Technical University of Ostrava) and foreign universities (University of the Balearic Islands, Université de Tunis El Manar and others). I have rich experience with receiving grant financing for projects (I have been a grantee of more than 15 projects of Grant Agency of the Czech Republic and Technological Agency of the Czech Republic - GACR) as well as with the project evaluation as a member of an expert board of GACR and reviewer at grant agencies abroad (FNRS, APVV, ACS PRF etc.) I am author or co-author of 120 scientific publications in prestigious impact journals and three patent applications. In addition to that, I serve the scientific community as a member of editorial boards of two journals, and I act as an expert reviewer of scientific papers in more than 60 journals.
I stood at the birth of the mentoring programme at our university, and I have a lot of experience with mentoring and the supervision of younger colleagues – I have supervised 16 doctoral students and 11 foreign post-docs, who joined my research group.
Although from what has been said it might seem that I have enough experience with all aspects of academic professional life, deep inside I feel there is still space for improvement and I like to look for new impetus, inspiration, and experience, which I could gain for example through mentoring.
For maintaining the inner balance, as a counterweight to my scientific work in the field of natural and technical sciences, I devote myself to photography in my free time, mainly focusing on wild nature and countryside, I am interested in history, I like to read a good detective story (perhaps a book by Kepler or Nesboa) and I clear my head with manual work at my cottage, where I constantly keep planning and building something.
