prof. Ing. Petr Ráb, DrSc.

(born in 1951 Liberec)

P. Ráb graduated from the University of Agriculture in Prague in 1974, specializing in fishery biology. He then started internal post-graduate study at the Institute of Livestock Physiology and Genetics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (CSAS). In 1981 he defended a thesis for the degree of CSc. (candidate of sciences) in the field of the cytogenetics of cyprinid fishes. Since then he has been a research scientist holding various positions at the Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v.v.i., a successor in 1993 to the former Institute of Livestock Physiology and Genetics of the CSAS. From 1991-1993 he was Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Institute and Head of the Laboratory of Fish Genetics. He served, during 1994-2002, as Director of the Institute; currently he heads the Institute´s Section of Evolutionary Biology and Animal Genetics. As a hosting scientist he was engaged in research at the Laboratory of General and Applied Ichthyology at the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) in Paris (France); the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) (USA); the Faculty of Fishery Science at the University of Warmia and Mazury (UWM) in Olsztyn (Poland); the Department of Zoology and Anthropology of the University of Lisbon (Portugal), and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Bonn (Germany). In 1995 he defended a doctoral thesis (for the degree of DrSc) on cytogenetics of selected freshwater holarctic fishes. He is an external lecturer at the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague, where he qualified as associate professor in zoology. He is a Board member of the European Ichthyological Society (EIS).

Dr. Ráb´s research is focused on the cytogenetics, cytotaxonomy and karyosystematics of fish with a particular emphasis on holarctic freshwater groups, the karyotype evolution of selected fish groups, fish genome manipulation, the gene pools of threatened animals, differential conventional and molecular chromosome banding and the genome composition of lower vertebrates, general aspects of fish genetics, and the biodiversity, taxonomy and systematics of fish.