Today at Prague Castle, President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman appointed Prof. Eva Zažímalová President of the Czech Academy of Sciences for the four-year period 2017–2021. She thus became the second woman ever at the head of the most important Czech scientific institution. She replaces Prof. Jiří Drahoš in the post, whose mandate ends on 24 March 2017. Prof. Eva Zažímalová was proposed for the post of President of the Czech Academy of Sciences already in December of last year by the Academy Assembly of the CAS and the Government of the Czech Republic took notice of this proposal in the middle of January. You can find the programme announcement of the new president here.

“Madam President, let me congratulate you on today's appointment. You are taking on a gigantic organization, which counts 52 institutes, of which at least one, namely the institute of Prof. Holý has written itself into world history and I am convinced that some other institutes are on the edge of the same entry,” stated President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman.

“The Czech Academy of Sciences has the best prerequisites to combine basic and applied research in a sensible way, and I will endeavour to create the best conditions and for the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic to reach better results and at the same time remained the cultivated and respected institution, which I am convinced that it is,” said Prof. Eva Zažímalová.

Eva Zažímalová was born in 1955 in Prague. She studied biochemistry at the Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague. Since 1983, she has worked at the Institute of Experimental Botany of the CAS. Between 2003 and 2007, she was the deputy director of the Institute of Experimental Botany, from 2007 to 2012 she led the institute as its director.

She has devoted herself to the molecular mechanisms of the effect of plant hormones. Her research work is focused predominantly on the phytohormone auxin, its metabolism and the molecular mechanisms of its activity and transport in plant cells. The results of her research have found applications for instance in agriculture.

At Charles University, Eva Zažímalová was habilitated in 2004 in the field of the Anatomy and Physiology of Plants and in 2013 was appointed a professor in the field of plant anatomy and physiology. In the same year, she was elected to the Academy Council of the CAS, where she led a team for the Evaluation of the Research and Professional Activities of the Workplaces of the CAS for 2010–2014. Prof. Eva Zažímalová also sits as an evaluator in the panels of the European Research Council. She is the author or co-author of more than 50 original scientific works predominantly in renowned international journals including Science, Nature, Cell, PNAS and so on, the editor of monographs and the author of chapters in specialized monographs. Her work has been cited more than 2800x according to the WoS (without self-citation), h-index 24.