📢🎯 Invitation | SPARK Europe Webinar Series FALL 2025
SPARK Europe Webinar Series | 4th February 2026 |4-5 pm (CET) | Target Product Profile (TPP) - for MedTech | Kyun Thibaut, CEO COVARTIM | hosted by SPARK Bordeaux
Three MUNI SCIENTIST Awards for scientists from MED MUNI
This year, four researchers from our faculty received awards for their excellent research results. A total of 39 researchers and research teams across the university were honored.
The announcement of the MUNI Scientist award holders took place in the second week of December, traditionally as part of the annual conference of the MU Grant Agency.
Awards for the Faculty of Medicine:
Leandro Loriga, Department of Medical Psychology and Ethics: Awarded for a book published by Springer Nature.
In his book Body Integrity Dysphoria and the Ethical Dilemma of On-Demand Amputation, he describes the still relatively unknown diagnosis of Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID), in which a patient perceives a certain part of their body as so foreign that they have a persistent desire to have it removed. He addresses the moral and ethical dilemma related to BID. The book offers a pioneering perspective on a condition that remains highly controversial in medical and public discourse. Patients’ desire for physical disability, often through amputation, forces the medical community to take a stance—either to grant the request for amputation or to deny it, risking that individuals may resort to self-harm. Based on an overview of current understanding of BID and original data obtained through extensive field research with medical professionals, the book examines the ethical and moral aspects of this condition. It raises essential questions concerning the relationship between bodily autonomy and embodiment, identity and gender, wellbeing and moral responsibility, and how these elements intersect, shape, and are shaped by the socio-cultural understanding of illness and the body. Leandro Loriga is also the first graduate of the English-language doctoral program in Bioethics.
Klára Marečková, First Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine MU and St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno, CEITEC MU:
Awarded for articles published in Translational Psychiatry, Psychological Medicine, and NeuroImage.
Klára Marečková focuses on neuroscience research, including the influence of maternal health during pregnancy on a child’s brain development and behavior. Using data from neuropsychology, neuroimaging, epigenetics, and other fields, she seeks to better understand why some individuals age faster or are predisposed to developing anxiety or depression. She works at the First Department of Neurology of the Faculty of Medicine MU and St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno, and at the CEITEC MU Neuroscience Center. She is a holder of the GAČR Junior Star award and the principal investigator of numerous projects. Forbes included her among the TOP 24 Czech women scientists of 2024. During the evaluated period, she co-authored many scientific publications, three of which were published in journals belonging to the first decile of their WoS category.
Jitka Blažíčková, Nicola Silva, Nicola Silva’s Research Group, Department of Biology:
Awarded for an article published in Nature Communications.
A team of scientists from Nicola Silva’s research group published in the first decile WoS journal Nature Communications the article Overlapping and separable activities of BRA-2 and HIM-17 promote occurrence and regulation of pairing and synapsis during Caenorhabditis elegans meiosis. The team’s laboratory has long focused on chromosome inheritance from one generation to the next, with an emphasis on the meiotic phase during which germ cells are formed. In this research, they discovered a protein regulating the formation of the so-called synaptonemal complex—a protein “zipper” that plays a key role in the pairing and stabilization of chromosomes. These new findings provide valuable guidance for researchers studying infertility.
