About Myself

I am a professor at the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University.

I have an M.S. in Mathematics from Masaryk University (1976) and a PhD in Computer Sciences from the Czech Academy of Sciences (1986) under Professor J. Horejs. Since 2006 I am a full professor of informatics at Masaryk University.

My current research interests include automated formal verification, parallel verification and digital systems biology.

In 2009, I founded the Laboratory of Systems Biology intending to integrate and intensify research and education activities in the emerging area of Computational Systems Biology at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University.

From January 1, 2016, we became part of the national research infrastructure C4Sys (Centre for System Biology), representing a Czech node of the ISBE (Infrastructure for Systems Biology – Europe), and our activities are supported from the program for large research infrastructures of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports.

For a more detailed CV, please follow this external link and check My Academic Genealogy.

a touch of history

The Department of Applied Mathematics, a predecessor to the Department of Computer Science, was located in the historical buildings till 1981. On the photograph is the main entrance to the building.
The main courtyard. The department itself was situated on the first floor.
The photograph was taken during the visit of Prof. Ballag (1976).

Research

The aim of our research in digital systems biology is to enhance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the behaviour of complex living systems. The goal is to gain a better explanation of how the complex dynamic behaviour of the cell emerges from the interactions of molecular species. When solving such a non-trivial goal, the data have to be necessarily integrated with mathematical modelling and computer analysis. Since the complexity of biological networks is enormous due to the appearance of complicated feedback loops, the system dynamics is often counter-intuitive and cannot be directly predicted from the network structure.

Computer science technologies together with computer tools employing suitable mathematical and computer science methods can help to obtain an exact description of the networks, and in consequence, to infer interesting predictions of systems dynamics evolved in an arbitrary environment. To cope with large-scale biological models describing interaction in the scale of several functional layers of a living cell, the central requirement imposed on analysis tools is the scalability.

My current primary research topic focus

Partially Specified Boolean Networks:

Boolean network is a very simple model of a biological system: each node takes either 0 or 1 and the states of nodes change according to regulation rules given as Boolean functions. In partially specified Boolean networks, some of these Boolean functions are (partially) unknown. Viewed in another way, we only know values of the Boolean functions for some arguments. The goal of our research is to develop effective, fast, and scalable methods, techniques and tools for automated analysis of robustness and control of partially defined Boolean networks.

Publications

30

DBLP journals

97

DBLP Conferences

4032

Google scholar citations

35

Google Scholar h-index

Contact

Call Me

I don't have an office phone and my university number is inactive.

Email Me

surname at fi.muni.cz

Visit Me

Faculty of Informatics
Botanicka 68a
602 00 BRNO
Czech Republic

Room A411

Office Hours

Wednesday 9.00-10.00
or by appointment