Tomáš Větrovský from IMIC CAS has received the GAČR President´s Award. Congratulations!

Following recommendations from several hundred scientists, fifteen projects – three from each of the five areas of basic research – have been nominated for the GA ČR President’s Award in 2026. Tomáš Větrovský from the Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology at the Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IMIC CAS) was successful in the field of ‘Agricultural and Biological-Environmental Sciences’ with a project that mapped the invisible world of soil fungi, which has a significant impact on soil fertility, landscape health and food production. We warmly congratulate the whole team!

Project: Economically important fungi and organisms: distribution, diversity and human effects

The award-winning project combined modern DNA analysis, bioinformatics and the GlobalFungi database, yielding new insights into how fungi are changing under the influence of human activity and climate change. To date, around 150,000–200,000 species of fungi have been described. Scientists have now estimated that there may be as many as six million.

This year’s winners of the GA ČR President’s Award: From left, Pavel Flegontov, Sebastian Ottinger, Soňa Krajčovičová, Tomáš Větrovský and Petr Sedlák. Source: GA ČR