One of the world’s highest honors in the field of science went to Julio Lukeš from the Institute of Parasitology of the Biological Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. At the beginning of May, he was elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the United States of America. The NAS is a private non-governmental organization that serves, among other things, as an advisory body to the US government on matters of science and technology.
The prestige of this organization is underlined by the fact that approximately 500 of its current and deceased members have won the Nobel Prize. Julius Lukeš is the only living Czech representative in NAS from Czech Republic.
“It’s the first award I’ve really gotten excited about,” Julius Lukeš honestly comments on his election. New members are nominated to the NAS by their colleagues for significant contributions in their research fields. This year NAS elected 120 new members from the United States and 24 international members from around the world, bringing the total number of active members to 2,617 and the total number of international members to 537.
Julius Lukeš works professionally in parasitology; deals with the molecular and cellular biology of parasitic protozoa that cause a number of serious diseases. Since 1987, he has been working at the Institute of Parasitology Biological Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and since 2003 he has also been working at the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia. He is the author or co-author of more than 400 professional articles in scientific journals, which have so far been cited almost 18,000 times with a Hirsch index of 63. Academy of Microbiology. Since 2018, he has been a member of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and in 2023 he became a member of the European Organization for Molecular Biology EMBO. He has also received a number of awards, among which are, for example, the Prize of the Minister of Education for extraordinary results of research, experimental development and innovation from 2011 and 2023, the GJ Mendel Medal for merit in biological sciences (2023) and the Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic for extraordinary research results, of experimental development and innovation (2020).
The National Academy of Sciences advocates for the development of science in the US and contributes to the development of the international scientific community. It is an actively functioning organization that deals with important questions of science and problems where scientific knowledge is essential. Julius Lukeš will work in the section dealing with pathogenic organisms and evolutionary issues. He will attend the first NAS assembly on April 25, 2025, when he will also be welcomed among the new members at a ceremony.
In history, two Czech scientists worked at the NAS. A neurophysiologist was elected as the first in 1995 Jan Bureš (1926–2012), the second virologist twenty years later Jan Svoboda (1934–2017). Thanks to his affiliation with the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, a molecular biologist also represents the Czech Republic in NAS David M. Sabatiniwho was elected as a full member of the NAS in 2016.
Photo: Pavlína Jáchimová
Source: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
