03. 10. 2025
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Today, Jan Malínský was officially appointed as the new director of the IEM CAS. The ceremony was attended by Radomír Pánek, President of the Czech Academy of Sciences, who officially introduced the new director. Employees of the IEM CAS and representatives of the CAS attended the event.
Jan Malínský succeeded in a demanding selection process, which included presenting and defending his concept for the further development of the Institute before the selection committee. Based on the results of this process, the Academy Council proposed him to the President of the CAS.
“During the previous leadership, the institute took steps in the right direction and achieved a number of significant successes. I am convinced that, in cooperation with all of you, we will build on these results and further strengthen the position of our institute not only in the Czech Republic but also in the international scientific community,” said the new director, Jan Malínský, in his first speech to employees.
This was followed by Radomír Pánek, President of the CAS, who wished the new management that the next five years would bring innovation, growth, and enhanced international prestige to the IEM CAS.
Profile
Assoc. Prof. Jan Malínský, Ph.D., is a senior cell biologist and expert in microscopy whose research focuses on the structure and function of membrane microdomains and their involvement in cellular stress adaptation. He earned his PhD in Physics of Molecular and Biological Structures from Charles University in Prague, where he also graduated in Biophysics.
Jan Malinsky commenced his scientific career at the CAS in 1996. Since 2006, he has led a research group at the IEM CAS and has served as Deputy (since 2016) and Acting Director of the institute (since March 2025). In addition, Jan Malinsky teaches a course in fluorescence microscopy at the Faculty of Science, Charles University (since 2011) and has participated in the organisation of science and PhD studies. Specifically, he serves on boards within the Czech Academy of Sciences, including the Board of the IEM CAS and the Institute of Microbiology of the CAS, and on subject area boards of Molecular and Cell Biology, Genetics, and Virology, and Developmental and Cell Biology at Charles University.
Among Assoc. Prof. Malinsky’s most significant discoveries is evidence that changes in membrane potential significantly alter the domain organisation of the plasma membrane in living cells during acute stress, and the elucidation of the dynamics, protein composition, and biological function of plasma membrane invaginations described in early electron microscopic studies in the 1960s. His team discovered a new metabolically-triggered mechanism of the regulation of mRNA degradation in these invaginations, which now appears to be evolutionarily conserved from yeast to humans, and a novel, lipid-mediated communication pathway between this plasma membrane microdomain and mitochondria, which most likely contributes to the yeast stress resistance or their pathogenicity.