Karel Šimek

Karel Šimek

Karel Šimek worked for almost three decades as a head of the Department of Aquatic Microbial Ecology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Biology Centre CAS in České Budějovice. He studied hydrobiology at the Charles University in Prague. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1986 from the Charles University in Prague with a thesis on: Factors regulating bacterial abundance and activity in freshwater drinking-water reservoirs. After a postdoctoral stay at The University of Texas at Arlington, USA, he returned to the Biology Centre CAS (1989), where he had been heading the Department of Aquatic Microbial Ecology since 1990 till 2018. In 1997, he obtained Associate Professorship in Limnology, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice. In 2003, he obtained Professorship in hydrobiology, Charles University in Prague.

Karel Šimek’s scientific interests range from single cell techniques studying mainly interaction of bacteria with bacterivorous protists, exploring a variety of molecular, fluorescence microscopy, and isolation and cultivation approaches, to general microbial ecology and trophic interactions in freshwater ecosystems.

His work has been awarded with several prestigious prizes, among them in 1991, the IRPE Prize (International Recognition of Professional Excellence in Ecology) awarded to young scientists in the field of limnetic ecology, Oldendorf – Ecology Institute, Germany. In 2010, he received Docteurs HONORIS CAUSA, the University of Clermont Ferrand, France, on the basis of his outstanding publications and educational activities in the field of hydrobiology. In 2015, he received a medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences - The Gregor Johann Mendel Honorary Medal for Merits in Biological Sciences.