I am an Assistant Professor of Plant Ecology and Head of the Laboratory of Quantitative Ecology at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. I am a quantitative ecologist studying long-term biodiversity dynamics across large spatial and temporal scales. My work integrates fossil-pollen archives, contemporary vegetation, functional traits, climate data, and quantitative modelling to understand ecological memory, biodiversity change, human impacts, and climate-change responses. I lead open and reproducible data-integration and software-development workflows in R.
Research identifiers: ORCID 0000-0002-9796-5081 | Scopus ID 57209659764 | ResearcherID AAC-7606-2019
Education
PhD in Entomology | 11/2019
University of South Bohemia | České Budějovice, Czech Republic
Thesis awarded by dean’s prize entitled “Spatial structure and community dynamics of arboreal ants in a tropical rainforest”
MSc in Zoology | 6/2015
University of South Bohemia | České Budějovice, Czech Republic
Thesis awarded the Dean’s Prize, entitled “Structure and dynamics of arboreal ant communities along successional gradient in a mountain tropical forest of New Guinea”
BSc in Biology | 6/2013
University of South Bohemia | České Budějovice, Czech Republic
Thesis entitled “Detection of UV-fluorescent-marked prey in the guts of predators and scavengers, dynamics of scavenging in a model experiment”
Professional experience
11/2023 - present
Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Assistant Professor of Plant Ecology
7/2025 - present
Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Member of the Charles University team in the ERC Synergy project MEMELAND: Molecular Ecology of Medieval European Landscapes (101166850).
6/2025 - present
Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Principal Investigator of the Charles University PRIMUS project Functional Vegetation Paleoecology (PRIMUS/25/SCI/002).
6/2025 - 12/2025
Parental leave
2024 - present
Charles University Research Centre
Member of the Charles University Research Centre programme UNCE/24/SCI/006.
6/2023 - present
Center for Theoretical Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Principal Investigator of the GAČR Postdoc Individual Fellowship - Incoming project BIODYNAMICS (23-06386I).
9/2022 - 6/2023
Parental leave
2/2020 - 6/2023
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Norway
Postdoc at ERC project (PI: Prof. H.J.B. Birks) entitled “Humans on planet Earth (HOPE)”
7/2015 - 12/2019
Department of Ecology, Institute of Entomology, Czech Republic
PhD researcher funded by several individual grants.
Major collaboration
2024 - present
Open Palaeoecological Data (PalaeOpen)
Steering Committee member and co-leader of Working Group 3, Data Storage and Management.
Present
International Association for Vegetation Science
Steering Committee member of the Historical Vegetation Ecology Working Group.
2022 - present
Past Global Changes
Committee member of Planetary Boundaries Working Group led by Prof. Lindsey Gillson
2022 - present
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Norway
Adviser of The Past, Present and Future of Alpine Biomes Worldwide led by Dr. Suzette Flantua
Institutional responsibilities
Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University, CZ
- 2024 - present: Head of the Laboratory of Quantitative Ecology
- 2024 - present: Graduate Student Advisor
- 2023 - present: Faculty member
- 2023 - present: Organiser of the Internal Seminar
- Founding member and leader of Working Group 3, Junior Faculty
- Member of the scientific board, Czexpats in Science PI Forum
- Open Science Champion
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Norway
- 2022 - 2023 Member of a PhD Hiring Committee
Fellowships
6/2023 - present
Center for Theoretical Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Awarded personal GACR Postdoc Individual Fellowship - Incoming
2018
Institute of Entomology, Czech Academy of Science, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
IBERA scholarship
2017 (2 months)
Smithsonian Institution Conservation and Research Center, Virginia, USA
Smithsonian Fellowship
Other work experiences
2019 (6 weeks)
Nditam, Cameroon, Africa
Leading field sampling of arboreal ants on an ERC project (PI: Prof. V. Novotny) entitled “Ecological determinants of tropical-temperate trends in insect diversity”
2017 - 2019 (6 weeks)
Brussels, Belgium
Main data analytics at Mobility Plus project (PIs: Dr P. Klimes and Dr M. Leponce)
2018 (2 months)
EuCFACE - WSU, Australia
Field experiments on tri-trophic interactions on ERC project (PI: Dr K. Sam) entitled “Why is the world green: testing top-down control of plant-herbivore food webs by experiments with birds, bats and ants”
2016 (6 months)
Binatang research centre, Papua New Guinea
Leading field project focused on arboreal ant ecology
Invited presentations to conferences
2026
Estimating Vegetation Change from Fossil Pollen to Planetary Boundaries: A Global, Long-Term Synthesis Using Big Data
Symposium of the International Biogeography Society, Aarhus, Denmark
2022
Quantifying rates of vegetation change over the last 18,000 years
Keynote lecture, Conference of the Czech Society for Ecology, Brno, Czech Republic
2022
FOSSILPOL: The workflow to process global palaeoecological pollen data
European Pollen Database Open Science Meeting
Teaching
2024 - present
Current teaching at the Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Czech Republic:
Course guarantor and organiser:
- SPROuT - Science Powered through Reproducibility, Openness, and Teamwork
- Statistics in Biology and Design of Ecological Experiments
- CodeFest - Innovating Together for a Better University Environment
- Science School on Quantitative Ecology
Member of the teaching team:
See my current teaching activities for more details.
2021 - 2023
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Norway
- Course organiser of OSW: Reproducibility in science
- Course co-organiser of Community Ecology
Supervision
2024 - present
Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Czech Republic
- Two PhD researchers: Bryan Novio (STARS, since 2024) and Natálie Hanusová (PRIMUS, since 2025)
- One bachelor thesis completed in 2025
See Laboratory of Quantitative Ecology for more details about team members
2016 - 2019
Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic
- 1 bachelor student
Organisation of scientific meeting
2024 - present
Science School on Quantitative Ecology
- Co-founder and main co-organiser of the annual Czech-German school
- Alternates between Germany and the Czech Republic
- Supported through three funding rounds
2024
Quantitative Ecology Special Interest Group meeting
- Main organiser
- Prague, Czech Republic
- ~15 participants
2023
RoC for geochemistry and XRF data workshop
- Co-organiser and presenter
- Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, Switzerland
- ~20 participants
2023
Palaeoecology and Sustainability
- Main co-organiser and presenter
- Meeting by Planetary Boundaries Working Group, Rome, Italy
- ~15 participants
2022
Conference of the Czech Society for Ecology
- Co-organiser (part of the Rising Star program) and presenter
- Brno, CZ
- ~300-500 participants
2023
- Co-organiser and presenter
- Workshop by African Pollen Database Council
- online
- ~35 participants
2021
Data Manipulation & Statistical Analysis in Palaeoecology
- Co-organiser and presenter
- Seminar by Palaeoecology Special Interest Group BES
- online
- ~50 participants
Reviewing activities
2023 - present
GAUK Evaluator, Charles University, Czech Republic
2019 - present
Reviewer for international journals including Nature Communications, Global Ecology and Biogeography, Global Change Biology, Ecology Letters, Anthropocene, and Biotropica.
Software development
I lead or contribute to open ecological data infrastructure and R software:
- VegVault - an integrated global palaeo- and neo-vegetation database with functional traits and abiotic drivers
- {vaultkeepr} - an R interface for reproducible access to VegVault
- RRatepol
- RFossilpol
- REcopol
- RUtilpol
- taxospace