Mgr. Aleš Horák, Ph.D.

Position

Job Position: Group leader - Laboratory of Evolutionary Protistology
Department: Evolutionary Parasitology
Workplace: Institute of Parasitology

Contact details

Phone: +420 387775449
E-mail: ogar@paru.cas.cz
Room: THS 5.11

Others

Description:

In my recent research I focus mainly on different aspects of evolutionary biology of Protists. It could be divided into two areas. First deals with the biodiversity and evolutionary history of various groups of protists, ranging from katablepharids (Okamoto et al. 2009, PloS One), dinoflagellates (Okamoto et al., in prep.), colpodellids and apicomplexans (Howe et al., in prep.; Janouskovec et al., in prep) to leishmanias (Lukes et al. 2007, P.N.A.S.) or parabasalid termite-gut endosymbionts (Carpenter et al., 2010, Protist). In these projects, I've been  responsible mainly for describing and quantifiyng diversity and finding hierarchy in studied taxa using molecular markers (i.e. phylogenetic and population genetic analyses). Second part of my work have been so far dedicated to uncovering macroevolutionary processes shaping up eukaryotic Tree of Life. I am part of annotating team for the genome projects of Guillardia theta (Cryptophyta) and Bigellowiela natans (Chlorarachniophyta), two non-relative alga important by the presence of remnant endosymbiont genome called nucleomorph. I've also worked on comparative genomics of four nucleomorph genomes (Horak, in. prep) and comparative genomics of plastids of Chromera velia and relative algal lineage CCMP3155 (Janouskovec at al. 2010, P.N.A.S).

CV:

 

Education and employment

• 2011-present research scientist at Department of Moleculary Biology, University of South Bohemia, Faculty of Science
• 2010-present post-doctoral fellow at Laboratory of Molecular Taxonomy, Institute of Parasitology Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
• 2007-2010 post-doctoral fellow at University of British Columbia, Dept. of Botany, Keeling lab.
• 2000 – 2007 (with exclusion of 2003 - 2004 when absolved Civil service) PhD student at Department of Zoology, Faculty of Sciences, University of South Bohemia.
• 1994 – 2000 Student (Msc.) Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of South Bohemia

Courses and Workshops

• June 2011 EuPathDB Workshop, UGA, Athens, GA, USA
• June 2010 CIFAR Eukaryotic Genome Annotation Workshop, Dalhousie, Halifax, NS, Canada
• May 2010 CIFAR BigData Workshop, UBC, Vancouver, BC, Canada
• May 2008 IMG Microbial Genomics Workshop, JGI, Walnut Creek, CA, USA

Awards

• Rector Award of the Best Publication of the Year 2010

Teaching