Jiri Lukas - Biography#

Following his PhD and early work in the Czech Republic, Jiri Lukas moved first to Oxford (to the group of Paul Nurse) and then to the EMBL in Heidelberg (to Giulio Draetta’s group). This postdoctoral experience had a strong formative impact on his career and research interests. In 1993, Jiri Lukas moved to Denmark and was appointed senior researcher at the Cancer Society in Copenhagen, where - together with his colleagues, Jiri Bartek and Michael Straus - he built up a highly-successful Cell Cycle and Cancer unit. In 2005, this unit was integrated into the Center for Genotoxic Stress Research, which received a prestigious grant from the Danish National Research Foundation, and of which Jiri Lukas became a director. In 2012, Jiri Lukas was appointed Professor at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences of the University of Copenhagen, and Executive Director of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, where he is now in charge of approximately 150 persons.