SEVEN ELITE TEAMS AT COMENIUS UNIVERSITY
At the end of June 2017, the Accreditation Commission released the results of the second round of evaluating elite research teams working at Slovak universities. The commission identified seventeen elite teams overall, of which seven teams were from Comenius University.
Of 52 submitted proposals, 27 were sent to experts abroad for further review following evaluations by permanent working groups. Out of these, seventeen elite teams were accepted by the commission upon the basis of the set criteria.
In the area of historical sciences and ethnology, one elite team from Comenius University’s Faculty of Arts was identified: Archaeology: Modern Research in Slovakia, under the leadership of Professor Jozef Bátora. The other team members are Dr Peter Barta, Dr Tomáš König, Professor Eduard Krekovič, Dr Jana Mellnerová, Associate Professor Michal Slivka, and Dr Andrej Vrtel.
In the area of social and behavioural sciences, one elite research team focusing on Social Contexts in Local Communities was identified at Comenius University’s Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences. The team is led by Professor Martin Kanovský and includes Associate Professor Juraj Buzalka, Dr Danijela Jerotijevič, and Dr Andrej Mentel.
There is an elite Bratislava team of Physics of High Energy at Comenius University’s Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics working under the leadership of Professor Stanislav Tokár. The other team members are Dr Róbert Astaloš, Dr Pavol Bartoš, Dr Tibor Ženiš, and Associate Professor Ivan Sýkora.
Bioinformatics and the Functional Analysis of Biological Systems is the name of an elite team working in the area of chemistry, chemical technology, life sciences, information sciences, automation, and telecommunications. The team is based at Comenius University’s Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics and the Faculty of Natural Sciences, and is under the leadership of Associate Professor Katarína Mikušová. The other team members are Dr Ingrid Zel Bhatia, Associate Professor Bronislava Brejová, Associate Professor Juraj Gregáň, Associate Professor Jana Korduláková, Professor Jozef Nosek, Professor Ľubomír Tomáška, and Associate Professor Tomáš Vinař.
In the area of life sciences, an elite team of the Experimental Biology of Plants was identified. It is under the leadership of Professor Alexander Lux from Comenius University’s Faculty of Natural Sciences. The other members of the team are Dr Michal Martinka, Dr Marek Vaculík, and Dr Zuzana Lukačová.
In the area of medical, pharmaceutical, and non-medical health sciences, there were two elite teams from Comenius University identified: one team works on the Translatory Research of Oncological Illnesses and is based at the Faculty of Medicine under the leadership of Associate Professor Jozef Mardiak (the other team members are Professor Michal Mego, Associate Professor Ľuboš Drgoňa, Dr Jozef Šufliarsky, and Professor Dalibor Ondruš). The other elite team works on the Cardiorespiratory System and Visceral Pain and is based at the Jessenius Faculty of Medicine; it is under the leadership of Professor Andrea Čalkovská. The other team members are Professor Miloš Tatár, Professor Michal Javorka, Associate Professor Marián Kollárik, and Dr Alžbeta Trančíková.
The complete list of elite teams identified in the second call by the Accreditation Commission can be found here (PDF file).
The first call had its results published in June 2015 and identified 37 elite teams at Slovak universities. Of these, 19 are based at Comenius University in Bratislava.