EIRENE Implementation Project (IMP) Selected for Horizon Europe Funding: Paving the Way Toward the EIRENE ERIC
The European research community has taken a landmark step toward advancing infrastructure for environmental health and exposome science.
Prof. Jana Klánová reappointed as Director of the RECETOX Centre
At the beginning of the year, prof. RNDr. Jana Klánová, Ph.D., was reappointed as the Director of the RECETOX Centre, continuing her long-term leadership of the institution. Her work to date has significantly contributed to the professional and international development of RECETOX.
Jana Klánová is Professor of Environmental Chemistry at the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University. She has also received an honorary doctorate from Örebro University in Sweden. Her research focuses on environmental and health risks linked to the presence of toxic substances in natural, occupational, and residential environments, as well as in water, food, and consumer products. More broadly, she studies how natural and social environments, together with human behaviour and choices, affect population health and the development of chronic diseases.
She has been Director of the RECETOX Centre since 2013 and, since 2020, has coordinated the prestigious European project CETOCOEN Excellence. Its aim is to transform the RECETOX Centre, through long-term partnerships with leading European universities, into a European Centre of Excellence for research on the human exposome and the impacts of environmental exposures. She also leads the European research infrastructure EIRENE, contributes to the establishment of the Global Exposome Forum, and is involved in the European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals.
According to Jana Klánová, the main priority for the RECETOX Centre over the next two years is the successful completion of the Teaming project. “It is essential to ensure that the European Centre of Excellence is sustainable in the long term and continues to develop all areas of its activities even after the eight-year grant ends. We need to invest in modernising education, including an English-language programme that we are developing with the University of Rennes and other partners within the EDUC network, supported by the ERASMUS MUNDUS project. At the same time, we must focus on recruiting high-quality students, upgrading infrastructural capacities, training a new generation of RECETOX leaders, and ensuring effective management,” Klánová said.
Within the next three years, she sees the completion of the implementation of the European research infrastructure EIRENE as a key task. This includes the establishment of a legal entity governed by the Czech Republic, a central system for managing access to infrastructural capacities, as well as reference laboratories and data centres. “We are also entering the final three years of the European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals, with selected activities to be taken over by EIRENE. A few months ago, we launched the Open Science II project, where we are responsible for building several national repositories for environmental data. We are preparing for the reconstruction of the second half of the INBIT pavilion. And during the autumn, we submitted a number of European project proposals—we will find out how successful we were in the coming weeks,” she added.
From the very beginning, RECETOX has been built as an interdisciplinary centre bringing together chemical, biochemical, biological, mathematical, and statistical expertise needed to address real-world problems. “What started as an environmentally focused centre has gradually expanded to include research on the links between the environment and human health. Projects such as Teaming or ERA Chair have strengthened our capacities in epidemiology and biomedicine,” Klánová explained.
“A distinctive feature of the centre is its strong connection to major research infrastructures and to application-oriented centres that support the transfer of knowledge into practice and capacity building in developing countries. The Brno Living Laboratory, which promotes regional cooperation between research institutions, hospitals, schools, industrial companies, public administration, and citizens, and which is a flagship project of the Brno 2050 strategy, received a European certificate and became a member of the European Network of Living Labs last year. All of this opens up a wide range of new opportunities that can now be fully utilised,” she added.
According to Klánová, it is important to stabilise research teams, strengthen their links to European research, make full use of unique infrastructural capacities such as long-term population studies, accredited laboratories, and data and application centres, and reinforce the centre’s role in European partnerships and global networks. “These new research capacities must also be reflected in modernised study programmes and in regional partnerships—this is where I see great potential in the Living Laboratory,” she concluded.
