Dr Jan Pokorný

Jan Pokorný, ass prof, director of ENKI, o.p.s. Graduated from the Charles University Prague Faculty of Natural Sciences. With the Botanical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences he studied photosynthesis (PhD dissertation) and developed instrumentation for oxygen measurements. In 1984/85 he was invited as a visiting scientist with the Institute for Irrigation Research of CSIRO Australia. Later he was involved in lake and wetland restoration projects in Europe, Australia and East Africa. He studied the effect of plant photosynthesis on the chemistry of shallow lakes and successively paid attention to the active role of terrestrial plants in distribution of solar energy via water transpiration, which is the most powerful air-conditioning process: plants cool themselves and their environment with a power equal to several hundreds of W.m-2. He has published approximately 200 scientific papers in reviewed journals and has co-authored several books.

Jan lectured and led field work for international courses in Applied Limnology (in cooperation with IHE- Delft and BOKU Wien). For 25 years he lectured on Plant Ecophysiology in Charles University Prague. Jan lectured the Erasmus course on “Water Quality Management” with Turku University/Finland for seven years. He is a member of international scientific committees, tutor of MSc and PhD students, an 8 year member of the Research Board of the Technological Agency of the Czech Republic (appointed by the Prime Minister), and a principal researcher of national and EU scientific projects