Study programmes

The aim of the study is to provide students with a broad and up-to-date factual knowledge in botany, plant ecology and mycology, including related disciplines, and methodological, and analytical and presentation skills. Botany is a key field in contemporary biology by its focus on plants as primary producers. Plants are organisms radically different in their life strategy from all heterotrophic organisms, and understanding them is essential for understanding the global carbon cycle with its impacts on climate and human nutrition. Botany has seen a fundamental change in the last two decades in connection with the development of a number of modern techniques (phylogenetics, genomics, imaging and computational techniques, remote sensing techniques). This has shifted teh discipline towards a detailed understanding of the causes responsible for diversity of plants and fungi and their ecological characteristics, relationships and functions.

In the course of study students are led to a wide overview of the whole discipline (taking into account the focus of their doctoral project), to study and master the techniques necessary for good work in the discipline and to obtain data quality sufficient for writing their thesis. A part of education is a thorough knowledge of the contexts defining the discipline and its the methodology. An important part of the study is to lead student to achieve flexibility in their work with literature, material and analysis and presentation, which will enable students to orient themselves easily in an unfamiliar environment and eventually serves as an important parameter on the labor market.

At the end of the four-year course of studies, a student has to submit a thesis that is comparable to doctoral theses submitted at good European universities. The thesis is required to consist of at least three chapters in the format of a scientific journal article (in English), with a broader synthetical introduction into the topic and conclusions interpreting the findings in a broader context. At least one of these articles must be printed or accepted in a good international journal at the time of thesis submission.

Because science is an activity that transcends national and linguistic areas, one of the main aims of the study is to lead students to present their results in an international forum, both at conferences and in scientific literature, which is a typical part of the study. If doctoral studies are to serve as an education for research work and its related critical attitude to data and facts, this cannot be achieved without proper contact with analogous research abroad. That is why we require the students to present their research at international conferences and to publish in international journals. A large part of the study takes place either in English or using English-language sources. Courses invited by foreign speakers are a regular part of the study. Theses are regularly reviewed by referees from abroad.

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