Frantisek Marec (Czech Republic), born in 1957. Director of the Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Genetics at the Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, both in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. He obtained his PhD in Entomology (insect genetics) in 1987 at the Institute of Entomology.
Since 1990 he has been a research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. He has had a long-standing collaboration with Prof. Walther Traut at the University of Lubeck, Germany, where he worked as a Humboldtian in 1991–1992 and 1998. Like many geneticists, he started his career in Drosophila, but soon become fascinated by Lepidoptera genetics. His research has focused on sex chromosomes in Lepidoptera, especially on meiotic pairing, molecular differentiation and evolution, and also applications of the sex chromosomes in genetic control strategies against pest species. In addition, his co-operation with the Insect Pest Control Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria, resulted in a new approach for the construction of genetic sexing strains in lepidopteran pests.
So far Prof. Marec has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and contributed to 4 book chapters. He was also editor of a recently published book on “Molecular Biology and Genetics of the Lepidoptera” (edited by Marian R. Goldsmith and F. Marec, 2010, CRC Press). Since 2001 he has been an Executive Editor of the European Journal of Entomology. He co-organized symposia on insect genetics at the VIth and VIIIth European Congress of Entomology (ECE).