The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is an indivisible part of the Agronomic Faculty of the Mendel University in Brno. The staff consists of more than 100 workers disposing of more than 800 m2 laboratory area for research and instrumentation, complying with best international standards. The institute is member of CEITEC (Central European Technological Institute) and its aim resides in providing an important European centre of science and education, ensuring the most advanced background and the best conditions for scientists in Brno.
The basic activities of the department are divided in the following three domains:
- pedagogic activities
- research activities
- providing services of the central laboratory
Pedagogic activities
The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry ensures education of a broad line of disciplines comprised in the curricula of three faculties of the Mendel University in Brno, thus participating in the creation of the profile of practically all school leavers.
The institute guarantees lecturing for undergraduate bachelor courses as well as for students of the following master´s and doctoral courses of the whole university programme. The diversified scale of subjects of study guaranteed by the university enables the students, right at the beginning of their carreer, to acquire the elementary concepts and skills of general chemistry, the inorganic, organic and analytical chemistry as well as biochemistry. Later on, they can considerably enlarge this basic knowledge by enrolling into a number of specialized courses. The education has the form of lectures, seminars and practical laboratory exercise. This practical learning takes place in specialized labs provided with up-to-date appliances ensuring not only quality of education, but also the necessary elements for the safety of work of the students.
The lecturers of the Agronomic faculty teach students of six bachelor´s curricula and ten courses of studies, five follow-up master´s curricula and seven courses of studies. The Faculty of Forestry and Wood Management provides six bachelor´s and seven study curricula. The Faculty of Gardening offers two and six respective curricula. In addition to obligatory and obligatorily-optional subjects it offers also eight optional subjects having the form of lectures, seminars and practical laboratory exercise.
Further the Institute of chemistry and biochemistry ensures education in 31 subjects for the requirements of doctoral studies and six subjects in English for its foreign students. As a rule, there are certain students successfully terminating their doctoral studies every year, publishing their results in renowned impacted periodicals. Thus the institute generates scientific capacity in a sustainable way, mostly remaining at the institute in the position of post-doctoral scientific workers. Some ensure the continuation and sustainability of research projects, some leave to join the participating foreign workplaces.
Research activities
The support of advanced procedures and technologies in biological chemistry – thus the vision of research, development and innovation at the Institute of chemistry and biochemistry might be called in the most concise way. There are five research groups split into nineteen labs working to meet these targets focusing upon the key domains, such as bioanalytical chemistry, technologies of algae and vegetal biotechnologies and, last but not least, experimental microbial and animal biochemistry and biology. Thus the research activities are divided according to the respective specialization into the groups and laboratories collaborating very closely with one another.
Scientific and research activities are indivisible component parts of our work, and the results on this field are very successful. Evidence, among others, is offered by funds allotted for research from grant agencies and the number of scientific contributions published by authors from the Institute.
In addition to its own projects of basic and applied research the Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry shares, in a long-time perspective, the grant tasks of many domestic and foreign universities, among other the Charles University, Masaryk University, School of physical Sciences and Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science. University of Tasmania, Australia; CESAM – Centro de Estudos do Ambiente e do Mar & Departamento de Quimica, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal; Department of Veternary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Great Britain, and a number of others.
Providing services of the central laboratory
The Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry has been a traditional provider of services within its scientific activities, in particular by carrying out chemical analyses, but also supplier of selected chemical substances both to applicants from various institutes of the Agronomic Faculty and other parts of MENDELU. Thanks to the expertise of its laboratory personnel and the top research infrastructure it can regularly broaden the scale of available services, so as to fully satisfy the growing demand of its clients. The most often requested services comprise the determination of total amino acids – after mineralization, of total sulphur acids – after oxidation and mineralization, the analysis of glutathione – in a sample of full blood or any cellular suspension, the analysis of volatile substances etc.