The University of South Bohemia is a public institution which provides higher education and also focuses on scientific research. One of the university faculties is the Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters (FFPW), established in Sept 2009. The FFPW consists of three research institutes grouped into the research center CENAKVA. The faculty is on the map of large research infrastructures of Czech Republic and focus on the understanding of the changes in the freshwater ecosystems from the point of view of biodiversity, protection of water environment and water resources. FFPW will utilize the unique pond infrastructure and experimental laboratories and knowledge in the freshwater aquaculture, together with the expertise in the new monitoring technologies and data processing in the project.

Role in the AQUAEXCEL3.0 project:

FFPW will be involved in biologically (biotechnologies based on germ stem cells) and technically (modelling of tank flow, biotelemetric tags data processing, technologies for welfare monitoring) oriented activities of the project. FFPW offer access to four installations for TNA (ICS, IAPW, IFA, and GRC).

Key persons involved:

Ing. Petr Cisar, Ph.D. is a director of the Institute of Complex Systems (ICS) as well as vice dean for development and the deputy of the director of the larger research infrastructure. His research is focused on the application of new technologies in aquaculture monitoring systems. He will lead Task 6.2.

Assoc. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Martin Pšenička, Ph.D. is the head of Laboratory of Germ Cells. His background is in fish genetics and his research is focus on germ cells including their identification, characterization and manipulation, and nuclear transfer. He will lead Task 5.1.

Ing. Jan Urban, Ph.D.  is the head of Laboratory of signal and image processing. His background is in cybernetics and his main scientific interest is signal and image processing for water quality analysis and fish behaviour analysis and modelling.