On Wednesday, September 24, 2025, Forbes magazine published a selection of twenty-five Czech women scientists who excel in their research fields. The TOP Women in Science ranking for 2025 includes three representatives of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. Environmentalist Tereza Hnátková works at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, ethologist Gudrun Illmann at the Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, and Jitka Kumhálová works at the Faculty of Engineering in geoinformatics.
Forbes magazine sought interesting, inspiring, and active female scientists. The aim was to show a wide range of top science in the Czech Republic. In addition to recommendations, the key factors in the final selection were prestigious grants and awards, citations, leadership of scientific groups, or, for example, popularization of science. The selection includes not only native Czech women, but also female scientists from other countries who have been active in the Czech scientific environment for a long time and fundamentally influence the level of their field in the Czech environment.
Ing. Tereza Hnátková, Ph.D., works as an assistant professor at the Department of Applied Ecology of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, and her areas of scientific interest are water management, blue-green infrastructure, biotechnology, and chemistry.She focuses mainly on water purification and recycling, reuse of grey and rainwater in urban environments, and overall adaptation to climate change. She is involved in several European research projects, such as adaptation to climate change and blue-green infrastructure. She translates the results of her research into practice, cooperates with dozens of municipalities, cities, and companies, and strives to implement sustainable measures in water management.
And what is the best and worst thing about science, according to Tereza Hnátková? "The best thing is when a complex problem unravels and starts to make sense - and you know your solution can help people, municipalities, or the landscape. The biggest challenge is combining the research with administration, communication, and the transfer of results into practice. Moreover, science works with a long time horizon - years can pass before an idea becomes a functional measure. Planning and maintaining a team when funding depends on short-term grant cycles is difficult. And then there is another crucial dimension: being able to talk about these topics not only with experts and officials, but also with the public - including children, who will one day decide on the shape of the landscape and cities," says Tereza Hnátková in a Forbes questionnaire.
Doc. Dr. Agr. Gudrun Illmann is an ethologist at the Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague and at the Animal Production Research Institute in Uhříněves. Ethology is a science that studies the behavior of animals and humans, their causes, and biological functions.“My specialization is the behavior of farm animals, especially maternal and social behavior. For the last fifteen years, we have been dedicated to the issue of animal welfare, i.e., recognizing indicators of their well-being and finding ways to meet their biological needs. We have extensive international cooperation. We are dealing with how to evaluate negative and positive emotions in animals and how to improve their breeding conditions. A current important topic is research into alternative housing for sows with piglets, which can replace cage housing and thus ensure better animal welfare. We are already helping to apply these results in practice,” explains Doc. Illmann.
And what does she consider the best and worst thing about science? "I am very positive about the opportunity to be guided by curiosity and deal with questions that interest me. I can design projects, formulate predictions, and verify them with experiments. Science offers space for formulating hypotheses, verifying them with experiments, and creating new knowledge. An integral part is interdisciplinary and international cooperation, which brings new perspectives and stimulates further development. Joint discussions, sharing ideas, and mutual support are the aspects that I find most inspiring. The pressure to obtain grants and publish in impact journals can be problematic. Although these activities are essential for the development of the field and the individual, they are not always possible to fulfill, which can also be a source of stress for some."
Doc. Mgr. Jitka Kumhálová, Ph.D., deals with geoinformatics at the Faculty of Engineering of the Czech University of Life Sciences. Specifically, remote sensing of the Earth and applying the acquired knowledge in combination with meteorological and agronomic information in agriculture. For example, she is researching hop cultivation, where they use drones and thermal cameras.
Her scientific work consists of obtaining and subsequently implementing information and knowledge from satellite and drone images and other digital sources in combination with meteorological and agronomic or agrotechnical information into agriculture. Recently, her research has focused on radar data. She has also been scanning selected hop fields for six years using drones equipped with multispectral and thermal cameras in cooperation with the Hop Institute in Žatec. The research focuses on detecting diseases, water stress, and the general physiological state of varieties for setting optimal agrotechnical procedures. The work results are gradually being introduced primarily into Czech agricultural practice, and there is also interest in them, for example, in the German hop-growing area.
Jitka Kumhálová considers a multidisciplinary approach to science to be the best. "I graduated from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Masaryk University in Brno with a degree in geography, biology, and geology, and then completed a doctoral program in geoinformatics, cartography, and DPZ at the same faculty. I enjoy the comprehensive use of these fields in my current research in precision agriculture. The diversity of the field and the constant discovery of new facts that work with living nature entail research based on many years of data collection and analysis, which will ultimately always bring fascinating results, among other things applicable in Czech and foreign practice."