Karel Kieslich

Ever since I can remember I have been fascinated by humans and loved stories. While at Gymnázium Budějovická, I was not sure where I should look for the most interesting stories about humans: would it be in history, art or documentary film-making? Perhaps a bit surprisingly, I made a hesitant choice to study medicine. Soon, medicine completely enchanted me: it taught me a lot about humans and I realized that having passion for stories is essential for being a good doctor. It occurred to me that the most fascinating stories were told in neuroscience and psychiatry, perhaps because there was so much unknown. That is why I joined a neuroscience research team and completed several internships in psychiatry. While studying medicine I also discovered another passion that immensely fulfills me: teaching. Since my 3rd year on medical school, I have been teaching anatomy, histology, embryology and physiology to medical students and did not stop even after graduation. Apart from this, for several years I have been a tutor and prefect on Summer Academy Discover and mentor in Yoda mentorship programme. I study master's programme in cognitive neuroscience at University College London (UCL), where I can learn from and work with my scientific heroes. Cognitive neuroscience is a young field with the ambition to explain how the mind emerges from the neural circuitry of our brains. I hope that with this science I could help make the stories of psychiatric patients a bit less mysterious and a bit more happy. My research project uses methods of computational psychiatry to understand how motivation, reward and punishment systems and decision making are disrupted in depression. Elucidating the mechanisms of psychiatric symptoms as well as sharing my passion for medicine and human brain with students and public is what I would like to keep doing in the future.