Dr. Jan Kormanec completed his biochemistry studies in 1984, after which he joined the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. Since 1991 he has been Head of the Department of Genomics and Biotechnology. His original works (149 original papers with 3536 citations, HI = 31) relate to the differentiation of Streptomyces, the role of sigma factors of RNA polymerase in Streptomyces, regulation of antibiotic synthesis, the role of sigma factors of RNA polymerase in bacterial pathogenicity, as well as the regulation of gene expression.