Karel became fascinated with psychiatry during his medical training. Yet, confronted with the unsatisfying neurobiological validity of psychiatric nosology, and seeing that the available treatments didn’t work for many patients, he decided to direct his efforts into research rather than clinical practice. After completing his medical degree in Prague and an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, he spent two years as a research assistant in the Neuroscience and Mental Health group at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, where he worked on a series of studies investigating the cognitive mechanisms of motivational symptoms in depression, and the role of dopamine in these. During his PhD, he would like to focus on finding ways to better target interventions to individuals. He believes this is best done through characterising the neurobiological mechanisms underlying symptoms transdiagnostically, as well as understanding the mechanisms of action of existing effective or promising novel treatments. He is an avid cyclist and loves to teach, watch art films and explore London and its many faces.