Neela Winkelmann-Heyrovská

Neela Winkelmann-Heyrovská (born 6 August 1969 in Prague) is a Czech academic, environmental activist and government official. She is currently the managing director of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, an educational project of the European Union bringing together government institutions and NGOs from EU countries active in research, documentation, awareness raising and education about the crimes of totalitarian regimes.^[1]

She is a granddaughter of the chemist and Nobel laureate Jaroslav Heyrovský, and studied biology at the Charles University in Prague, graduating with a master's degree in 1992. She earned a PhD in molecular biology at Cornell University in 1997. She was active in the environmental movement from 1984, and was a member of the preparatory committee for the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. In the 1990s she worked with environmental NGOs in India and elsewhere. She later worked to promote renewable energy, such as wind power, in the Czech Republic.^[2] She later worked for the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, a Czech government agency, and became managing director of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience in 2011.

She has been active in the Green Party, and was a candidate for that party in the European Parliament election of 2004. She was a member of the Academic Senate of the Charles University 1990–1992.

Winkelmann-Heyrovská has lived in Kempten, Bavaria since 1996,^[3] although she now divides her time between Kempten and Prague.

References