Štěpán Jurajda has been a permanent Mellon Endowment Professor at CERGE-EI since 2004 and a member of the CERGE-EI Executive and Supervisory Committees. From January 2009 to December 2013, he served as Director of CERGE at Charles University and the Institute of Economics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (EI), where he is a full professor and senior research fellow. He defended his professorship at Charles University, where he also received the Gold Commemorative Medal. He received his habilitation in economics at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University and was awarded the Otto Wichterle Prize for Young Scientists by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He is also a member of CEPR in London and IZA in Bonn. Prof. Jurajda has also been a visiting scholar at the Department of Economics at Princeton University. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Labour Economists and Chairman of the Economics Panel and the Social Sciences and Humanities Committee of the Czech Grant Agency. He was awarded the Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute and became a member of the Czech Government Council for Research, Development and Innovation. He was a member of the National Economic Council of the Government of the Czech Republic.