Štěpán Jurajda has been the Mellon Endowment Professor with tenure at CERGE-EI (under US permanent charter) and a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee of CERGE-EI since 2004. He served as the Director of CERGE, Charles University, and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (EI) during 2009-2013.

Professor Jurajda graduated from the Prague School of Economics in 1992 in Econometrics and Operations Research and received his Ph.D. in Labor Economics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton University in 2000 and Senior Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute in 2014. He is also a Research Fellow at IZA, Bonn. He received the Otto Wichterle Prize for young scientists awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Commemorative medal of Charles University, has served as a member of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Labour Economists, and as chair of the Social Sciences and Humanities Committee at the Czech Science Foundation. He has been a member of the National Economic Council of the Government of the Czech Republic and Vice-Chairman of the Research, Development and Innovation Council of the Government of the Czech Republic. He currently serves as Deputy Minister for Science, Research and Innovation of the Czech Republic and is also a member of the Government Council for Gender Equality.

​