Franz Bucar is Deputy Head of the Department of Pharmacognosy, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, at the University of Graz, Austria, and Associate Professor in Pharmacognosy.

Major research activities focus on drug discovery from traditional medicinal plants, including extraction, isolation, structure elucidation and analysis of plant constituents with antibacterial activity, and plant natural products as modulators of bacterial resistance. Recently, the research interest was expanded to plant compounds with anti-adipogenic and lipolytic activity.

He was President of the Phytochemical Society of Europe (PSE) from 2020–2022, and Vice-President from 2018–2020 and 2022–2024. He was also a Member of the Executive Board of the Austrian Pharmaceutical Society (2004–2023) and is an Overseas Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK).

Prof. Bucar is subject editor of Phytochemistry Letters and a member of the editorial advisory board of Phytotherapy Research. Currently, he is author and co-author of approximately 160 publications in peer-reviewed journals and 4 book chapters.