New accolades for most cited scientist

21 Nov, 2019
 
New accolades for most cited scientist
Professor Valery Feigin

AUT’s Professor Valery Feigin has been elected as both a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

He appears on the list of 18 new Ngā Ahurei a Te Apārangi Fellows announced today. Being made a Fellow is an honour that recognises distinction in research and the advancement of science, technology or the humanities at the highest international standards.

Royal Society Te Apārangi noted that ‘the research findings of Professor Feigin have had a profound international impact, changing our understanding of stroke and traumatic brain injury prevention and epidemiology’.

This research has had significant implications for healthcare services, research planning and priority setting, resulting in changes to the World Health Organisation (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) – the foundation for identifying health trends and statistics worldwide.

Furthermore, his novel approach to primary stroke prevention, through motivational population-wide intervention (the Stroke Riskometer app), has received worldwide recognition. He was awarded the 2015 MacDiarmid Medal by Royal Society Te Apārangi in recognition of his work in this area.

Professor Feigin is the third AUT academic to be elected as a Fellow of the Academy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, alongside Professor Nikola Kasabov and Professor Richard Bedford.

Chair of the Academy Executive Committee, Professor Richard Blaikie, says: “The newly elected Fellows have made amazing contributions to knowledge in their fields and across disciplinary boundaries. Their election adds significantly to the breadth and diversity of knowledge held within the Academy. They will help support the purpose of Te Apārangi to engage with and inform New Zealanders on matters of public importance”.

Professor Feigin was also elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences as a Foreign Member earlier this month. Established by the Emperor Peter the Great in 1724, it is the highest-level scientific institution in the Russian Federation and seeks to advance fundamental research in the sciences and humanities. The date that the academy was founded (February 4) is observed as a national day of science.

“I am extremely honoured to be elected to both the Royal Society of New Zealand and Russian Academy of Sciences. I take it as recognition of the work being carried out by my team and I at the National Institute for Stroke and Applied Neurosciences at AUT. I will do my best to further advance research in stroke and applied neurosciences to the benefit of all people,” he says.

Professor Feigin is one of the world’s most influential scientific minds, recognised in the 2018 Web Science Group list of the most cited researchers in the world – ‘that small fraction of the researcher population that contributes disproportionately to extending the frontiers of knowledge’.

He is currently the most cited scientist in New Zealand and recently achieved 100,000 citations.

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