NAME: Alexei Verkhratsky
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:
Professor Alexei Verkhratsky, PhD, D.Sc, Member of Academia Europaea (2003), Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2013), Member of Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia of Spain (2012), Member of Polish Academy of Sciences (2017); Corresponding Member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (2019); Member of The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives (2012), Distinguished professor of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Distinguished professor of Jinan University at Guangzhou (2018); Honorary professor of China Medical University at Shenyang (2019), was born in 1961 in Stanislaw, Galicia, Western Ukraine. Alexei graduated from Kiev Medical Institute in 1983, and received PhD (1986) and D.Sc. (1993) in Physiology from Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology also in Kiev. In the period between 1989 and 1995 he was visitor scientist in Heidelberg and Gottingen, and between 1995 and 1999 he was a Research Scientist at Max Delbrück Centre of Molecular Medicine in Berlin. He joined the Division of Neuroscience, School of Biological Sciences in Manchester in September 1999, became a Professor of Neurophysiology in 2002 and served as Head of the said Division from 2002 to 2004. From 2007 to 2010 he was appointed as a visitor professor/Head of Department of Cellular and Molecular Neurophysiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Academy of Sciences of Check Republic. Alexei also serves as a Research Professor of the Ikerbasque (Basque Research Council) in Bilbao, where, from 2012, he acts as Adjunct Scientific Director of the Achucarro Basque Centre for Neuroscience; from 2011 to 2017 he was as a Honorary Visitor Professor at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. Alexei is the editor-in-chief of Cell Calcium, Deputy Editor-in Chief of Cell Death & Disease and member of editorial boards of many journals including Pflugers Archiv, Acta Physilogica, Purinergic Signalling, ASN Neuro &c.
In 2007 he, together with Arthur Butt published the first ever Textbook on Glial Neurobiology, and in 2013 he, again in co-authorship with Arthur Butt published a handbook Glial Physiology and Pathophysiology, which has rapidly become the reference book in the field.
Alexei Verkhratsky is an internationally recognised scholar in the field of cellular neurophysiology. His research is concentrated on the mechanisms of inter- and intracellular signalling in the CNS, being especially focused on two main types of neural cells, on neurones and neuroglia. He made important contributions to understanding the chemical and electrical transmission in reciprocal neuronal-glial communications and on the role of intracellular Ca2+ signals in the integrative processes in the nervous system. Many of his studies are dedicated to investigations of cellular mechanisms of neurodegeneration. He was the first to perform intracellular Ca2+ recordings in old neurones in isolation and in situ, which provided direct experimental support for “Ca2+ hypothesis of neuronal ageing”. In recent years he studies glial ageing and gliopathology in age-related brain diseases, including Alzheimer disease as well as in neuropsychiatric diseases. He authored a pioneering hypothesis of astroglial atrophy as a general mechanism of cognitive brain disorders including neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases.
Scientometry: Prof Verkhratsky authored and edited 16 books and published ~ 450 papers and chapters. His papers were cited >24000 times, H-index 83 (Scopus, 08/2018).
He was among 30 Most cited European neuroscientists in 2016
http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/ranking/2016_01/index2.lasso
and in 30 Most cited European physiologists in 2014 (20)
http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/ranking/2014_02/index2.lasso