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Igor Rudan

Igor Rudan (born 7 March 1971) is a Croatian-British scientist, writer, and science communicator. He leads research projects in global health and genetics, writes books, and creates documentary series.

Igor Rudan is a medical doctor with two master’s degrees (in anthropology and epidemiology) and two Ph.D. degrees (in public health and genetic epidemiology). He has published more than 600 research papers as of 1 October 2023, which have been cited more than 200,000 times.

In his early career, he developed a biobank in the isolate island populations of Croatia (“10001 Dalmatians”). He co-led the study that first identified associations between SLC2A9 genetic variants, uric acid levels and gout; and identified variants that regulate human protein N-glycosylation; and predispose to autoimmune diseases and cancers. He co-authored 12 Nature and 64 Nature Genetics papers that assigned biomedical function to more than 2000 human genetic variants.

In his later career, he focused on international health efforts to reduce global child mortality as the member of Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group (CHERG). He served as a consultant of the World Health Organization, UNICEF, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The World Bank, Save the Children, and other organizations. He developed the "CHNRI" methodology (in 2007) and EQUIST tool (in 2012). Both have been widely used by international agencies to prioritize investments in global health research and interventions, respectively.

He founded or co-founded Croatian Centre for Global Health at the University of Split, Croatia (in 2008), Edinburgh University Global Health Society (in 2011), Journal of Global Health (in 2011), World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Population Health Research and Training (in 2013), Centre for Global Health at the University of Edinburgh (in 2015), Journal of Global Health Reports (in 2017) and the International Society of Global Health (in 2019).

He is most widely known for his popularizing of biomedical science. In 2017 he completed a documentary series "Survival: The Story of Global Health" which was broadcast on Croatian National TV and seen by more than 1 million people. He published four No. 1 national bestsellers in popular science in Croatia: The Exact Colour of the Sky: The Story of Science (in 2017), Evil Air: The Story of Medicine (in 2018), In the Land of Clans: The Story of Adaptation (in 2019) and Awaiting the Fires: The Story of Sustainability (in 2020).

He was included among ISI/Thomson Reuters "World's Most Influential Scientific Minds". He received awards including the Wellcome Trust's International Research Development Award (in 2002), "Scientist of the Year" Award from The Croatian Parliament (in 2005), Visiting Professorship for Senior International Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (in 2012), The Chancellor's Award for Research (in 2012) and Principal’s Medal (in 2019). In 2016, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE). In 2020 he was the adviser to the Croatian Government for COVID-19 response and he launched a health education campaign on the pandemics which reached up to three million people in eight countries. Subsequently, he has been admitted to the Academia Europaea (2022), the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2023), and the International Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Bosnia and Herzegovina as a Laureate (2023). Provided by Wikipedia