Professor Igor Rudan

Senior Research Fellow, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Edinburgh Medical School in Scotland, UK and Professor, Epidemiology and Director of Croatian Centre for Global Health at the University of Split, Croatia

Professor Igor Rudan, MD, DSc, PhD, MPH has published more than 100 papers, book chapters, books and monographs to date, and has been awarded with 15 national and international awards for his scientific work. He has been a principal or co-principal investigator on 15 research projects to date, amounting to more than US$ 12 million. He works as a consultant of the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the World Bank and UK Department for International Development (DFID). In 2007, Dr Rudan has been awarded the “Rising star” status by Institute for Scientific Information (Thomson ISI) “In-Cites” journal as the researcher with the greatest increase in the number of citations in the world in the field of general social sciences (which includes public health, health policy and international health). His discovery of a gene that causes gout disease in 2008 was declared the 3rd greatest contribution of Croatian scientists to global scientific heritage by the leading Croatian weekly magazine, “The Globe”.

As a consultant of OCHRC since 2005, Professor Rudan has been co-ordinating the effort to develop a new systematic methodology for setting priorities in child health research investments globally. The progress has been presented at Global Forum for Health Research (GFRH) 2005 in Mumbai, 2006 in Cairo and 2007 in Beijing. Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development of the World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted this approach and applied it in the areas of 6 main childhood causes of mortality, which led to a large donor conference to be held at the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2009. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently supported OCHRC methodology-based grant proposal for modelling the impact of emerging interventions against childhood pneumonia and awarded nearly USD 2 million to Professor Rudan’s consortium, which involves OCHRC.

Igor Rudan graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Zagreb, Croatia, in 1995. He obtained M.Sc. degree in Anthropology in 1997 and Ph.D. degree in Epidemiology in 1998 at the University of Zagreb. In 1999, he obtained M.P.H. degree in Genetic Epidemiology at the European School for Advanced Studies at the University of Pavia, Italy. In 2005, he obtained his 2nd PhD in genetics at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, Scotland, UK.