Vladimir Parpura, MD, PhD, MAE, holds both a medical degree, awarded from the University of Zagreb, Croatia in 1989, and a doctorate, received in Neuroscience and Zoology from Iowa State University, U.S.A. in 1993. He held faculty appointments in both countries. He is presently a Distinguished Professor and Director of International Translational Neuroscience Research Institute, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China. He has been elected/inducted as a Member of Academia Europaea (MAE) in 2012, a corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MSASA) as well as a Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS) both in 2017, and a Fellow of American Physiological Society (FAPS) in 2020. Parpura was President (2017-2019 term) of American Society for Neurochemistry. In 2019, Parpura has been awarded Honorary Professor title at University of Rijeka, Croatia and the journal Neurochemical Research had a special issue in 2021 in his honor. In 2013, his laboratory ranked the 3rd in the world in nanotechnology. Since 2021, he has ranked number 2 in the world in astrocyte expertise by experts.com. He discovered astrocyte-neuron glutamate-mediated signaling pathway, i.e. gliotransmission. Parpura has been interfacing neuroscience with nanoscience/nanotechnology, neurochemistry, synthetic biology and biomedical engineering.
Vladimir Parpura
