At the Mayo Foundation House in Rochester in October, 10 outstanding Mayo Clinic alumni have been honored with this year’s Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumni Award, including the UNIRI honorary professor and top neurologist, Prof. Vladimir Parpura, M.D., Ph.D. The Distinguished Alumni Award was established in 1981 by the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees to acknowledge and show appreciation for the exceptional contributions of Mayo Clinic alumni to the field of medicine, including medical practice, research, education, and administration. Alumni receiving this award are recognized nationally, and often internationally, in their fields.
The recipients have made remarkable contributions to medical practice and research, including vital work in the areas of stroke prevention and treatment, magnetic resonance imaging, pancreatic and molecular biology, healthcare reform, and more.
Vladimir Parpura is a world-renowned scientist, neurologist, distinguished professor, and the director of the International Translational Neuroscience Research Institute at Zhejiang Chinese Medical University in Hangzhou, China. He discovered that astrocytes, non-neuronal cells of the central nervous system, could release chemicals/transmitters, much like neurons, and communicate with neurons. His discovery of this process, known as gliotransmission, and his subsequent research have had a remarkable impact on the fields of neuroscience and cell biology.
Read more about this year’s recipients here.
The 2025 recipients (left to right): Allan Jaffe, M.D.; Herbert Gaisano, M.D.; Peter Layer, M.D., Ph.D.; David Lee, M.D.; Vicente Torres, M.D., Ph.D.; Vladimir Parpura, M.D., Ph.D.; Eric Matteson, M.D.; Richard Ehman, M.D.; Thomas Brott, M.D.; and Raymond Gibbons, M.D.