Alan Evans elected Fellow of the Royal Society
Honour is recognition for a lifetime of leading research
Alan Evans, a researcher at The Neuro, James McGill Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery and co-director of the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health, has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, joining a class of scientists that includes a Nobel laureate and a former Chief Medical Advisor to the US President.
Originally from Wales, since the mid-1980s Evans has been a leading figure in brain mapping in clinical and basic neuroscience. Evans' research interests include cognitive neuroimaging, neuroanatomical variability, and image-processing methodologies for PET and MRI. He pioneered the technique of multi-modal 3D brain imaging with PET and MRI, which provides detailed 3D images of brain anatomy. Among the largest achievements of his career is the BigBrain dataset, the world’s highest resolution, 3D, whole-brain template. BigBrain was included in MIT Technology Review’s Top 10 Breakthroughs for 2014, and it has since been downloaded over 25,000 times.
Evans has published over 550 peer-reviewed papers, and is a member of numerous international advisory boards, review panels and research collaborations. He is the most cited neuroscientist in Canada and 12th worldwide according to Research.com. He is ranked 40th among the world’s medical and health scientists by AD Scientific Index.
"I would like to thank the Royal Society for this high honour,” says Evans. “This recognition means a great deal to me, coming from my homeland and from such a prestigious organization."
About the Royal Society Fellows
Evans is one of over 90 exceptional researchers from across the world have this year been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences.
Recognised for their invaluable contributions to science, the elected Fellows are leaders in their fields. They include Nobel laureate Emmanuelle Charpentier, Emmy winner Andrew Fitzgibbon and the former Chief Medical Advisor to the US President, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Drawn from across academia, industry and wider society, the new intake spans disciplines as varied as pioneering treatments for Huntington’s Disease, developing the first algorithm for video streaming, generating new insights into memory formation, and studying the origins and evolution of our universe.
