Western University’s Vladimir Hachinski – past president of the World Federation of Neurology and a world-renowned stroke expert – is a 2018 Killam Prize winner for health sciences.
The Canada Council for the Arts announced the recipients of the 2018 Killam Program earlier today. This prestigious program, administered by the Canada Council, is funded by a private endowment supporting creativity and innovation through research and higher learning.
Five Canadian researchers will receive $100,000 each in recognition of their exceptional career achievements in humanities, engineering, natural sciences, social sciences, health sciences, and interdisciplinary studies within these fields.
“I am delighted by the honour. But I realize this is not just about me – it is about all the work we have done,” says Dr. Hachinski, a Distinguished University Professor at Western and Professor of Neurology at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. “I am left with a tremendous feeling of gratitude – gratitude for the acknowledgement, but even more importantly, gratitude because it gives us an opportunity to highlight what we are doing, and where we are trying to go, which is the most exciting thing.”
Dr. Hachinski transformed the understanding, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the two greatest threats to the brain: stroke and dementia. He co-discovered a link between Alzheimer’s and stroke and introduced new concepts and a new clinical diagnosis tool, the Hachinski Ischemic Score for identifying the treatable components of dementia. He founded, with John W. Norris, the world’s first successful acute stroke unit, now the standard of care.
Having published 18 books, including Treatable and Potentially Preventable Dementias (2018) and more than 800 frequently cited scientific articles, Dr. Hachinski was Editor-in-Chief of Stroke – the leading publication in the field – for an unprecedented 10 years (2000-10).Dabid
A recipient of the Order of Ontario and Order of Canada, he was the President of the World Federation of Neurology (2010-13) and was inducted in the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2018.
Dr. Hachinski becomes Western’s sixth Killam Prize winner and the most recent winner since English professor David Bentley won in 2015. Other Western winners include Economics professor John Whalley (2012), Engineering professors Alan Davenport (1993) and Maurice Bergiougnou (1999) and Robarts Research Institute co-founder Henry Barnett (1988).
For more about the 2018 Killam Program, including the other winners, please visit: https://killamprogram.canadacouncil.ca/
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