The University of Szeged awarded David W. Busija professor (USA) with the title Doctor Honoris Causa. Dr. Gábor Szabó rector presented the certificate of merit on 11 November 2009 at the Senate Meeting on the Day of the University. The professor of Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the United States of America has maintained fruitful scientific collaboration with Hungarian researchers.

As one of the best-known international experts on the field of cerebrovascular regulation he has published more than 240 research papers in prominent scientific journals and he is the author of nearly 50 book chapters. The most important of his observations are on the cerebrovascular regulatory mechanisms of the newborn brain. He has also had a defining role in identifying the coupling between the activity-dependent release of excitatory amino acids and the brain’s local blood flow. Recently, his attention has been directed to exploration of mitochondrial mechanisms in the cerebrovascular physiology and type 2 diabetes-related cerebral pathophysiology and he has been investigating the cellular mechanisms of the pharmacological preconditioning in the brain. In the previous fifteen years eight researchers representing the Departments of Physiology and Pathophysiology of our Faculty spent a total of 15 years in Professor Busija’s laboratory. The number of his publications co-authored by researchers from Szeged exceeds 70. Bilateral research programs and the exchange of researchers are active forms of collaboration. In addition to the researchers from Szeged, promising young investigators from Budapest and Pécs have also completed successful research projects in Professor Busija’s laboratory.