Scientist from Peram in the 2% most cited in the world.
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Irina Ivshina, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and professor at the Perm National Research University, was included in the ranking of the world's top 2% scientists for 2026. Every year it is collected by Stanford scientists together with Elsevier Publishing using the Scouts database: they check how often the author's work is cited by peers around the world. Ibshina is well known in the field of biotechnology. We'll tell you why.
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In 1975, a graduate of the Faculty of Biology at PSU drove through the tundra and taiga in a UAZ truck full of laboratory equipment. They were looking for bacteria that could be used to detect oil underground without drilling. Found: Rhodococcus. The prediction accuracy is 95-98%.
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Another would throw away the rest of the bacteria from the samples. Ivshina saved them all and described them. This is how the world's largest collection of bacteria that feed on hydrocarbons (they are called alkanotrophs) appeared in Prem. The central fund, about 700 cultures of rhodococci, is stored in the refrigerators of the Institute for Ecology and Genetics of Microorganisms on Gulba Street. Strains are purchased by laboratories from all over the world. In the nineties, a western company offered to buy the entire collection for any money. they refused.
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The main application is tested in practice. In 1994, an oil pipeline burst near Osinsk in Komi, and the accident was included in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most serious pollution on Earth. The Perm Laboratory, together with Moscow University and oil workers, developed a biological treatment there: bacteria processed oil in the soil, and it was several times cheaper than burning the earth.
⠀ She calls bacteria "beautiful". Under her leadership, 17 candidates and 3 doctoral theses were defended. The first female academic in Orel.
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And on the edge of her table is a bowl of sweets. A student comes, shakes, eats sweets and feels better. Her employees say so, but she herself is silent about it.