The Presidium of the FEB RAS Announces Winners of the 2026 Prizes

The Presidium of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FEB RAS) has approved the results of the prestigious 2026 prize competition. The awards recognize outstanding scientists of the Russian Far East across all age categories. Among the laureates are researchers from the V.I. Il'ichev Pacific Oceanological Institute.

Prestigious academic awards were conferred for large-scale research in marine geology and ecology:

• The Academician Yu.A. Kosygin Prize was awarded to Maria Sergeevna Obrezkova, PhD (Geology and Mineralogy) and Head of the Laboratory of Marine Micropaleontology. The award recognizes a series of papers titled "Stratigraphy and geological history of the East Arctic seas in the Late Cenozoic according to microfossils"

  M.S. Obrezkova, PhD 
  2026 Academician Yu.A. Kosygin Prize Laureate

  This series of articles by M.S. Obrezkova focuses on Arctic research in several key areas:

  • Biostratigraphy: A modern reference framework for the distribution of diatoms and dinocysts in surface sediments of the Eastern Arctic seas has been established. It serves as a calibration tool for dating and correlating Holocene-Pleistocene sections.
  • Paleogeography: For the first time in the Russian Arctic, the sequence of changes in sedimentation conditions within the "continent–shelf" transition zone has been reconstructed–spanning from continental lakes (Pleistocene) through estuarine-lagoon environments to the modern inner shelf (Holocene).
  • Lithodynamics and Marine Geology: Areas characterized by ice-bottom exaration and stratigraphic gaps have been identified, which is crucial for constructing accurate sedimentation models for the Arctic shelf.

  
  

  Figure 1 – Model of microfossil distribution (diatoms, ciliates tintinnidae, testate amoebae) in bottom sediments of the Laptev Sea coastal shelf [Obrezkova M.S. et al. Microfossil (Diatoms, Tintinnids, and Testate Amoebae) Assemblages in the Holocene Sediments of the Laptev Sea Shelf off the Yana River as a Proxy for Paleoenvironments // Quaternary. — 2025. — Vol. 8, No. 3. — P. 40. doi.org, WoS Q1]

• The Academician V.I. Il'ichev Prize was awarded to a research team from the Laboratory of Sedimentary Processes Geochemistry: Valentina Vladimirovna Sattarova (Head of the Laboratory) and Kirill Igorevich Aksentov (Leading Researcher), both Phd in Geological and Mineralogical Sciences. The scientists were honored for a series of works titled "Ecological and geochemical characteristics of bottom sediments of Northeast Asia as an indicator of sedimentation conditions and sources of sedimentary material under anthropogenic influence and global warming".

  V.V. Sattarova, PhD	K.I. Aksentov, PhD
  2026 Academician V.I. Il'ichev Prize Laureates

  This series of publications is devoted to a comprehensive study of the material composition and geoecological features of marine sediments in key areas: the Arctic shelf, the northwestern Pacific Ocean, and the South China Sea. The research focuses on oceanographic sedimentation processes, sources of sedimentary material, and the impacts of human activity and global warming on marine ecosystems. International environmental standards were applied to assess baseline and anomalous heavy metal content. Calculations of fluxes and accumulation rates in modern bottom sediments illustrate the scale of industrial impact on marine basins. The findings reveal that while the Arctic is dominated by natural element accumulation mechanisms, the marine area off the coast of Vietnam exhibits a pattern of maximum industrial impact.

  
  

  Figure 2 – Spatial distribution of heavy metals (a) and enrichment factor values (b) for surface sediments of the Kuril Basin (Sea of Okhotsk) and the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench area [Sattarova V.V., Aksentov K.I. Trace metals in deep-sea sediments collected from Kuril Basin (Sea of Okhotsk) and Kuril-Kamchatka Trench area // Marine Pollution Bulletin. — 2021. — Vol. 164. — P. 112055. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.112055, WoS Q1]

The FEB RAS prizes named after outstanding scientists of the Russian Far East are awarded for original scientific works and discoveries pivotal to the development of fundamental and applied science. This year, the prize amount is 75,000 rubles.

Congratulations to our colleagues on this well-deserved recognition!