“C’est un honneur,” Dr. Daniel Pauly, University Killam Professor with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, said after being named “Scientist of the Year” by Radio Canada’s Les Années-lumière.
Pauly is being recognized for his lifelong research efforts on the human impacts on global fisheries, which hit a high note in 2016 with two major publications, both co-authored with Dirk Zeller: The Nature Communications paper Catch reconstructions reveal that global marine fisheries catches are higher than reported and declining and the Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries,
Yanick Villedieu, host of Les Années-lumière, explained that the award aims at highlighting the work of a French-speaking scientist who, throughout his/her career, but particularly in the past year, had a major discovery, achievement, or publication of national and international significance.
After reviewing the most important science news stories of the last 12 months and conducting a series of consultations with science journalists from Découverte (Radio-Canada television), Québec Science, and Découvrir magazine, Dr. Pauly was selected by the show’s production team as this year’s awardee.
Following the awards ceremony, Pauly and Villedieu sat down for an hour-long interview with a live audience interested in knowing more about the scientist’s trajectory and ongoing research projects. The interview will be aired on Sunday January 22, 2017 at 12 p.m. EST.
Later that day (at 6:30 p.m. EST), Découverte plans to air a series of filmed interviews with Dr. Pauly, which will close with a flourish the honours conferred upon him by Radio Canada.
The “Scientist of the Year” award has been granted for the past 30 years to outstanding individuals from a variety of fields that range from genomics to oceanography.
With this distinction, Dr. Pauly joins a stellar list of renowned researchers such as biologist and oceanographer Louis Fortier, biologists Pierre Béland, J.-André Fortin, and Claude Villeneuve, hematologist Guy Sauvageau, ecologist Joël Bêty, among others.