To Pavel F. Kiku, our dear teacher, scientist and friend

We are deeply saddened to inform you that the member of our Editorial Council, our friend and valued colleague Prof. Pavel F. Kiku passed away on April 10, 2022 at the age of 65. Pavel Kiku, Dr. Sci. (Med), Cand. Sci. (Tech.), Professor, Director of the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, School of Biomedicine, Far Eastern Federal University, was an outstanding Russian scientist of world importance in the field of environmental health, human ecology, hygiene, preventive medicine, and health care management, a person of diverse interests and a science writer.

Dr. Kiku was born on December 27, 1956 in the city of Vladivostok, Primorsky Krai, Russian Federation. Having finished school, he entered the Sanitary and Hygienic Faculty of the Vladivostok State Medical Institute, from which he graduated in 1983. His scientific career began the same year as he started full-time target post-graduate courses at the Department of Public Health and Health Care Management of the Kemerovo State Medical Institute. As a postgraduate, he defended his thesis “Socio-Hygienic Characteristics of Health and Disease Prevention in Workers Engaged in Hydraulic Mining in Kuzbass”. After that, he worked as an assistant at the Department of Public Health and Health Care Management of the Vladivostok State Medical Institute.

Since 1993, he worked in the Research Institute of Medical Climatology and Rehabilitation in the city of Vladivostok, where he rose from a research fellow to the Head of the laboratory. In 2000, he defended his doctoral dissertation and in 2001, he became a Professor of Hygiene.

During more than 20 years of work in the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Kiku took part in implementing six research projects and headed three of them. In cooperation with other researchers, he developed a number of models, including the Model of a Comprehensive Environmental Health Assessment, the Model for Analysis of the Relationship between Environmental Quality and Diseases of the Respiratory System, and the Model for Sociometric Index Processing Based on the Method of Mathematical Pleiades.

Personal contribution of Prof. Kiku to public health sciences includes the development of the methodology of public health assessment based on a systemic analysis, the use of its principles in solving public health monitoring issues, the elaboration of algorithms of biomedical data processing, introduction of information technologies in environmental health studies. He was the first to propose an information complex of processing health and environment data based on statistical methods of a cluster, factor, and regression analyses, described in his doctoral thesis and enabling a better systemic evaluation of health effects of environmental factors. He was also the first to merge approaches of Russian and foreign scientists in interpretation of results of a factor analysis. Russian Centers for Hygiene and Epidemiology apply his original information technologies to ranking territories by environmental pollution burden and health risks. A long-term cooperation with researchers from the Institute of Geography and the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Far Eastern Federal University, the Far Eastern State Technical University, and the Vladivostok State Medical University allowed Prof. Kiku to carry out a number of complex works on environmental health and to introduce his developments into the educational process.

In 2011, Prof. Kiku started working in the School of Biomedicine of the Far Eastern Federal University, became the first Head of the Department of Preventive Medicine, and, until death, was the Director of the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, a leader of postgraduate educational programs “Public Health and Health Care”, “Hygiene”, and the Master’s program “Public Health and Health Care Management”.

Throughout that time, Prof. Kiku focused on training of young professionals. Under his guidance and supervision, 12 candidate and 5 doctoral dissertations were defended in such fields as medical, biological, technical, geological and mineralogical sciences. He gave lectures and seminars on biostatistics and the use of a systemic analysis in biomedical research. Scientific and methodological activities of Prof. Kiku were distinguished by high professionalism. He established himself as a hard-working, principled, and disciplined teacher, an excellent organizer highly respected by students and colleagues.

The studies conducted by Prof. Kiku were well-known in the scientific community and supported by grants from the governors of the Primorsky Krai (in the years 1997 and 1999). Pavel Kiku was the Permanent Chairman of the Section on Environmental Health Issues at the Annual International Conference “Primorskie Zori [Maritime Dawns]”, a member of the doctoral dissertation council at the Vladivostok State Medical University. Since 2013, he worked as an expert in preventive medicine for the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. He published over 500 paper including 17 monographs, 14 guidelines and manuals; he got patents for 22 inventions.

For his diligent research and teaching efforts, Prof. Kiku was awarded diplomas of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Governor of the Primorsky Krai, and the Rector of the Far Eastern Federal University, diplomas and letters of gratitude from administrations of the Primorsky Krai and the City of Vladivostok, numerous awards by the International Academy of Ecology and Life Protection Sciences, including the “Star of the Scientist” Order.

On behalf of the Federal Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology, we offer heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Prof. Kiku, sharing the bitterness of loss. The good memory of our colleague with remain in our hearts forever.