Feigl, Gábor

Gábor Feigl is an assistant professor at the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Szeged, a researcher and educator, and the leader of the Environmental Plant Biology and Protein Biochemistry Group. He obtained his degree in biology from the University of Szeged in 2011 and completed his doctoral dissertation at the same institution in 2015. He completed his habilitation in 2024. His research focuses on the effects of anthropogenic stressors, particularly heavy metals, nanoparticles and plastics, on plant root development. In collaboration with his research partners and building on their previous results in nanomaterial research, his group was the first in Hungary to investigate the effects of plastic pollution on plants. With several years of experience, they study how microplastics influence early plant development, root system architecture, and plant-soil-microbe interactions. Over the past decade, he has been the principal investigator in several successful NRDIO projects investigating nitro-oxidative stress processes in plants and their morphological and developmental consequences. His work has been published in more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, in 19 of which he was first or last author. His publications have been cited more than 1200 times, with a Hirsch index of 24 and a cumulative impact factor higher than 170. He gained international experience through a fellowship at the Estación Experimental del Zaidín Research Institute in Granada, Spain, and through active participation in several prestigious international conferences. His scientific work has been recognised with several awards, including the Bolyai János Research Fellowship, three instances of Bolyai+ support from the New National Excellence Programme, and two awards for his contributions to the Young Plant Biologists Lecture Series of the Hungarian Plant Biology Society. His teaching activities cover a wide range, from BSc courses to PhD programmes, and he is actively involved in teaching courses and practical sessions on plant stress physiology, phytoremediation and fluorescence-based research methods. He has supervised numerous undergraduate students and is currently supervising two PhD students. He is an active member of the national and international scientific community, a member of several scientific societies (e.g. MNT, FESPB) and a voting member of the Scientific Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His public duties in the department include the functions of study coordinator and MTMT administrator. As part of his activities to promote science, he is a regular lecturer at the Wesselényi Community College and at the Researchers’ Night.