Virág, Attila

Attila Virág is an assistant professor at the Department of Petrology and Geochemistry at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He received his PhD degree in 2014 from the Doctoral School of Earth Sciences of the same institution. The title of his thesis was “Morphometrical and paleoecological study of Hungarian Pliocene and Pleistocene elephantids”. He is a member of the Scientific Committee on Palaeontology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Palaeontological-Stratigraphical Section of the Hungarian Geological Society and the Hungarian National Committee of INQUA. From 2013 to 2016, he was a co-researcher in the project “Taxonomical, taphonomical and paleoecological studies on the richest early Middle Pleistocene small vertebrate material of Hungary (Somssich Hill, site 2)”, Hungarian Scientific Research Fund Grant No. K 104506, and from 2017 to 2018 in the project “Identification of classical Greek sculptors – Master-hand attributions by 3D-analysis”, Hungarian Scientific Research Fund Grant No. NF 101755. From 2018 to 2023, he led a team of two researchers and one PhD student in the framework of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund Grant No. FK 128741, entitled “Developing a landmark-based system for studying taxonomic and phylogenetic issues of vertebrates with various tooth morphologies”. In 2013, he was awarded the Sepkoski Grant of the American Paleontological Society, and from 2015 to 2017 he was awarded the MTA Postdoctoral Fellowship for his research entitled “Taxonomical and palaeoecological analysis of Hungarian Quaternary mammals based on tooth microwear and enamel histology”. In 2024, he was awarded the MTA Bolyai János Research Fellowship for the next 3 years for his application “Machine learning methods in the service of paleontology”. He considers it important to participate in the public life of the university and is currently a member of the ELTE TTK FFI Artificial Intelligence in Geography and Earth Sciences Working Committee. He is a regular participant of the Researchers’ Night and the Night of the Museums events, and he participated in the establishment of the “Mineral of the Year / Fossil of the Year” programmes of the Hungarian Geological Society.