The award and medal recognise outstanding research performance by early-career staff at Otago and are accompanied by a $5000 grant for personal scholarly development.
Announcing the annual medal's latest recipient, deputy vice-chancellor Prof Richard Blaikie said some of Dr Michaelian's colleagues regarded his ``prodigious high-quality research'' at such an early stage in his career as ``simply amazing''.
Using approaches from philosophy and psychology, he had made significant progress towards providing a general account of episodic memory.
A senior lecturer in the Otago philosophy department, Dr Michaelian was ``thrilled'' to gain the award.
His research progress at Otago reflected the ``exceptional research environment'' provided by the department, the humanities division, and wider university, he said.
Dr Michaelian last year also received a prestigious Marsden Fund $300,000 Fast-Start grant, over three years, to study collective memory.
Before joining the Otago department in 2015, he worked at Bilkent University in Turkey and the Institut Jean-Nicod in France.
Since arriving at Otago, he has produced 12 articles and book chapters. He is also working on editing a third book.