Rajaa Cherkaoui El Moursli in the Forbes' 50 Over 50 list for the Middle East and Africa
Nuclear physicist Rajaa Cherkaoui El Moursli, a 2018 TWAS Fellow and a professor with the Mohammed V University, in Rabat, Morocco, has been included in the 2024 Forbes list of 50 outstanding women over 50, for the Middle East and Africa.
She has been selected for her outstanding scientific contributions which include working in the team that proved the existence of the Higgs Boson. The Higgs boson is an elementary particle that gives mass to other particles such as electrons and quarks.
Cherkaoui El Moursli earned a PhD in nuclear physics from the University of Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France in 1982. Upon her return to Morocco, she was appointed the director of the Nuclear Physics Laboratory in Rabat.
In 1996, she became the Moroccan representative in the ATLAS Experiment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
In 2015, she was the first Moroccan scientist to receive the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science, representing Africa and the Arab States, and was named the Moroccan Woman of Year 2015 by the magazine Illi. In 2017, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation honoured Cherkaoui El Moursli for her outstanding contributions to science and technology in the Islamic world.
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UNESCO-Carlos J. Finlay Prize goes to Uzbek TWAS Fellow Dilfuza Egamberdieva
Uzbek microbiologist Dilfuza Egamberdieva, elected to TWAS in 2022, is the recipient of the 2023 UNESCO–Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology. She received the prize on 14 November 2023, at UNESCO headquarters, in Paris, France.
Egamberdieva researches plant-microbe interactions to spot beneficial bacteria that make crops more resistant to drought, hot temperatures, and high salt concentrations. The ultimate goal of her work is to improve plant productivity, and reduce the environmental damages caused by the massive use of chemical fertilizers in agricultural practices.
The Carlos J. Finlay Prize was established in 1980 to reward scientists who achieve outstanding results in the field of microbiology and related applications. It is named after Cuban epidemiologist Carlos J. Finlay, who discovered that yellow fever is caused by mosquitoes infecting people.
Egamberdieva heads a research group at the Faculty of Biology, National University of Uzbekistan, in Tashkent. She works on cotton, tomatoes, wheat and other vegetables. Her expertise, makes her an authoritative voice in Uzbekistan in the evaluation of national programmes and projects regarding agricultural research for sustainable development.
She currently serves on the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE), the science-policy interface of the UN Committee on World Food Security. She is a member of the Global Young Academy, and the 2012 recipient of the TWAS Prize in Agricultural Sciences.
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Olanike Adeyemo reappointed to UN High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition
Olanike Adeyemo is a 2019 TWAS Fellow and a professor in the Department of Veterinary Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Ibadan, in Nigeria.
She has been reappointed to the Steering Committee of the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security. The HLPE-FSN is the United Nations body assessing scientific matters related to global food security and nutrition.
Adeyemo is one of three African members elected to the Steering Committee, and her mandate will last two years, until the end of 2025.
Her reappointment, the citation reads, reflects her exceptional experience and expertise, and her immense contribution to food security and human nutrition globally.
Adeyemo is the Secretary to Oyo State Government since July 2023, and a leader in cross-cutting research merging issues on environment, livestock, wildlife, and humans. Her interests cover environmental toxicology, aquatic, and wildlife disease epidemiology, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, and food safety.
Through her research, she proved the complex bonds between the environment with its living creatures and human health, which have significant policy implications for Nigeria, the African Continent, and the rest of the world.
She is a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Science (2016), and the African Academy of Sciences (2012). She was named 'Scientist of the Year 2020' in the Natural Sciences category of the Open International Competition by the International Achievements Research Center, Chicago, USA.
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Jonah Ratsimbazafy receives the 2023 Seacology Prize
Jonah Ratsimbazafy, a faculty lecturer at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, and a 2021 TWAS Fellow, is the recipient of the 2023 Seacology Prize.
Ratsimbazafy is a passionate conservationist who has been devoting his life and career to the protection of endangered lemurs, a primate species, and other animals in Madagascar.
The Seacology Prize honours islander men and women, who achieved exceptional results in preserving the environment and culture of their island.
Ratsimbazafy is the co-vice chair of the Madagascar section of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group. He is also the president of the Madagascar Primate Research Group. In February 2020, he was elected the president of the International Primatological Society.
More than 10 years of observations led Ratsimbazafy to discover a new species of lemures, Microcebus jonahi, which has been named after him. His discovery was displayed in a short film, titled “Good news in bad time: Welcome Microcebus jonahi,” available on YouTube.
His unceasing conservationist efforts earned him several awards, including the Galante Family Winery Conservation Scholarship of the International Primatological Society, in 2002; the Disney Conservation Hero Award, in 2015; and the African Primatological Society Award, in 2019.
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Rajeev Varshney elected to the Royal Society
Agricultural scientist and 2016 TWAS Fellow Rajeev Kumar Varshney was elected to the Royal Society in July 2023. Varshney is the director of the Centre for Crop & Food Innovation at Murdoch University in Australia, and is the first person from this university to receive such an honour.
He is an expert in crop genomics, genome-assisted breeding, and plant stress tolerance. His discoveries have been pivotal in crop improvement programmes including the productivity of 'orphan' tropical crops. Orphan crops are named this way because the scientific community neglects them due to their low commercial value on international markets, even though small farmers grow them for their nutritional value. They include chickpea, pigeonpea, and groundnut.
Through his research, Varshney has addressed global challenges such as making agriculture more sustainable and increasing food security in light of climate change.
By exploiting genomic variation he succeeded in breeding crop varieties that are more resistant to drought and pests, and are more nutritious as well.
Varshney's other memberships include the African Academy of Sciences (2022), the Indian Academy of Sciences (2019), and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2016).
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Kauser Abdulla Malik appointed as minister in Pakistan
Kauser Abdulla Malik, a 1996 TWAS Fellow, is a recently appointed minister in the caretaker Government of Pakistan, a temporary political body acting until the official government is formed.
A native of Lahore, Malik is currently a Distinguished National Professor of biotechnology and Dean Postgraduate Studies with the Forman Christian College in Lahore. His scientific interests cover microbial diversity, bacteria-mediated plant transformation and crop biofortification, all techniques that allow breeding crops with increased nutritional properties.
He also studies how to enhance the fertilizer use efficiency in wheat through genetic engineering procedures. Malik is also active in outreach activities, which include serving as a member syndicate at the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Lahore, and member of the executive board of the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), in Karachi.
He received the Hilal-e-Imtiaz (2004), Tamgha-e-Imtiaz (1988), Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1998), ISESCO Prize in Biology (1997), and the Gold Medal from the Pakistan Academy of Sciences (1996).
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Ana Maria Cetto Kramis receives UNESCO-Kalinga Prize
Ana María Cetto Kramis, a TWAS Fellow since 1999, has received the 2023 UNESCO-Kalinga Prize in recognition of her outstanding efforts and contributions to science outreach and popularization.
She was awarded on 10 November by the Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences at UNESCO, Lidia Arthur Brito, during a ceremony for the World Science Day for Peace and Development.
Cetto Kramis, a physicist and a research professor at the Institute of Physics, National Autonomous University of Mexico, has contributed to the development of stochastic quantum mechanics and stochastic electrodynamics.
From 2003 to 2010, she served as Deputy Director-General at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria.
She is passionate about the science of light, and was among the promoters of the 2015 International Year of Light and a supporter in the establishment of the annual International Day of Light. Cetto is currently working on a project seeking to improve urban lighting and contain light pollution.
Today, she is president of the UNESCO Open Science Advisory Committee and holds the UNESCO Chair on Science Diplomacy and Heritage.
The Kalinga Prize is UNESCO's oldest prize. It was created in 1951 after a donation from Mr Bijoyanand Patnaik, Founder and President of the Kalinga Foundation Trust in India, and is awarded every two years.
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Mohammad Qasim Jan appointed as minister in Pakistan
Mohammad Qasim Jan, a 2002 TWAS Fellow, has been recently appointed as minister in the caretaker Government of Pakistan. A caretaker government is a temporary political body in charge of carrying out duties until the official government is formed.
A distinguished national professor (emeritus) with the University of Peshawar, and the past president of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences (2018–2020), Jan is a geologist by education, with a PhD from the University of London. He is renowned for his studies addressing the Earth’s crust-building processes that gave birth to the Andean margins.
He has held several positions at national and international levels and has served as vice-chancellor of three universities. To acknowledge his outstanding contributions to the field of geological sciences, the Government of Pakistan has bestowed him with three civil awards: Hilal-e-Imtiaz (2010), Sitara-e-Imtiaz (1999), and Tamgha-e-Imtiaz (1993).
He is the author or editor of hundreds of papers and books, and a fellow of several academies and professional bodies, including the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, the Islamic World Academy of Sciences, and the Mineralogical Society London.
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Elfatih Eltahir elected to the US National Academy of Engineering
Elfatih Eltahir, a 2023 TWAS Fellow and a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
NAE membership is given to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice, or education, pioneering new fields of technology, and bringing innovative approaches in the field. Eltahir was elected because he developed knowledge of how climate and land use impact water availability, environmental and human health, and vector-borne diseases.
At MIT, where he is an H.M. King Bhumibol Professor of hydrology and climate, he has developed two sophisticated numerical models. His Regional Climate Model and the Hydrology, Entomology, and Malaria Transmission Simulator are now used to make climate projections.
Eltahir's scientific interests cover a wide range of topics including hydrology, water resources, climate variability, and climate change. Through his projections and simulations, he analysed how natural phenomena and the society evolve and intertwine, focusing on climate-related events such as droughts over the Mediterranean basin, and extreme heatwaves in Asia.
Eltahir is a member of the Sudanese National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of several awards, including the Hydrologic Science Award (2017).
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L’Oréal-UNESCO award goes to FTWAS Anamaría Font
Anamaría Font, a TWAS Fellow since 2013, is the recipient of a 2023 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Awards. Every year, the awards acknowledge five outstanding women scientists who gave seminal contributions to scientific advancements either in life sciences (in even years), or physical sciences, mathematics and computer science (in odd years). An international jury selects the awardees, who receive €100,000.
Font is a theoretical physicist and a professor at the School of Physics, Faculty of Science, of the Central University of Venezuela, in Caracas. Her scientific interests have addressed the primordial components of matter in the context of the string theory.
In 1998, jointly with former ICTP Director Fernando Quevedo, she received the ICTP Prize in the field of High Energy Physics. The prize acknowledged the importance of her studies that led to a better understanding of the low energy string physics, as well as various stringy symmetries. In 1991, she received the Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury Science Prize, the most important award offered by the private sector to contemporary talented scientists from Venezuela who have shown creativity and productivity.
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Abdon Atangana wins the UNESCO–AI Fozan International Prize
Cameroonian mathematician and 2022 TWAS Fellow Abdon Atangana has received the UNESCO–AI Fozan International Prize for the Promotion of Young Scientists.
The biennial award, this year in its first edition, gives recognition to five young researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM disciplines), promoting gender equality and easing the choice of a career.
Atangana, a professor at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa is a world-renowned scholar in the field of fractional calculus, fractional differential equations, and mathematical modelling. He is the founder of numerous mathematical operators and some numerical methods that are currently used by scientists in different disciplines.
The mathematical models resulting from his research have important applications in predicting the course of an infection in a given community, providing reliable estimates on the number of new infections, recovered cases, and fatalities.
In 2019, he was named one of the world’s most highly cited mathematicians and one of the top 1% of scientists on the global Clarivate Web of Science list.
In 2020, he received the first-ever TWAS-Mohammad A. Hamdan Award, named after TWAS’s late Vice President for the Arab Region, who passed away earlier in the same year.
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Tshilidzi Marwala is the new rector of the United Nations University
Tshilidzi Marwala, an artificial intelligence engineer from South Africa and a 2010 TWAS Fellow has been appointed as the seventh United Nations University (UNU) Rector. His five-year term mandate started on 1 March 2023. UNU is a global research and training organisation with institutes and programmes in 12 countries.
Before this appointment, Prof. Marwala served as the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg, from 2018‒2023. Prior than that, he was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Internationalization (2013‒2017) and the Executive Dean of the faculty of engineering and the built environment (2009–2013). Early in his career, he served as associate professor and full professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa (2003–2008).
As a researcher, he carried out investigations in social science, economics, medicine and finance, and served in several capacities with UN bodies including UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO and WIPO.
Among more than 40 awards that he has received there is the South Africa's highest honour, the Order of Mapungubwe. He authored more than 20 books, and more than 200 magazine articles and newspaper editorials.
In 2021, the Institute of IT Professionals South Africa named Marwala IT Personality of the Year. In 2019, he was among the distinguished panellists at TWAS round table held in the frame of the science festival Trieste Next.
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Wolfgang Lutz awarded Austrian Science Prize
Wolfgang Lutz, the Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital has been awarded the 2023 Science Prize of the Austrian Research Association. Lutz, who was elected a TWAS Fellow in 2014, holds a PhD in demography from the University of Pennsylvania (USA), and served as the Director of the Vienna Institute of Demography (2002–2022).
The prize, now in its 16th edition, is bestowed every two years to first-class scholars to showcase the high level of Austrian research.
Lutz is recognised worldwide as an outstanding scientist. His interests focus on global population development, with in-depth investigations on the interactions among demographic changes, the society, the economy, and the environment.
Numerous awards speak about his achievements. The awards include the ERC Advanced Investigator Grant, which he received in 2008, 2012, and 2016, the 2010 Wittgenstein Award (often called Austria's Nobel Prize), and the 2009 Mattei Dogan Foundation Award of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.
Lutz is a member of many scientific academies including the Austrian, German, and Finnish Academies of Sciences. As many as 24 of his over 280 scientific articles were published by leading scientific journals like Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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The UNESCO–AI Fozan International Prize awards TWAS Alumna Fu Qiaomei
TWAS Alumna Fu Qiaomei, head of the molecular paleontology laboratory at the CAS Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, is a 2023 laureate of the UNESCO–AI Fozan International Prize. The prize, now in its 1st edition, gives recognition to young researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM disciplines), for their transformative research addressing global challenges.
Prof. Fu is a leading scholar in evolutionary genetics and population genetics. She has retrieved ancient DNA from human remains and sediments and has used it to build an evolutionary map of Eurasian populations' gene flow across the past 100,000 years.
Her findings have shed light on the role of our ancestors in shaping the genetic makeup of modern humans. In fact, she spotted the appearance of several DNA mutations that modulated skin traits, hair thickness, and the development of sweat glands.
She is the author of more than 30 academic papers in journals like Nature, Science, Cell, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. One of her papers has been awarded The Top 2014 Annual Ten Scientific Events by Nature.