The TWAS Council has announced the winners of four of its prestigious awards for enterprising and accomplished scientists living and working in the global South.

All four winners are women. Also, two of the winners are from Least Developed Countries, Burkina Faso and Malawi. The other two are from Sri Lanka and China.

TWAS administers numerous awards, often named after generous and highly accomplished TWAS Fellows.The awards provide a powerful incentive for developing world scientists to excel on new levels, while bringing much-deserved global recognition to their achievements and inspiring others to follow in their footsteps.

The awardees are:

2023 TWAS-Abdool Karim Award winner — Sanata Bamba Pakotogo of Burkina Faso, for her contribution to the diagnosis and management of post-tuberculosis chronic pulmonary aspergillosis in a tuberculosis endemic area in Burkina Faso;

2023 TWAS-Atta-ur-Rahman Award winner — Imalka Munaweera of Sri Lanka, for her contributions to the development of engineered inorganic nanostructures and nanofiber composites that may have multidisciplinary applications;

2023 TWAS-Fayzah M. Al-Kharafi Award winner — Nyovani Janet Madise of Malawi, for her pioneering research in Kenya on the lack of access to health care by the poor living in slums, leading to the construction of maternity facilities;

2024 TWAS-Siwei Cheng Award in Economic Sciences winner — Zhao Yaohui of China, for her pioneering studies on the Chinese labour market and the economics of healthy ageing.

TWAS also anticipates that the winner of the 2023 TWAS-CAS Young Scientist Award in Mathematics and/or Artificial Intelligence will be publicly named in the coming weeks.