Dajani Rana

Dajani is currently a Yidan Global Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a professor of molecular biology at the Hashemite University, in Jordan. Her area of expertise is epigenetics and biomarkers of trauma among refugees. Through her leadership, she has introduced national and regional stem cell laws and presided over numerous scientific boards and United Nations councils, most recently as the president of the Society for the Advancement of Science and Technology in the Arab World. She has held visiting professor positions at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Jepson School of Leadership and Cambridge, and is an advocate for building indigenous research capabilities in the developing world, and for creating a mentoring programme to support women scholars in STEM that was recognized by the National Academy of Sciences. Rana is a social entrepreneur and a global thought leader. She is the founder of We Love Reading, a grassroots initiative to create changemakers in underserved communities by fostering a lifelong love of reading. A recipient of the UNESCO International Literacy Prize, We Love Reading has established more than 8,000 locally run libraries in over 70 countries.