Abegaz was Exec. Dir. of African Acad. of Sciences (2011-2017). He has contributed to the development of the Acad. by securing recognition by the African Union and NEPAD and steep increase of the fellows. Under his leadership and partnerships with global funders, AESA, the alliance for accelerating excellence in science in Africa has been established. He's been promoting South-South cooperation and is the co-founder of highly successful networks: Natural Product Research Network for Eastern and Central Africa (NAPRECA), Network for Analytical and Bioassay Services in Africa (NABSA), and pan-African Natural Products Library (p-ANPL). Abegaz served as Chair of UNESCO Science Board, the CSPR of ICSU, as sen. Advisor to IOCD, IFS, etc. He has also received a number of awards, the IFS-DANIDA award, the Pierre Crabbe Award and the CNR Rao Award. He is elected fellow of TWAS, AAS and EAS.

Abidi is Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his BSc in electrical engineering from Imperial College, London, UK, in 1976, and his MS (1978) and PhD (1981) in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He has also served in many other capacities including: Member, technical staff, Advanced LSI Development Laboratory, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, 1981-84; visiting faculty researcher, Hewlett Packard Laboratories, 1989; and editor, IEEE Journal of Solid-state Circuits, 1992-95. He has received several honours including the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Solid-State Circuits Award; Lockheed-Martin Award for Excellence in Teaching, UCLA; IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits Best Paper Award; IEEE Millennium Medal; and membership in the US National Academy of Engineering and IEEE. He specializes in the design of analog integrated circuits, and is credited with single-chip CMOS radios. Abidi is the inaugural holder of the Abdus Salam Chair at LUMS, Lahore, Pakistan.

Agarwal is professor at the Texas A&M U.. He was educated at Banaras Hindu U., India, and the U. of Rochester where he obtained his PhD in 1969. He retired from Oklahoma State U where he held the regents professorship and Noble Foundation chair. His previous positions include dist. scientist and director of the Physical Res. Lab. in Ahmedabad; Indian Natl. Science Acad. Albert Einstein research professor; and professor (1977-95), School of Physics, U. of Hyderabad. His awards include Bhatnagar Award; Max Born Award of the Optical Soc. of America; GD Birla award; RD Birla award; Humboldt Research award, Eminent Faculty award of Oklahoma State U and TWAS Physics Prize. His fellowships include: The Royal Society, UK; 3 science academies of India; American Physical Soc.; Optical Soc. of America. He is also the recipient of honorary doctorates. He is the author of nearly 700 research publications, edited books and monographs. His recent text book "quantum optics" was published by the Cambridge University Press. He is an authority in quantum optics as well in nano photonics and plasmonics.

Alberts is a US Natl. Medal of Science awardee (2014). He has served as Editor-in-Chief of Science (2008-2013) and as one of President Obama’s first three United States Science Envoys (2009-2011). Alberts holds the Chancellor's Leadership Chair in Biochemistry and Biophysics for Science and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, to which he returned after serving two six-year terms as the president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Dr. Alberts is noted as one of the original authors of The Molecular Biology of the Cell, a pre-eminent textbook in the field soon to be in its sixth edition. Alberts has earned many honors and awards, including 16 honorary degrees. He currently serves on the advisory boards of more than 25 nonprofit institutions, including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP).

Azzam is distinguished professor of electrical engineering, University of New Orleans (UNO). After receiving his BSc (Cairo University, 1967) and PhD (University of Nebraska, 1971), he held postdoctoral and faculty positions at the University of Nebraska until 1979 when he joined UNO. He was Fulbright scholar and visiting professor at Université de Provence, France, and professor of physics at the American University in Cairo. He served as topical editor for the Journal of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and Applied Optics, and as member of the OSA Publications Council. His honours include: 2005 GG Stokes Award of SPIE, International Society for Optical Engineering; 1993 Photonics Circle of Excellence Award; 1993 R and D Award; 1988 Outstanding American Inventor; 1985 Fulbright Scholar (France); and fellow of the Optical Society of America and SPIE.

Bass was educated at Princeton U. (BA, 1955) and U. of Chicago (MS, 1956; PhD, 1959). He is Samuel Eilenberg Dist. U. Prof. of Mathematics and Mathematics Education, U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was Adrain Prof. of Mathematics, Columbia U. (1959-99), and had visiting research and faculty positions at mathematical centres worldwide. He is a founder of the Algebraic K-Theory field and co-founder of the theory of group actions on trees. His awards include: Sloan and Guggenheim Fellowships; Cole Prize in Algebra, American Mathematics Soc.; Yueh-Gin Gung and Dr. Charles Y. Hu Award for Disti. Service to Mathematics, Mathematical Assn. of America; and US Natl. Medal of Science. He is member of the Natl. Acad. of Sciences, USA, American Acad. of Arts and Sciences, and the Natl. Acad. of Education, USA. He is past pres., American Mathematical Soc. and Intl. Commission on Mathematical Instruction.

Founding Executive Director, University of California, Davis; President Emeritus, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, MO; Professor, Department of Biology, Washington Univ., St. Louis. Former director Natl. Inst. of Food and Agriculture, US Dept. of Agriculture. Education: BA in biology (1966) Goshen College, Indiana; PhD in plant pathology (1973) Michigan State Univ., East Lansing. Previous academic positions: Washington Univ., St. Louis, Missouri; Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA. Member, US National Academy of Science; Fellow, AAAS and Academy of Microbiology; Foreign Fellow, National Academy of Sciences of India and Indian National Science Academy. Awards include the Wolf Prize in Agriculture; Dennis Robert Hoagland Award, American Society of Plant Biologists; Scientist of the Year, R and D Magazine; and Ruth Allen Award, American Phytopathological Society.

Chu and colleagues were the first to achieve superconductivity above liquid nitrogen temperatures with YBaCuO (90 K). Such and related work has established him as a leader in the field of high temperature superconducting oxides. He is Founding Director and Chief Scientist, Texas Center for Superconductivity; Professor of Physics and T.L.L. Temple Chair of Science, University of Houston; President Emeritus and University Professor Emeritus, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; and Honorary Chancellor, Taiwan Comprehensive University System. He has received the U.S. National Medal of Science and numerous international awards, as well as 10 honorary doctorates and 7 honorary professorships. He is a fellow/member of the American Physical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica, National Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other organizations.

Clegg's research in evolutionary genetics combines statistical analyses with modern molecular techniques. Major accomplishments include characterizing the dynamics of linkage disequilibrium in plant and animal populations, showing that plant chloroplast gene evolve slowly, pioneering the use of DNA sequence data in plant phylogenetic inference and using molecular data in the study of crop domestication. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, Darwin Prize from Edinburgh University and the Award of Distinction from UC Davis, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Eltahir is H. M. King Bhumibol Professor of hydrology and climate, and professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Eltahir made significant contributions defining the role of land surface processes in climate system. He has been actively engaged in projecting future impacts of global climate change at local and regional scales, with the objective of informing and hence enabling proactive adaptation by local communities. Examples for topics of his projections include: water in Nile basin, malaria in Africa, droughts over Mediterranean, and extreme heatwaves in Asia. Eltahir is the director of the UM6P-MIT Research Program at MIT with a focus on sustainable development in Africa. He is also the lead principal investigator in a large Climate Grand Challenges Project at MIT with the goal of reinventing adaptation to climate change. He was recently elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering. Eltahir is a recipient of the Kuwait Prize in Applied Science in 2000, an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2008, and a recipient of the Hydrologic Sciences Award in 2017, from AGU.

Garruto is prof. of biomedical anthropology and neurosciences and Dir. of the Biospecimen Archive Facility, State Univ. of New York, Binghamton. He received his PhD from Penn State Univ. and joined the Natl. Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1973 as a research scientist. He has done fieldwork in Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, and Latin America. His honours include: Commendation Guam Legislature, 1987; Alumni Fellow, Penn State Univ., 1987; NIH Directors Award, 1993; Gorjanovic-Krambergeri Medal, Croatian Anthropological Society, 2000; Burroughs-Welcome Foundation Visiting Professorship, Basic Medical Sciences, 2001; Franz Boas Distinguished Achievement Award, Human Biology Assoc., 2005; National Honor Plaque of Panama, National Secretariat for Science,Technology and Innovation, 2011. He is a member of the US Natl. Acad. of Sciences and a fellow of AAAS.

Gross (PhD 1966, UC Berkeley) is permanent member, Kavli Inst. for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara, where he was director (1997-2012). He was Thomas Jones Prof. of Mathematical Physics, Princeton U. Gross has made important contributions to particle physics and string theory, incl. the discovery of asymptotic freedom and development of quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the nuclear, strong force; and the discovery and development of heterotic string theory. His awards include: MacArthur Prize; Dirac Medal; Oscar Klein Medal; Harvey Prize; EPS Particle Physics Prize; Grande Medaille d'Or; Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004. He holds hon. degrees from the US, Britain, France, Belgium, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Israel,Brazil and Argentina. He is a member of: US Natl. Academy of Science; American Academy of Arts and Sciences; American Philosophical Society; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Indian Academy of Science; Russian Academy of Sciences.

Gumel is a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and the Michael and Eugenia Brin Endowed E-Nnovate Chair in Mathematics at the Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland, USA. He also holds the honorary Extraordinary Professor position at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research focuses on using mathematical approaches to gain insight and provide understanding on the transmission dynamics and control of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases of major public health significance. He has authored over 170 peer-reviewed research articles, supervised many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and written four edited books. He is the editor-in-chief of Mathematical Biosciences, one of the premier journals for mathematical biology research, and the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the 2021 Bellman Prize, and elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Mathematical Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, African Academy of Sciences, Nigerian Academy of Science, African Scientific Institute. He presented the 2021 Einstein Public Lecture of the American Mathematical Society.

Gunatilaka (PhD and DIC 1970-74, Imperial College, London) is professor and director of the Natural Products Center, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, U. of Arizona (UA). His was previously: Academic visitor, Imperial College, London; research associate at Stanford, USA; professor and head, Dept. of Chem., U. of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka; visiting professor and Snr. research scientist at Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State U., USA. His awards include: Bikaji Framji Kahn Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, U. of Ceylon; Inst. of Chem. (Ceylon) Gold Medal; Sri Lanka President's Gold Medal for Scientific Achievement, UA Asian American Assoc. Outstanding Faculty Award, and UA Leading Edge Researcher Award for innovative research. He is a fellow of the Natl .Acad. of Sciences, Sri Lanka. He has published +250 peer-reviewed papers and delivered +100 invited lectures in 18 countries.

Hildebrand is Regents Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He received his AB (biology) from Harvard University and PhD (biochemistry) from Rockefeller University. After 16 years of faculty service at Harvard and Columbia Universities, he moved to Arizona in 1985 as Founding Head of the Division of Neurobiology (1985–2009), later the Department of Neuroscience (2009–2013). Research fields: insect neurobiology and behavior, olfaction, chemical ecology, and arthropod vector biology. A past President of: Association for Chemoreception Sciences; International Society of Chemical Ecology; and International Society for Neuroethology. Elected member: National Academy of Sciences (currently International Secretary); American Academy of Arts and Sciences; American Philosophical Society; Brazilian Academy of Sciences; German National Academy of Sciences ‘Leopoldina’; Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters; Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. Honorary Fellow: Royal Entomological Society (UK). Fellow: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Entomological Society of America, and International Society for Neuroethology.

Hussain (PhD, Stanford, 1969) is President's Dist Chair in Engr and Science, and Snr Adv to the President, Texas Tech Univ (TTU), Mech Engr Dept. He was post-doc at Johns Hopkins, then moved to U. of Houston (UH) in 1971, where he became Prof (76), Dist Univ Prof (85), Cullen Dist Chair (89) before moving to TTU in 2013. His honours include: Eckhart Prize for Outstandg Dissertation, Stanford; Freeman Scholar and Fluids Engr Awards of Amer Soc of Mech Engr (ASME); Fluid Dyn Prize of Amer Phys Soc (APS); Fluid Dyn Award of Amer Inst of Aero and Astro (AIAA); Sigma Xi, Farfel, and other Research Excell Awards of UH; Gold Medal, Bangladesh Soc of Mech Engrs; and Inst of Engrs Bangladesh Medal. He is a Fellow of APS, ASME and AIAA; member of Natl Acad of Engr, Bangladesh Acad of Sci, and Johns Hopkins Soc of Scholars; Hon Prof of Peking Univ and Dean of Houston Methodist Research Institute.

Jain earned his PhD in 1973 from The Ohio State University, USA. He is Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. His area of research includes pattern recognition, machine learning, computer vision and biometrics. He was a member of Defense Science Board and of the Forensics Science Standards Board, both US institutions. He was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Humboldt Research Award, the Fulbright Fellowship and the King-Sun Fu Prize. He was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. Jain holds eight patents, US and Korean, and was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Jain and his students' work is focused on unconstrained face recognition and the development of fingerprint matching solutions, which have applications.

Jamshidi is LB Endowed chaired prof. of ECE and dir., ACE Lab., U. of Texas, San Antonio, regents prof. em., U. of New Mexico, Albuquerque and hon. prof., Birmingham U. (UK) 2012-2017. He was adv., NASA, and sr. res. adv., US Air Force Res. Lab and US DOE. Awards include: IEEE's Norbert Wiener Res. Award; Centennial Medal; CSS Dist. Member Awd., and IEEE-USA Sys Engr. Awd.; member, 5 honor societies; Best Res. Awd., Min. of Sci. and Higher Ed., Iran; Edison Natl. Res. Awd., Min. of Energy, Iran; Dist. Res. of the Year, UNM College of Eng.; and 3 hon. doctorates from u. in Azerbaijan, Canada and Greece. NASA Natl. service awd.. His membership includes: fellow of IEEE, ASME, NYAS, AAAS; assoc. fellow, AIAA; Hungarian Acad. of Eng.; Russian Acad. Nonlinear Sci.; U. of Texas System Chancellor’s Council (2011-). He has published 730 pieces of work including 68 books, some translated into Russian, Mandarin among others.

Kailath was educated in India (BE, 1956) and MIT (SM, 1959; ScD, June 1961). He then worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab., before joining Stanford University in January1963, where he is currently Hitachi America Prof. of Elec. Eng., Emeritus. His major awards include: US National Medal of Science, presented by President Barack Obama; IEEE Medal of Honor; IEEE Educ. Medal; IEEE Kilby Signal Proc. Medal; IEEE Claude Shannon Award; Silicon Valley Eng. Hall of Fame; BBVA Foundation Prize in ICT; Padma Bhushan Award from the President of India; Guggenheim,Churchill and Humboldt Fellowships; Hon. D.Sc. from universities in France, Greece,India, Israel, Scotland, Spain and Sweden. Member US Natl. Acad. of Eng., US Natl. Acad. of Sciences, Amer. Acad.of Arts and Sciences;For. Mem., Royal Society of London, Royal Spanish Acad. of Eng., TWAS, Indian Nat’l Acad. of Eng., Indian Natl. Science Academy, Indian Acad. of Sciences, Natl. Acad. of Sciences,India; Fellow,IEEE, AMS,SIAM,Inst Math Statistics

Khush is adjunct professor at UC Davis. He obtained his PhD at UC Davis in 1960. After serving as assistant geneticist at the same university for seven years, he joined the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines as plant breeder. He retired as principal plant breeder and head of the division of plant breeding, genetics and biotechnology in 2002. His honours include 14 honoris causa doctorates and several awards including the Japan Prize, World Food Prize, Rank Prize, Wolf Prize, Golden Sickle Award, Mahathir Science Award and the Padma Shri Award by the President of India. He is a member of 9 science academies including Indian National Science Academy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences.

Kim is professor of Graduate Studies in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. He has held a variety of academic and research positions including: Fulbright Fellow (1962); Guggenheim fellow (1985-86); and visiting professorships at Beijing University (1982), University of Paris (1986), and Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea (2011- ), and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (2016- ). He has also received many awards including: Earnest O. Lawrence Award, USA (1987); Princess Takamatsu Cancer Foundation Award, Japan (1989); Ho-Am Prize in Science, Samsung foundation, Korea (1994); Korean Academy of Science and Technology Prize (2000); and Legacy Laureate Award, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA (2005). He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Korean National Academy of Sciences; and fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology.

Klein is Carnell Professor of Science and director of the Institute for Computational Molecular Science, at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. He was Hepburn professor of physical science and director, Lab. for Research on the Structure of Matter, Univ. of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Philadelphia. After his PhD (Univ. of Bristol) and postdoctoral work in Italy, England, and USA, he joined the National Research Council of Canada. In 1987, he joined UPenn where he established the Center for Molecular Modeling. He is member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, a fellow of: Royal Society of London; Royal Society of Canada; and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Awards include: American Physical Society Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics; American Chemical Society Debye Award in Physical Chemistry; and Bernie J. Alder CECAM Prize, European Physical Society.

Kumar is a Regents Prof, University Distinguished Prof, holds the O’Donnell Foundation Chair I, and is a Prof in the Dept of Elect and Comp Engg., Texas A and M Univ. He obtained his BTech from IIT Madras (1973) and DSc from Washington U., St. Louis, (1977). He has worked on game theory, adaptive control, simulated annealing, machine learning, queueing networks, security, information theory, wireless networks, cyberphysical systems, manufacturing systems, power systems, and UAV systems. He was awarded an hon. doctorate from ETH, Zürich; was guest chair prof., Tsinghua U., Beijing; is a hon. prof., IIT Hyderabad; and was dist. vis. prof., IIT Bombay. His awards include: Eckman Award, Am. Automatic Control Council; IEEE Field Award in Control Systems; Ellersick Prize of IEEE Communications Soc. Alexander Graham Bell Medal of IEEE, Infocom Achievement Award, SIGMOBILE Test-of-Time Paper Award; ACM SIGMOBILE Outst. Contrib. Award; Dist. Alumnus Award of IIT Madras; Alumni Achv. Award, Washington U., St. Louis; Drucker Eminent Faculty Award, U. of Illinois. He is Fellow, IEEE, member, US National Academy of Engineering, and Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Kwok, MD, PhD, graduated at University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. After residency in dermatology and postdoctoral training at Washington University School of Medicine, USA, he joined its faculty in 1993. He was Distinguished Fellow and Director of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Academia Sinica from 2017-2023, and Henry Bachrach Distinguished Professor at University of California San Francisco from 2002-2024. Kwok’s research focused on developing tools and strategies to study the human genome and the role of human variation in common diseases. He holds several patents on genomic analysis tools and played key roles in many large consortia, including the SNP Consortium, the International HapMap Project, the NSIGHT Consortium, and the CSER Consortium. He led the Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative, where a reference database with genetic profiles and clinical data of 500,000 people was built to improve health through disease risk prediction and tailored heath management guidelines. Kwok is a Fellow of the AAAS and the recipient of the 2022 Chen Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in Human Genetic and Genomic Research by the Human Genome Organization.

Lal is dist. univ. prof. of soil science and dir., Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, Ohio State U., Columbus. After obtaining his PhD at Ohio State and completing postdoctoral work at The U. of Sydney, Australia, in 1969, he joined the Intl. Inst. of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. He returned to Ohio State in 1987 where he has taught two classes: environmental soil physics, and soils and climate change, and conducted research on soil carbon sequestration, soil restoration and food security. Honours include: three h.c. doctorates; Hugh Hammond Bennett Award (1998); Borlaug Award (2005); IPCC Nobel Peace Prize certificate; Zayed Prize diploma, Liebig Award (2006). He is a fellow of five societies, incl. the American Assn. for Adv. of Science (1996) and The Rothamsted (2013). He has authored 15 and edited 56 books, and has about 1700 scientific articles to his credit.

Dr. Laurencin is the University Professor of the University of Connecticut (the 8th in history). He is the Albert and Wilda Van Dusen Distinguished Endowed Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Biomedical Engineering. He did his B.S.E. degree in Chemical Engineering at Princeton, his M.D. from Harvard Medical School (Magna Cum Laude) and his PhD from M.I.T.. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering in the U.S.. He is an elected Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Sciences. the Indian National Academy of Engineering, and an Academician and Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He has been honored three times by U.S. Presidents. He received the Presidential Faculty Fellow Award from President Bill Clinton and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Math and Engineering Mentoring from President Barack Obama. He received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the United States' highest honor for technological achievement in ceremonies at the White House.

Littlewood took a BA in 1976 and a PhD in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in 1980, with a one-year intermediate sojourn at MIT as a Kennedy Scholar. In 1980 he moved to Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and remained as a member of technical staff to become head of the Theoretical Physics Research Department in 1992. He returned to Cambridge in 1997 as Professor of Physics, and from 2005 to 2010 he was head of the Cavendish Laboratory. In 2011 he became Associate Laboratory Director at Argonne National Laboratory in the USA, and in 2014 Laboratory Director, retiring in 2017. He is a Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, and Trinity College Cambridge. He has extensive collaborations in India, at Bangalore, TIFR, and Kolkata. He has over 200 publications and six patents.