Board of Directors

    Chairman:
    Adnan Badran (Senator, President of Petra University) Bio
    • Former Prime Minister of Jordan (7th of April - 28th of November,2005), also a scientist and academic. Adnan Badran received his M.S.c. and Ph.D. degrees from Michigan State University. As Professor of Biology for many years, Dr. Badran quickly became a leader in his field and writer of several books and publications, particularly on the development of science in the Arab world.

    Members:
    Khaled Toukan (Chairman, Jordan Atomic Energy Commission) Bio
    • Former Minister of Education, Chairman of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Jordan, and Acting Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology (1995-1997). Dr. Toukan subsequently became President of Al-Balqa Applied University. He holds a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the American University of Beirut, an M.Sc. degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • Professor Mohammad Abu Qudais (Former President, Yarmouk University) Bio
    • Mohammad Abu Qudais was Secretary General of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Mechanical Engineering, an M.A. from The University of Science and Technology in Mechanical Science and a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Mosul University.



  • Mazen Darwazah (CEO MENA Region, Hikma Pharmaceuticals) Bio
    • Mazen Darwazah joined Hikma in 1985 as a Medical Representative and held several positions, including Chairman and CEO of Hikma Pharmaceuticals Limited - Jordan, Chairman of Trust Pharma Limited and Pharma Ixir Co. Ltd. Between 2001 and 2003 he served as President of the Jordanian Association of Manufacturers of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Appliances. Mazen Darwazeh is a member of the Jordanian Higher Education Counsel since 2003. He holds a BS in Business Administration from Beirut University.
    • Tarik Awad (Director, King Abdullah II Fund for Development) Bio
      Tarik Awad previuosly held the positions of Executive Vice President of Business Development - Boscan Middle East Investment Ltd., Deputy Managing Director - Al Manara Investment Group, Area Planning Manager, East Mediterranean - PepsiCo Inc. and International Financial Analyst, South America - Mobil Oil Corporation. Tarik Awad holds a BS in Business Administration from University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA - 1985 and MBA from University of North Texas, Denton - TX – 1989.



    International Advisory Council
     
     
     
     
     

  • Peter AGRE (The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2003) Bio
       
      Peter Agre is a native Minnesotan, he studied chemistry at Augsburg College (B.A. 1970) and medicine at Johns Hopkins (M.D. 1974). He completed his residency at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and an Oncology Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
      Agre joined the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine faculty in 1984 and rose to the rank of Professor of Biological Chemistry and Professor of Medicine. In 2005, Agre moved to the Duke University School of Medicine where he served as Vice Chancellor for Science and Technology and James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology. Agre returned to Johns Hopkins in January 2008, where he is University Professor and Director of the Malaria Research Institute at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
      In 2003, Agre shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering aquaporins, a family of water channel proteins found throughout nature and is responsible for numerous physiological processes in humans and is implicated in multiple clinical disorders. Agre has received other honors including 12 honorary doctorates, Commandership in the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit from King Harald V, and the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. Agre is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine for which he chaired and serves on the Committee on Human Rights. In February 2008 Agre became President-Elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.
  • Richard AXEL (The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2004) Bio
       
      Born in New York City, New York, Axel graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1963, received his A.B. in 1967 from Columbia University, and his M.D. in 1971 from Johns Hopkins University. He returned to Columbia later that year and became a full professor in 1978.
      Richard Axel is known to be a great aficionado of opera and was referred to as an 'opera addict' by the Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel. Axel attended Joan Sutherland's debut performance at New York's Metropolitan Opera with his high school friend Jerold Brenowitz, who later became a heart surgeon.
      During the late 1970s, Axel, along with microbiologist Saul J. Silverstein, and geneticist Michael H. Wigler, discovered a technique of cotransformation, a process which allows foreign DNA to be inserted into a host cell to produce certain proteins. Patents, now colloquially referred to as the "Axel patents", covering this technique were filed for February 1980 and were issued in August 1983. However it was his work on the olfactory system that won him and Linda B. Buck, a former post-doctoral scientist in his research group, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004.
      Axel's primary research interest is on how the brain interprets the sense of smell, specifically mapping the parts of the brain that are sensitive to specific olfactory receptors. He holds the titles of University Professor at Columbia University, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and of Pathology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He also taught for Duke University's Program in Genetics and Genomics.
      Axel is married to fellow scientist and olfaction pioneer Cornelia "Cori" Bargmann.
  • John B. FENN (The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2002) Bio
    •  
      John B. Fenn was born in 1917 in Hackensack, N.J, a suburb of New York City. He received a B.A. in Chemistry in 1937, began graduate study in Chemistry at Yale, and received a Ph.D. in 1940. He spent the next dozen years in industrial R&D at Monsanto Chemical Company, Sharples Chemicals, Inc., and Experiment, Inc. In 1945, he became Director of Project SQUID, a program of “Pure and Applied Research in Those Fields of Science Relating to Jet Propulsion”, funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and administered by Princeton University. Four years later he became Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Sciences, where he began an intense and continuing love affair with the properties and applications of intense molecular beams, i.e. “big leaks in vacuum systems”! In 1967 he returned to Yale as Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. He left Yale in 1993 and returned to Richmond as Research Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University, his present position. In 2002 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on “Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry”, a rapid and relatively simple technique for obtaining precise values of molecular weights, and thus the identities and roles, of the large, complex and non-volatile molecules (e.g. proteins and carbohydrates,) that play vital roles in living organisms.
  • David J. GROSS (The Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004) Bio
    •  
      David J.Gross received his bachelor's degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, in 1962 and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966. He then was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University before moving to Princeton University where, in 1973, he was promoted to Professor and later named Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and Thomas Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics. He became the Director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and holder of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997.
      Gross has been a central figure in the development of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) as the accepted theory of the strong nuclear force. His discovery, with his student Wilczek, of asymptotic freedom led them to the formulation of QCD. Asymptotic freedom is the phenomenon where the force between quarks weakens at short distances, and conversely grows stronger as one tries to separate them, which is why the nucleus of an atom can never be broken into its quark constituents. Gross has also made seminal contributions to Superstring theory. With collaborators, he originated the "Heterotic String Theory", the prime candidate for a unified theory of all the forces of nature.
      In 2004, Gross was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of asymptotic freedom, along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer.
  • Harold KROTO (The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1996) Bio
    •  
      Harold Kroto was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England. He was raised in Bolton, Lancashire, England, and attended Bolton School, where he was a contemporary of the highly acclaimed actor Sir Ian McKellen.
      In 1961 he obtained a first class BSc honours degree in chemistry at the University of Sheffield, followed in 1964 by a PhD at the same institution. His doctoral research involved high-resolution electronic spectra of free radicals produced by flash photolysis (breaking of chemical bonds by light).
      Among other things such as making the first phosphaalkenes (compounds with carbon phosphorus double bonds), his doctoral studies included some unpublished research on carbon suboxide, and this led to a general interest in molecules containing chains of carbon atoms with numerous multiple bonds. He started his work with an interest in organic chemistry, but when he learned about spectroscopy it inclined him to quantum chemistry. After postdoctoral research at the National Research Council in Canada and Bell Laboratories in the USA he began teaching and research at the University of Sussex in England in 1967. He became a full professor in 1985, and a Royal Society Research Professor from 1991 – 2001. During this time Kroto was one of three to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry of 1996 for his discovery of fullerenes. He is currently on faculty at Florida State University, which he joined in 2004.
  • Finn E. KYDLAND (The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, 2004) Bio
    •  Finn Erling Kydland (born 1943) is a Norwegian economist. He is currently the Henley Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He also holds the Richard P. Simmons Distinguished Professorship at the Tepper School of Business of Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned his Ph.D.. Kydland was a co-recipient of the 2004 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (shared with Edward C. Prescott), "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles".
      Kydland grew up as the eldest of six siblings at the family farm in Søyland, Gjesdal, which is located in the Jæren farming region in Rogaland county, southwestern Norway. He recalls having had a liberal upbringing, his parents not imposing many limitations on their children. Finn Kydland became interested in mathematics and economics as a young adult, after he did some bookkeeping at a friend's mink farm. With a freshly awakened interest in theoretical economics, Kydland earned a B.S. from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) in 1968 and a Ph.D. in economics from Carnegie Mellon in 1973, dissertation: Decentralized Macroeconomic Planning. After his Ph.D. he returned to NHH as an assistant professor. In 1978 he moved back to Carnegie Mellon as an associate professor. He has been living in the US since then.

      Aside from work, he nurtures a deep interest in blues music, and also in keeping fit; he has run the marathon four times, and enjoys playing and watching soccer. His favorite soccer team is Boca Juniors. He frequently rides his Ducati motorcycle.
  • Robert C. MERTON (The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, 1997) Bio
    • Robert C. Merton (Born 1944) is a leading scholar in the field of finance and was one of three men, Merton, Fischer Black and Myron Scholes who, in the early 1970s, developed a mathematical theory for the risk and pricing of financial options. Merton was the first to publish a paper expanding our mathematical understanding of the options pricing model and coined the term “Black-Scholes” options pricing model. Merton and Scholes received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new method to determine the value of derivatives. The work has had a wide-ranging influence on finance practice well beyond the $500 trillion global derivatives market to include pricing in the credit, mortgage, and financial guarantee markets as well as the valuation of drug discovery processes, modularity in production systems, oil drilling leases, and flexibility of the labor force in developing countries. Merton obtained his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1970, where, he applied optimal control theory in order to derive consumption and portfolio allocation rules for economically optimizing agents and his work has paved the way for the now flourishing field of financial engineering, and quantitative finance which applies his methods in asset management, corporate finance and the design and management of financial institutions.
  • Robert A. MUNDELL (The Nobel Prize in Economics, 1999) Bio
       
      Robert Alexander Mundell (born in 1932) is University Professor at Columbia University. He was born in Ontario and is a graduate of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He attended the University of Washington, the London School of Economics and MIT, where he obtained his PhD in Industrial Economics in 1956. He has received numerous honorary doctoral degrees, over forty five honorary professorships from universities in China, and is a Companion of the Order of Canada. The author of numerous works and articles on economic theory of international economics, he prepared the first plan for a common currency in Europe and is known as the father of the theory of optimum currency areas. He was a pioneer of the theory of the monetary and fiscal policy mix for internal and external stability, the theory of inflation and interest and growth, the monetary approach to the balance of payments, and the co-founder of supply-side economics. He has also written extensively on the history of the international monetary system, transition economies and the Chinese economy, and is an advocate of a global currency.
  • Ferid MURAD (The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1998) Bio
       
      Ferid Murad (born September 14, 1936) is an Albanian-American physician and pharmacologist, and a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system”. He was born in Whiting, Indiana to John Murad (born Xhabir Murat Ejupi), an Albanian and Henrietta Bowman, an American. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the pre-med program at DePauw University in 1958, and MD and pharmacology Ph.D. degrees from Case Western Reserve University in 1965; an early graduate of the first Medical Scientist Training Program to be developed. He then joined the University of Virginia, where he was made professor in 1970, before moving to Stanford in 1981. Murad left his tenure at Stanford in 1998 for a position at Abbott Laboratories, where he served as a vice president until starting his own biotechnology company, the Molecular Geriatrics Corporation, in 1993. The company experienced financial difficulties, and in 1997 Murad joined the University of Texas to create a new department of integrative biology, pharmacology, and physiology. He now continues at the University of Texas as Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and holds the John S. Dunn Distinguished Chair in Physiology and Medicine.
      Murad's key research demonstrated that nitroglycerin and related drugs worked by releasing nitric oxide into the body, which acted as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, making blood vessels dilate. The missing steps in the signaling process were filled in by Robert F. Furchgott and Louis J. Ignarro, for which the three shared the 1998 Nobel Prize (and for which Murad and Furchgott received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1996). There was some criticism, however, of the Nobel committee's decision not to award the prize to Salvador Moncada, who had independently reached the same results as Ignarro.
  • Marshall W. NIRENBERG (The Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1968) Bio
       
      Marshall Nirenberg spent his entire scientific career at NIH, where he deciphered the genetic code for which he shared the Nobel Prize in 1968. Nirenberg graduated from the University of Florida and earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Michigan. After graduating in 1957 he came to NIH to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Health. He earned a permanent position and spent the next seven years deciphering the genetic code, which he published to great acclaim between 1961 and 1966. He then switched his research to neurobiology. He and his colleagues established clonal lines of neuronal tumor cells that form synapses with striated muscle cells and have used these model systems to explore many neural properties. He and his colleagues also indentified the molecular mechansims of opiate addiction. Currently, he is studying genes involved in the assembly of the nervous system in Drosophila embryos.
  • Norman RAMSEY (The Nobel Prize in Physics, 1989) Bio
       
      Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr. (born August 27, 1915, in Washington, DC) is an American physicist. A physics professor at Harvard University since 1947, Ramsey also held several posts with such government and international agencies as NATO and the United States Atomic Energy Commission. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the separated oscillatory field method, which had important applications in the construction of atomic clocks. Ramsey shared the prize with Hans G. Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul. Ramsey earned his B.A. and Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University in 1935 and 1940, respectively. He stayed on as a member of the Columbia faculty until 1947, when he moved to Harvard.
  • Robert C. RICHARDSON (The Nobel Prize in Physics, 1996) Bio
       
      Marshall Nirenberg spent his entire scientific career at NIH, where he deciphered the genetic code for which he shared the Nobel Prize in 1968. Nirenberg graduated from the University of Florida and earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Michigan. After graduating in 1957 he came to NIH to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Health. He earned a permanent position and spent the next seven years deciphering the genetic code, which he published to great acclaim between 1961 and 1966. He then switched his research to neurobiology. He and his colleagues established clonal lines of neuronal tumor cells that form synapses with striated muscle cells and have used these model systems to explore many neural properties. He and his colleagues also indentified the molecular mechansims of opiate addiction. Currently, he is studying genes involved in the assembly of the nervous system in Drosophila embryos.
  • Richard J. ROBERTS (The Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1993) Bio
       
      Dr. Richard J. Roberts is the Chief Scientific Officer at New England Biolabs, Beverly, Massachusetts. He received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1968 from Sheffield University and then moved as a postdoctoral fellow to Harvard. From 1972 to 1992, he worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, eventually becoming Assistant Director for Research under Dr. J.D. Watson. He began work on the newly discovered Type II restriction enzymes in 1972 and these enzymes have been a major research theme. Studies of transcription in Adenovirus-2 led to the discovery of split genes and mRNA splicing in 1977, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1993. During the sequencing of the Adenovirus-2 genome computational tools became essential and his laboratory pioneered the application of computers in this area. DNA methyltransferases, as components of restriction-modification systems are also of active interest and the first crystal structures for the HhaI methyltransferase led to the discovery of base flipping. Bioinformatic studies of microbial genomes continues to be a major research focus.
  • Elie WIESEL (Nobel Peace Laureate, 1986) Bio
       
      A 15 year-old when he and his family were deported to Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel was liberated in April 1945. After the war, he studied in Paris, eventually became a journalist, and is today the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University. A prolific writer and teacher, he has spoken out on behalf of the persecuted and oppressed throughout the world, including Soviet Jews, Nicaragua’s Miskito Indians, Argentina’s Desaparecidos, Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, victims of famine and genocide in Africa, of apartheid in South Africa, and victims of war in the former Yugoslavia. Among his more than 40 books of fiction and non-fiction is his memoir, Night, which has been translated into more than 30 languages. The founding Chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., he has been awarded the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, Grand-Croix of the French Legion of Honor, an honorary Knighthood of the British Empire, and more than 100 honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning. Soon after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, he and his wife Marion established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, whose mission is to combat indifference, intolerance and injustice through international dialogue and youth-focused programs that promote acceptance, understanding and equality.
  • Torsten WIESEL (The Nobel Prize in Physilogy or Medicine, 1981) Bio
       
      Torsten Nils Wiesel was born in Uppsala, Sweden. In 1981, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in recognition of his pioneering work on the neural basis of visual perception, carried out at Harvard Medical School in collaboration with David Hubel.
      He served as President of the Rockefeller University from 1992-1998. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2005 in recognition of his scientific excellence and his outstanding leadership in support of international scientific collaboration, principally as Secretary General of the Human Frontier Science Program since 2000. In 2005 he also received the David Rall Medal from the Institute of Medicine for his service from 1994-2004 as chair of the Committee on Human Rights at the National Academies.
      He currently co-chairs the Board of Governors of Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology (OIST), chairs the Scientific Council of the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization (IPSO) and serves on the Board of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.



    • Regional Executive Committee


  • Dr Bahri Akissa: Bio
    • Akissa BAHRI is an agricultural engineer with Ph.D degrees from France and from Sweden. She has worked in the field of agricultural use of marginal waters (brackish and waste water), sewage sludge and their impacts on the environment. She has been working for the National Research Institute for Agricultural Engineering, Water and Forestry in her home country Tunisia, where she was in charge of research management in the field of agricultural water use. She has been involved in policy and legislative issues regarding water reuse and land application of sewage sludge, and is a member of different international scientific committees. She has joined in 2005 the International Water Management Institute as Director for Africa. She has received international honors from Guinness Foundation (January 1984), the International Foundation for Science (Sweden) (May 1993), and the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (1996), and was elected member of the International Water Academy in 2000, member of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World in 2003 and of the African Academy of Sciences in 2007 (Trieste, Italy).
  • Dr Elias Baydoun: Bio
    • Was educated at the University of Jordan, Amman (BSc, 1971), the American University of Beirut (AUB), Beirut, (MSC, 1977) and the University of Cambridge (MPhil, 1978 and PhD, 1980). He is Professor of Biology at AUB and Secretary General of the Arab Academy of Sciences. His previous positions include: Chairman of Biology and Associate Professor at AUB, Assistant and Associate Professor at Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan; Assistant President, Director of Human Resources and Director of Planning and Development at Yarmouk University . His awards include: Award, Federation of Arab Scientific Councils; Adul Hamid Shomam Prize for Young Arab scientists for Biology; AUB Research Awards; Distinguished Scholar Award, Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development; and the Developing World Study Award, Royal society, UK. His membership includes: Cambridge Philosophical Society; Biochemical Society, London; American Society for Plant Biologists, USA; Institute of Biology, London; Arab Academy of sciences, Lebanon ; and TWAS. Organised and chaired several international conferences. Published over 50 articles in international refereed journals and over 70 abstracts in the proceedings of international conferences. Authorsof several Biology Textbooks for High School and Community Colleges. Translated into Arabic a university textbook in Biochemistry. Served as consultant for several local, regional and international organizations.
  • Dr Mahmoud Saker: Bio
    •  
      Mahmoud M. Saker is the head of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology Division and Director of Center of Excellence for Advanced Sciences (CEAS), National Research Center (NRC), Egypt. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tanta, Egypt in Cytogenetics in 1995. As professor of plant biotechnology, he is the principal investigator of many national, regional and international research projects funded from ASRT (Egypt), USA, ICGEB and NEPAD, published 80 research papers and one book, chaired and organized many international workshop and conferences in the field of biotechnology. He held many positions including project officer in STDF, Egypt and R&D supreme council of NRC. He won National Research Center prizes for scientific encouragement and scientific superiority and state prize for scientific encouragement in 1998, 1999 and 2009, respectively.
  • Dr Samira Islam: Bio
    • Professor Samira Islam, Professor of Pharmacology and founder of the Drug Monitoring Centre of the King Fahd Medical Research Centre. She has been an academic staff member of the King Abdulaziz University since 1971 and has contributed to many scientific achievements and advances in Saudi Arabia. Some of her academic highlights can be seen in her introducing formal education for girls in 1973. During 1975-1978, she established BSc degree programs for girls in Natural Sciences. From 1981-1984, Prof. Samira established the School of Health Sciences for Girls and between 1998-2000, she became the Establishing Dean for Effat College (First Private College for Girls).

       

      Professor Samira Islam was the first Saudi woman to complete a basic education, the first Saudi woman to obtain Bachelor and Ph.D. degrees, the first Saudi woman to become a full professor in respect of all subjects, and the first Saudi to become a Professor of Pharmacology. In the year 2000, she was the first Muslim and Arab woman who was shortlisted for the HR/L’Oreal/UNESCO “Women in Science Award”. In May 2009 she was awarded the "Makkah Award for Excellency" the highest distinction ever awarded to Saudi citizen for exemplary contribution to Science & Research.
  • Dr Sari Nusseibeh: Bio
    •  

      Sari Nusseibeh is Professor of Islamic and Political Philosophy and President of al-Quds University, East Jerusalem since 1995.

       

      Born in Damascus in 1949, he was brought up in Jerusalem and later educated both in the UK and Harvard, obtaining his PhD in 1978. He taught at Birzeit University in the West Bank from 1978 until 1991.

       

      In 2004 Sari Nusseibeh co-founded IPSO (the Israel/Palestine Scientific Organization), and continues to serve at its co-chairman to this day. Nusseibeh also co-founded and chaired several grassroots committees, unions, and non-governmental charity organizations, including, in 2002, “the Peoples’ Voice”, a “bi-national” public campaign for a two-state solution.

       

      Over the years, Nusseibeh received several recognitions and awards, including, most recently -(2009)- an Honorary Doctorate from Leuven University in Belgium. He was twice selected in 2005 and 2007 by Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazines as one of the 100 leading world public figures. In 1993, he was elected Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington D.C. In 2003 he was Visiting Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. In 2004, he was the Rita Hauser Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard. In 2006 he became Fellow at the Baker Institute for Foreign Policy at Rice University.

       

      Nusseibeh has written and lectured widely and is currently working on a new book ‘What’s a Palestinian State Worth?’ to be published by Harvard University Press.




    Project Management Unit


  • Rana Kawar: (Fund Director) Bio
    • Middle East Science Fund Manager since June 2008. She holds an MSc degree from Strasbourg-France in professional translation (Arabic-English-French) and has been a certified translator since her graduation in 1995. In 1993, she obtained her BA in English Literature from the University of Jordan.

       

      She started her professional career as a lecturer at the Jordan University, where she taught at the Language Centre of the Faculty of Literature. From 1995-1996, she worked at the French Embassy and was responsible of the local administrative affairs. In 1997, she joined the BBC regional office for one year as Office Manager. From June 2000-June 2008, she assumed the positions of Projects Officer, Communications Manager, Education Projects Manager and finally Acting Assistant Director Programmes at the British Council. Her professional career at the British Council provided her with the knowledge and experience in development projects consultancy and management.

  • Dr Sami Mahmood (Scientific Advisor) Bio
    • Professor of Physics at Yarmouk University, and currently Dean of Scientific Research and Graduate Studies. Dr Sami obtained his B.Sc. in Physics in 1978 from the University of Jordan, Amman, his M.Sc. in 1984 and his Ph.D in 1986 in Physics from Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. During 1992-1994, he assumed the position of Director of the Center for Theoretical and Applied Physical Sciences. From 1996-1998, he was Chairman of Physics Department, and during 1998-2004, he became the Dean of Science at Yarmouk University. In 2004-2005 he assumed the positions of Dean of Science, Director of the Center of Faculty Development, Director of the Center of Accreditation and Quality Assurance, and Vice President of Philadelphia University, Amman, Jordan.
       
      He obtained several national, regional and international Awards and Honors for Academic excellence and contribution to science. He also published around 80 articles in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He participated in the management of nationally and internationally funded projects concerned with the establishment of new academic programs, capacity building, and scientific research projects.