2021 -Professor Stuart Stephen Papworth Parkin

Professor Stuart Stephen Papworth Parkin

 

Stuart Parkin received his B.Sc. in Physics and Theoretical Physics in 1977, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in experimental condensed matter physics in 1980, from the University of Cambridge, U.K. He was elected to a Research Fellowship, Trinity College, Cambridge in 1979, and carried out postdoctoral work in the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Sud. He then moved to IBM Research, San Jose, California as an IBM World Trade Fellow in 1982. In 1999, Parkin was appointed an IBM Fellow, IBM’s highest technical honor. Parkin was the Director of the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center from 2004 to 2014, when he took up a position as a Director at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Halle, Germany. He was also appointed as an Alexander von Humboldt Professor at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle. Parkin is an elected Fellow/ Member of several major scientific academies and has received 4 honorary doctorates. He has published more than 580 papers and has an h-index of 113. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes.

Parkin’s work focuses on the exploration and discovery of novel spintronic materials and devices for future memory and computing systems. He has led the field of spintronics for more than 30 years. Parkin invented and developed materials and devices for three major spintronic memory and storage technologies. All of these rely on the creation and manipulation of spin currents in atomically engineered thin film heterostructures. These include a spin-valve sensor that can detect tiny magnetic fields at room temperature, a high performance non-volatile magnetic random access memory that relies on magnetic spin-dependent tunneling junctions, and magnetic racetrack memory, a novel three-dimensional shift memory-storage device that relies on the current controlled manipulation of series of magnetic domain walls.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

2021 - Professor Stephen Mark Strittmatter

Professor Stephen Mark Strittmatter

 

Stephen Strittmatter obtained an A.B. in Biochemistry in 1980 from Harvard College, and received his M.D. and PhD. In Pharmacology from Johns Hopkins University in 1986. He completed his medical internship and neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined Yale University faculty in 1993, and currently holds the Vincent Coates Professorship of Neurology and is Professor of Neuroscience. He is a Founding Director of Yale Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair Program, Yale Alzheimer Disease Research Center, and Yale Memory Disorders Clinic.

Professor Strittmatter is the author of over 240 original reports. He has been recognized by several prestigious awards and honors, including: the Ameritec Award, John Merck Scholar Award, Donaghue Investigator Award, McKnight Brain and Memory Disorders Award, Alzheimer Association Zenith Fellow Award, Senator Jacob Javits Award in the Neurosciences, and an NINDS Outstanding Investigator Award. He is a member of several editorial boards and scientific societies.

Professor Strittmatter has made outstanding contributions to the field of neural repair, including the identification of a Nogo Receptor pathway that plays a central role in determining the ability of axons to extend and reconnect after injury. He showed that glia-derived inhibitors bind axonal Nogo Receptor to activate RhoA and prevent neural plasticity, sprouting, regeneration, and recovery. His work revealed that soluble Nogo Receptor decoy therapy promotes recovery in preclinical spinal cord trauma and ischemic stroke, and led to clinical trials in chronic spinal cord injury.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

 

2021 - Professor Robin James Milroy Franklin

Professor Robin James Milroy Franklin

 

Robin Franklin obtained his BSc. in Neuroscience from University College London in 1985, a BVetMed in Veterinary Medicine from Royal Veterinary College London in 1988, and His PhD in Neuroscience from University of Cambridge in 1992. He spent most of his career at the University of Cambridge starting as research fellow in 1991, until he attained the professorship in 2005. He is currently at the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, the Director of the UK MS Society Cambridge Center for Myelin Repair at the University of Cambridge, and a Professor of Stem Cell Medicine at the University’s Clinical School. He previously served as a Professor of Neuroscience in the University’s School of Biology.

Professor Franklin’s main research questions focused on how stem cells in the adult brain respond to injury, how they contribute to regeneration, and how they are affected by aging. He has made many outstanding original contributions to

in the University’s School of Biology.

myelin biology that have had important applications for clinical neurology, especially multiple sclerosis. He has been a pioneer in the biology of remyelination, an area in which he is widely acknowledged as the world’s leading expert, and where he has made many seminal contributions. These include: identifying the role of the innate immune response, the effects of aging and how they can be reversed, the activation and plasticity of CNS stem cells following injury, the transcriptional and epigenetic control of CNS stem cell differentiation, and the first demonstrations of remyelination by transplanted oligodendrocyte progenitor cells and olfactory ensheathing cells, the latter led to a successful clinical trial in spinal cord injury in which he played a central role.

His work opened the exciting possibility of pharmacological enhancement of remyelination, which has implications for a whole range of CNS conditions, not just MS. His studies on the remyelination enhancing properties of metformin and RXR are the basis of current clinical trials. His extensive publications of over 270 peer-reviewed papers in this area include many landmark studies for which he is recognized worldwide. He was the recipient of the Barancik International Prize for Research Innovation in 2017, and was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2016.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

 

2021 - Dr. Mohamed Mechbal

Professor Mohamed Mechbal

 

Mohamed Mechbal holds a Doctorate in Arabic literature, and he is a professor of rhetoric and literary criticism at the Faculty of Arts, Abdul-Malik al-Saadi University, Tetouan, Morocco.

Professor Mechbal held several managerial positions, including Head of the Research Training Unit on “Rhetoric of Ancient Arabic Prose Texts” and Head of “Doctoral Research Structure: Rhetoric and the Horizons of Discourse Analysis”. He has been a member of several committees, notably the scholarly committee of the journal Rhetoric and Discourse Analysis in Morocco, a member of the jury for the 2018 Morocco Book Prize, and a member of the jury for the 2016 International Prize for Arabic Fiction – Booker.

Professor Mechbal has published numerous research papers and studies specialized in rhetoric and criticism in refereed journals and periodicals. His scholarly and literary works include On the Rhetoric of Argumentation: An argumentative Rhetorical Approach to Discourse Analysis, Ethics and Identity Discourse: An argumentative Rhetorical Approach to Al-Jahedh’s Letters, On Modern Arab Rhetoric, Towards an Extended Rhetoric, The Novel & Rhetoric: Towards an Expanded Rhetorical Approach to the Arabic Novel, and Rhetoric and Literature: From Language Images to Discourse Images.

His research papers comprise The Aesthetic Effect on the Rhetorical Theory of Abd Al-Qaher Al-Jurjani, The Characteristic of Sarcastic Irony in the Letter of Quadrature and Circulation: A Systematic Proposal, Rhetoric and Literary Gender, Arabic Rhetoric and the Field of Characteristics, Rhetoric of the Narrative Text: A Critical Review, and The Status of Ethos in the New Rhetoric.

Professor Mechbal has participated in many conferences and seminars inside and outside Morocco. He has presented many research studies, including Rhetoric of the Literary Text: Origins and Extensions, which was published in 2008 by the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, as part of a book issued by the National Conference of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature Curricula for the Study of Arabic Literature in a Hundred Years.

He also supervised several collective books in the field of rhetoric which include: The Rhetoric of Religious Discourse, The Rhetoric of Political Discourse, and The Rhetoric of Historical Discourse.

Professor Mechbal was honored for his efforts in the field of criticism with several awards, including the 2018 Sheikh Zayed Prize for Critical Studies, and the Katara Prize for Critical Studies in 2018.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

2021 - Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al-Sharekh

Mr. Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al-Sharekh

 

Mohammad Al-Sharekh obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in economics and political science from Cairo University in 1965, and a Master’s Degree in the same academic field from Williams College in Massachusetts, USA.

He served as a Deputy General Manager of the Kuwaiti Fund for Development, and a member of the Board of Directors of the World Bank in Washington D.C. He founded and chaired the Board of Directors of the Bank of Kuwait. He set up Al-Alamiah Electronics Company in the State of Kuwait and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Al-Sharekh established in Kuwait the Sakhr project for Arabic language computer localization, after which he developed the screen reader, machine translation, and automatic speech recognition. Besides, Sakhr Company has developed more than 90 educational programs and computer programming for young people. It has also published books on computer sciences and teacher’s training. He also developed the Holy Quran computer program, the nine hadiths, and the Islamic Information Archive. He established an institute for teaching computer programming, and contributed to the launch of many training centers across a number of Arab countries.

He worked for a number of banks and participated in many local and international financial and economic committees. He served as a vice president of the Arab Economists Association. His most significant achievements include “The Modern Arabic Dictionary”, the “Archive of Cultural and Literary Magazines”, and the “Automatic Corrector”.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.