2023 - Professor Jackie Yi-Ru Ying

Professor Jackie Yi-Ru Ying

Jackie Yi-Ru Ying  graduated with B.E. summa cum laude in Chemical Engineering from The Cooper Union in 1987. As an AT&T Bell Laboratories Ph.D. Scholar at Princeton University, she began research in materials chemistry, linking the importance of materials processing and microstructure with the tailoring of materials surface chemistry and energetics. She pursued research in nanocrystalline materials with Prof. Herbert Gleiter at the Institute for New Materials, Saarbrücken, Germany as NSFNATO Post-doctoral Fellow and Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow. She joined the Chemical Engineering faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1992.

Prof. Ying’s pioneering research in materials chemistry has led to the synthesis of advanced nanostructured materials. This includes novel classes of nanoporous materials for heterogeneous catalysis, such as mesoporous and microporous transition metal oxides, mesostructured zeolites, as well as mesoporous silica with tri-continuous pore structure and mesocellular foam-like structure. Prof. Ying has also developed a wide variety of oxide and nitride nanocrystals, metallic nanoclusters, metal oxide nanosheets and nanocomposites for catalytic and energy applications.

In addition, Prof. Ying has designed polymeric and inorganic nanosystems for drug delivery, nanomedicine, tissue engineering and diagnostic assays. Notably, she has created stimuliresponsive polymeric nanoparticles that allow for insulin delivery to diabetic patients only when their blood sugar levels are high, without the need for external blood sugar monitoring.

Prof. Ying has been recognized with American Ceramic Society Purdy Award, Packard Fellowship, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, American Chemical Society Award in Solid-State Chemistry, Technology Review’s TR100 Young Innovator Award, American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Colburn Award, International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Jubilee Medal, Mustafa Prize, Islamic World Academy of Sciences-COMSTECH Ibrahim Memorial Award, Turkish Academy of Sciences Prize in Science and Engineering Sciences.

Prof. Ying is an elected Member of World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, German National Academy of Sciences – Leopoldina, U.S. National Academy of Inventors, and U.S. National Academy of Engineering. She is a Fellow of MRS, RSC, AIMBE and AAAS.

Prof. Ying has been selected by the Muslim 500 in consecutive years since 2012 as one of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims. She was named one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era” by AIChE in its Centennial Celebration. She was an Inaugural Inductee for the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame. She was the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Nano Today.

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

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Professor Chad Alexander Mirkin

Chad Alexander Mirkin received his B.S. from Dickinson College and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1989. He trained in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, serving as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow under the guidance of Professor Mark Wrighton (1989-91). Following appointment to the faculty at Northwestern University in 1991, he ascended to the rank of Morrison Professor of Chemistry (1997) and then Rathmann Professor of Chemistry (2000). He founded the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) (2000). Currently, he is the Director of the IIN and the Rathmann Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Medicine, Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University.

Professor Mirkin’s research has been on the forefront of nanochemistry for over three decades. His invention of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) has led to his development of a variety of SNA-based molecular diagnostic and therapeutic tools, and he has used SNAs as building blocks to prepare programmable matter based on the nanoparticle “atom” and the DNA “bond,” leading to new ways of thinking about chemical bonding. Professor Mirkin also invented scanning probe lithography-based tools for synthesizing novel surface-based nanostructures useful in materials discovery, cellular analyses, and other applications and delineated new routes to advanced manufacturing via 3D high-area rapid printing (HARP), anisotropic nanostructures via seed-mediated, light-driven processes, and supramolecular structures via the weaklink approach.

An author of >830 papers, Professor Mirkin was the first chemist to be elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), Materials Research Society, National Academy of Inventors, and others. He has been recognized with >230 international awards, including the Kabiller Prize in Nanoscience and Nanomedicine, NAS Sackler Prize in Convergence Research, UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in Life Sciences, American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal, Society of Chemical Industry Perkin Medal, ACS Award for Creative Invention, RSC deGennes Prize, Wilhelm Exner Medal, and Netherlands Award for Supramolecular Chemistry. He served for eight years as a science advisor to President Obama.

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

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Professor Dan Hung Barouch

Dan Hung Barouch  received his undergraduate B.A. degree summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1993, his Ph.D. degree from Oxford University in 1995 on a Marshall Scholarship, and his M.D. degree summa cum laude from Harvard Medical School in 1999. He completed clinical training in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2001 and in Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2004. He founded and currently serves as the Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and he is the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Barouch’s laboratory focuses on studying the immunology and pathogenesis of viral infections and developing novel vaccine and treatment strategies. He pioneered the creation of a series of vaccine platform technologies, including novel recombinant adenovirus vectors such as Ad26. He utilized this technology to develop vaccine candidates for multiple pathogens of global significance, including HIV-1, Zika virus, tuberculosis, and most recently SARS-CoV-2. He utilized the Ad26 vector to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, which led to the Johnson & Johnson Ad26.COV2.S vaccine that has now been administered to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. This vaccine is stable without the need for subzero freezing and can be produced inexpensively, which are critical properties for a global COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Barouch has authored over 350 research papers. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020, and he is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Oswald Avery Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (2012), Bostonian of the Year (2016, 2021), Best Academic Research Team from the World Vaccine Congress (2019), Bloomberg 50 Most Influential People (2020), Global Citizen Hero from the American Red Cross (2021), STAT Madness Winner (2021), Ray Stata Leadership and Innovation Award from the Massachusetts High Technology Council (2021), George Ledlie Prize from Harvard University (2021), and Hero Among Us from the Boston Celtics (2021).

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

2023 - Professor Sarah Catherine Gilbert

Professor Sarah Catherine Gilbert

Sarah Catherine Gilbert received her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences (specialising in Microbiology) from the University of East Anglia with a prize for the highest final examination marks in the School of Biological Sciences, in 1983, and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Hull in 1986. She completed post-doctoral appointments at the Brewing Research Foundation and the University of Leicester before moving to Delta Biotechnology in 1989, working on the production of recombinant human blood proteins from yeast. She moved to Oxford University in 1994, as a senior post-doctoral researcher before being appointed University Research Lecturer (1999), Reader in Vaccinology (2004), Jenner Investigator (2006) and Professor of Vaccinology (2010). In 2021 Professor Gilbert was appointed to the Saïd Chair of Vaccinology and became Head of the Outbreak Pathogens Vaccine Group in the Pandemic Sciences Institute in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford University.

Professor Gilbert’s research has been on the development of vaccines against infectious diseases, including vaccine design, preclinical and clinical assessment of vaccines produced using viral vector platform technologies. This has included the initial development of the novel simian adenoviral vectored vaccine technologies ChAdOx1 and ChAdOx2. Her research has included the development of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) manufacturing processes and assays to allow ChAdOxvectored vaccines to be produced for clinical trials. She has led projects on the clinical development of ChAdOx1-vectored vaccines against influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), with clinical trials of the latter taking place in the UK and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 2020 Professor Gilbert initiated and led the rapid production and development of a vaccine against SARSCoV-2 (Vaxzevria) which was licensed to AstraZeneca and is now in use in over 180 countries.

Professor Gilbert was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2021 in recognition of her work during the 2020 pandemic. Her book, Vaxxers, describing the development of Vaxzevria was a Sunday Times bestseller. Other awards include the Royal Society of Medicine Gold Medal, the Princesa de Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, 2021 and the Sunhak Peace prize 2022.

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

2023 - Professor Abdelfattah Kilito

Professor Abdelfattah Kilito

Professor Abdelfattah Kilito studied at Mohammed V University, Rabat, at the Faculty of Arts, specializing in French literature.  He pursued his studies until he obtained a postgraduate diploma in 1971 on a theme about the novelist François Mauriac.

He started teaching at the Faculty of Literature in 1968 and continued to teach modern literary theories at the same Faculty until retirement in 2010. In addition to his interest in French literature, he never ceased to attach interest to Arabic literature. In 1967, on the occasion of preparing a certificate in comparative literature, he discovered ancient Arabic literature and closely studied the works of critics, including Ibn Qutaybah, Qudamah bin Ja’afar, Al-Amadi, Al-Qadi Al-Jurjani, and Abdul-Qaher Al-Jurjani.

At the close of the sixties, the movement of structural analysis of the narrative emerged, so Professor Kilito took an interest in it and read the writings of Roland Barthes, Gérard Genette, Tzvetan Todorov, and Algirdas Greimas. He then decided to devote his doctorate to ancient Arab narrative, so he registered at the new Sorbonne University a subject on the maqamats (Arabic prosimetric literary genre), focusing on the relationship of narrative with cultural systems. The thesis was published in 1983 and had widespread resonance among French Arabists, as some of them translated the texts he studied, including “Maqamat al-Hamdhani”, “Maqamat al-Hariri”, “The Tale of Abu al-Qasim” by al-Mutahhar al-Azdi, and “Doctors’ Call” by Ibn Batlan.  In the meantime, interest in “One Thousand and One Nights” grew stronger. The book was re-translated into French and tentative analytical writings were published, especially the analysis penned by André Mikkel, Jamal Eddine Bencheikh, and Claude Bremont. In this environment, Abdel Fattah Kilito wrote “The Eye and the Needle, a Study on One Thousand and One Nights” (1992). He was also concerned with the perceptions of Arab historians and news transmitters about the original language and the first poem. He wrote “The Tongue of Adam” (1995) on this topic, in addition to other studies in ancient biographies and in the literature of virtues.

With regard to Professor Kilito’s approach to these texts, he was keen on deepening his knowledge of various modern theories, while being very cautious not to be fascinated by them. In his view, this can only be achieved through a comprehensive assimilation of ancient theories, as well as familiarity with aspects of modern world literature, in order to avoid narrow-minded specialization.

Professor Kilito has been a visiting professor and lecturer at the New Sorbonne, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, the University of Oxford, and the College de France. In parallel, his writings have been translated into nearly ten languages, and he won a number of awards for his literary and critical output.

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

2023 - Professor Robert Hillenbrand

Professor Robert Hillenbrand

Robert Hillenbrand was educated at the universities of Cambridge (English Literature; B.A. 1963) and Oxford (Oriental Studies; D.Phil. 1974). Between those dates he worked in the Administrative Class of the Civil Service in London and began to undertake research for his doctorate. He taught at the Department of Fine Art in the University of Edinburgh from 1971 and was awarded a chair of Islamic art there in 1989. His travels have taken him throughout the Islamic world. He has held visiting professorships at Princeton, University of California at Los Angeles, Bamberg, Dartmouth College, Beirut and Groningen. From 1992 to 2004 he held a short-term visiting professorship at Leiden. In 1993 he delivered the Kevorkian Lectures at New York University, and in 2004 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo. He delivered the Runciman Lecture at King’s College, London, in 2010. Prof. Hillenbrand scholarly interests focus on Islamic architecture, painting and iconography. He work with the following languages: German (native speaker), French (excellent), Italian (reading knowledge), Spanish (reading knowledge), Persian (colloquial) and Arabic (for epigraphic purposes). He lectured in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, India, China, Japan, Russia, Canada, and throughout Europe and the United States.

Professor Robert Hillenbrand has written the following twelve books: Imperial Images in Persian Painting; Islamic Art and Architecture (translated into German and Turkish in 2005, Danish in 2008 and Persian in 2009; revised and expanded ed. 2021); The Architecture of Ottoman Jerusalem: An Introduction; Studies in Medieval Islamic Architecture (2 vols.); the prize-winning Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (translated into Persian in 1998 and 2000); The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque; Studies in Islamic Painting; The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. A landmark of modern Islamic architecture; Studies in the Islamic Decorative Arts; An unknown masterpiece from Mongol Iran; and Islamic Architecture in North Africa (co-author). In addition, he has edited seven books and co-edited five more. He also published some 190 articles on aspects of Islamic architecture and art.

In 2006 he was awarded the Book of the Year prize for The Visual Language of the Book of Kings. In 2008 he received the Iris Foundation Scholar’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Decorative Arts in New York. In 2013 he was appointed Ehrenmitglied (Honorary Member) of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft. In 2018 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Iranian Studies in California, and in 2019 he received, with his wife Carole, the Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Society’s highest award, given periodically in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of Asian studies.

A Festschrift for him appeared in 2005: The Iconography of Islamic Art. Studies in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand, ed. B. O’Kane, and a second two-volume Festschrift for him and his wife Carole, ed. M. Gibson and A. Ansari, is to be published in London by Gingko Press in April 2022. In 2006-7 he served as Director of the newly-established Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World, which comprises a consortium of the universities of Edinburgh, Manchester and Durham.

Professor Robert Hillenbrand was Slade Professor of Art at the University of Cambridge in 2008.

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

2023 - His Excellency Sheikh Nasser bin Abdullah

Sheikh Nasser bin Abdullah

Sheikh Nasser bin Abdullah Al-Zaabi completed his university education in his country, then joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1972 where he was appointed as Attaché in the Ministry, then as Chargé d’ Affaires at his country’s embassy in Libya, and then Ambassador at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He participated in several meetings and conferences of foreign ministers of Islamic countries and heads of Islamic countries. He has a long track record in charitable work and religious advocacy. Since 1981 he has been Chairman of the Permanent Council of the Islamic Solidarity Fund (ISF), a subsidiary institution of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic University in Niger since 1992, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic University in Uganda since 1997. He is also a member of a number of Islamic councils, entities and centers.

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

2023 - Professor Choi Young Kil-Hamed

Professor Choi Young Kil-Hamed

Professor Choi Young-Kil obtained a BA in Arabic Language and Literature in 1975, from Hancock University on Foreign Language Studies. In 1980 he received a university studies certificate at the College of Fundamentals of Religion and Da’wah [religious advocacy] at the Islamic University of Madinah. He also obtained a Master’s degree in 1982 in Arabic language from Hancock University for the study on foreign languages, and a PhD degree in 1986 in Islamic studies at Omdurman Islamic University. His PhD thesis was entitled “Islamic Advocacy in Korea”. Professor Choi Young-Kil worked as a teacher during his residence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for Koreans residing in the country at the Islamic Education Center. He served as Visiting Professor at Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University over 1982-1983. He held several academic positions at Myeongji University during which he headed the Department of Arab Studies and Graduate Studies at the university, then Director of Academic Affairs at the College of Arts, and then Dean of the College of Humanities. He is still practicing his work at this university, where he works as a chair professor of Islamic studies. He is also a former member of a number of councils, bodies and centers concerned with Islamic scholarship. He was honored for his efforts in promoting Islamic work and translation. He received the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Award for Translation for the year 2008, and an award for serving Islam from the Regional Council for Islamic Call in Southeast Asia for the year 2023.

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