professor ahmad

Professor Howard Yuan-Hao Chang

by Science

Howard Yuan-Hao Chang received his undergraduate A.B. degree at Harvard College 1994, Ph.D. in Biology from MIT 1998, and M.D. from Harvard Medical School 2000. He completed Dermatology residency and postdoctoral training at Stanford University. Since joining the Stanford faculty in 2004, he earned tenure in 2008 and ascended to the rank of Professor in the Depts. of Dermatology and Genetics. Currently, Prof. Chang is the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and Director of the Center for Personal Dynamic Regulomes at Stanford University, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Prof. Chang’s research has revealed the hidden information and logic of the noncoding genome, which comprise 98% of human DNA. RNA and DNA switches. He discovered a new class of genes, termed long noncoding RNAs, can control gene activity throughout the genome, illuminating a new layer of biological regulation. He invented ATAC-seq and multiple new methods for identifying DNA regulatory elements genome-wide and in single cells. These RNA and DNA switches decide when and where genes turn on and off, and have revealed mechanisms and targets in a plethora of human diseases, most notably in cancer, immunity, and development. His recent studies of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in cancer showed that ecDNAs are prevalent, arise early in cancer, and represent profound epigenetic dysregulation that leads to tumor heterogeneity, oncogene overexpression, and drug resistance. The long term goal of his research is to decipher the regulatory information in the genome to benefit human health.

Prof. Chang is a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Academy of Medicine (NAM), and American Academy for the Arts and Sciences. Prof. Chang’s honors include the NAS Award for Molecular Biology, Outstanding Investigator Award of the National Cancer Institute, Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, Judson Daland Prize of the American Philosophical Society, and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise. His work was honored by the journal Cell as a Landmark paper over the last 40 years and by Science as “Insight of the decade”.

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

Prof. Jerry

Professor Jerry Roy Mendell

by Medicine

Jerry R. Mendell, MD, is Emeritus Professor at Nationwide Children’s Hospital where he held the Dwight E. Peters and Juanita R. Curran Endowed Chair in Pediatric Research at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. He has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine and recently received the ASGCT Translational Medicine Award that was named in his honor and has been given yearly to accomplished scientists.

He did Neurology residency at Columbia University’s New York Neurological Institute. His post-doctoral fellowship at the Medical Neurology Branch of NIH began his career in neuromuscular disease. He has published >400 articles with a focus on neuromuscular disease and authored books on Skeletal Muscle Disease, Peripheral Nerve Disorders, and Gene Therapy.

Early work in DMD described a vascular pathway responsible for muscle damage in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) now confirmed by the link to nNOS binding sites of muscle. The first breakthrough in treatment was described in 1989, as efficacy of corticosteroids in DMD (Mendell JR, et al. N Engl J Med 320:1592-1597, 1989). Prednisone or one its corticosteroid variants now standard of care for DMD. Since then, research has moved toward molecular-based strategies. In 1999 Dr. Mendell performed the first in-human clinical trial using AAV for gene transfer to skeletal muscle. In March 2007, Dr. Mendell’s gene therapy in limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 2D, demonstrated sustained gene expression for more than 6 months, an important milestone for the field (Mendell JR Ann Neurol 2009;66:290-297). In a similar gene therapy approach for DMD, he demonstrated that expressing the transgene into deleted domain resulted in rejection of the gene product because of transgene immunity (Mendell JR et al N Engl J Med;363:1429-37).

He was instrumental in establishing the international incidence of DMD at birth at 1:5000 (Mendell JR, et al Ann Neurol 2012;71:304-313). Clinical Trials led by Dr. Mendell in exon skipping were noteworthy as the first therapeutic agent to show increased dystrophin expression following long-term exon skipping outcomes demonstrating slowing of disease progression (Mendell al. Ann Neurol 2013; 74:637-47; Ann Neurol 2016; 79:257-271). Eteplirsen (Exondys 51) is approved by the FDA for commercial use.

He was the principal investigator for SMA gene therapy, the first systemically delivered gene showing achieving safety and efficacy (Mendell JR, et al N Engl J Med Nov 2017). This was a major milestone saving the lives of infants with gene delivery by intravenous administration. This work received Science Magazine 2017 Breakthrough of the Year Award.  SMA gene therapy has now been approved by the FDA for clinical therapy as Onasemnogene Abeparvovec (Zolgensma®, Novartis, Inc). Based on SMA gene therapy, newborn screening is now established in 49 states throughout US.

Currently Dr. Mendell is actively engaged in systemic delivery of micro-dystrophin-DMD gene therapy. He is the Principal Investigator and as a result gene therapy has been approved by FDA treatment of DMD patients 4-5 years old (Elevidys®, Sarepta, Inc.). Studies are underway to obtain gene therapy treatment for all DMD patients.

Dr. Mendell now serves as a Senior Advisor for Sarepta Therapeutics.

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

Prof. Wael

Professor Wael B. Hallaq

by Islamic Studies

He graduated from the University of Haifa in 1978, then earned a masters degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1979. Hallaq joined McGill University as an assistant professor of Islamic law in 1985, after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1983. He became a full professor in 1994, and was named a James McGill Professor in Islamic law in 2005. In 2009, he moved to New York, to become the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he has been teaching ethics, law, and political thought since 2009. Hallaq is considered a world leading scholar in the field of Islamic studies, and has been described as a foremost authority on the Sharia. His research and writings have shaped the Western academic education on Islamic law, and have extended over many periods and subjects, ranging from the formative period of Islam to modern history. He lectured in universities across the world, from Japan, Singapore and Indonesia, to the Middle East, Europe and North America. He has published over eighty articles and numerous books on topics including law, legal theory, philosophy, ethics, political theory, and logic. In 2009, he was listed among the 500 most influential scholars in the studies of Islamic.

Hallaq gained prominence for his doctoral work challenging the notion of the so-called “the closing of the gate of ijtihad,” a narrative that was for long accepted in the field as paradigmatic. His major works include Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge, and Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha, Authority, Continuity, and Change in Islamic Law, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law, Shari`a: Theory, Practice, Transformations, and Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Usul al-Fiqh. Professor Hallaq’s work is widely debated and translated, with several books and dissertations, and numerous articles, devoted to the study and analysis of his writings. His life and work have been featured in many interviews, symposia, talk shows, and documentaries by major media outlets.

In 2015, his Impossible State (2013) won Columbia’s distinguished Book Award for the two years prior, and since it appeared in Arabic in 2014, it has commanded much attention in academic circles and mass media in the Muslim world. In 2020, he won the Nautilus Book Award for Reforming Modernity, and in 2021, he was awarded the TÜBA Prize, given by the Turkish Academy of Science in recognition of innovative and path-breaking scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Later in the same year, he was elected an Honorary Member of this Academy. Dozens of his major articles and all his books have now been rendered into Arabic and Turkish, and many are translated into several other languages including Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Urdu, Hebrew, Italian, German, French, and most recently Albanian, Russian, and Bengali.

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

2021 -Professor Stuart Stephen Papworth Parkin

Professor Stuart Stephen Papworth Parkin

by Science

 

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

by Medicine

 

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

by Medicine

 

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

by Arabic Language and Literature

 

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

by Service to Islam

 

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.