More than 50 high-profile science figures from 15 countries will be present at the awarding ceremony in Tehran’s Vahdat Hall.
The Mustafa Prize is a science and technology award granted to top researchers and scientists from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states. The prize is granted to scholars of the Islamic world for scientific excellence.
The $500,000 science and technology prize, medal, and diploma are awarded to Muslim researchers and scientists, regardless of whether they live in Muslim-majority nations or elsewhere, as well as non-Muslim scientists in Muslim countries. In 2016, Science journal called the prize “The Muslim Nobel”.
The first laureate, in the field of All Areas of Science and Technology, is Harvard University professor, Cumrun Vafa, for his work “F-Theory.”
Vafa shares the prize with Zahid Hasan, who will be awarded for “Weyl fermion semimetals”. Originally from Bangladesh, Hasan is currently a professor at Princeton University.
The next laureate is Mohamed H. Sayegh, from Lebanon, for “Novel Therapies to Improve Renal and Cardiac Allograft Outcomes”.
Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary for “The discovery of fascinating molecules with therapeutic applications,” is another laureate of this edition.
Choudhary, who specializes in organic chemistry, received the Khwarizmi Prize from Iran years ago.
Also on the prize winners’ list is Yahya Tayalati for “The observation of Light by Light Scattering and the Search for Magnetic Monopoles.”
Tayalati’s research has contributed extensively to the realm of dark matter and dark energy.
Sayegh, Choudhary, and Tayalati are the 2021 Mustafa Prize laureates from Islamic countries.
In the three previous editions, more than 270 scientists, from 33 countries, were invited to the final stage of the Mustafa Prize ceremony, where nine scientists from Iran, Singapore, Turkey, and Jordan were honored.
Source: Iran Daily