Five Muslim Scientists Awarded Prestigious Mustafa Prize

Date: 22 October 2021 - 22:29

News ID: ۹۵۷۴۴

TEHRAN – The winners of the 2021 Mustafa Prize were presented with awards at a ceremony held at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall on Thursday.
Five Muslim scientists were awarded as the laureates of the 4th edition of Mustafa Prize.
Cumrun Vafa from Iran, M. Zahid Hasan from Bangladesh, Mohamed El. Sayegh from Lebanon, Yahya Tayalati from Morocco, and Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary from Pakistan were picked out as recipients of the prize.
The Mustafa Prize is awarded in four categories of information and communication science and technology, life and medical science and technology, nanoscience and nanotechnology, and all areas of science and technology.
Cumrun Vafa and Zahid Hasan shared the Mustafa Prize in ‘All Areas of Science and Technology’ section.
Harvard University professor from Iran, Cumrun Vafa, was awarded the Mustafa Prize for his work “F-Theory.”
“I present this Prize to the Foundation for Supporting Fundamental Sciences that is now being established in Iran by my colleagues,” Vafa said, adding “I hope this initial investment attracts more investments for helping the development of basic sciences in Iran and the regional countries.”
Zahid Hasan is a Bangladeshi professor of Princeton University who won the Mustafa Prize for “Weyl fermion semimetals.”
“This achievement is the outcome of my research for more than 15 years,” Hasan said in his speech.
Mohamed H. Sayegh, Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary, and Yahya Tayalati were the other prize winners from Islamic countries.
Mohamed H. Sayegh from Lebanon received the Mustafa Prize for “Novel Therapies to Improve Renal and Cardiac Allograft Outcomes,”

according to its website.
Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary for “discovery of fascinating molecules with therapeutic applications” was another laureate.
Yahya Tayalati won the Mustafa Prize for “observation of the light by light scattering and the search for magnetic monopoles.”
The winners have been granted cash prizes amounting to $1 million.
The Mustafa Prize seeks to encourage education and research and play a pioneering role in developing regional relations between science and technology institutions working in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries.
It was launched in 2013, with high-profile universities and academic centers of the OIC member states defining its policies.
The scientific event is held biennially during the Islamic Unity Week, which celebrates the birthday of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
Sorena Sattari, head of the Mustafa Prize policy-making council, delivered a speech to the event, saying, “I am very glad that this international prize provides a network of scientists of Islamic countries to solve the problems according to science and technology.”
Hassan Zohour, head of the scientific committee of Mustafa Prize, also gave a speech on the details of the 2021 Mustafa Prize.
Back in 2019, Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech, received the award for his seminal work on individualized cancer immunotherapies, in particular for the development and clinical testing of mRNA-based vaccines that are tailored to each patient’s mutation profile.
Sahin’s BioNTech later developed the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. To develop the vaccine, Sahin and his team used the same study that earned him the Mustafa Prize: vaccines based on messenger-RNA or mRNA.
Jackie Yi-Ru Ying, the founding executive director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore, is another prominent recipient of the Mustafa Prize.