First U.S. Science Envoys
Washington: At a time when many of the critical challenges that nations face are global in nature, three American scientists are setting out on separate journeys to Muslim-majority countries to strengthen and forge new partnerships in science, medicine, engineering and technology.
They are part of a new Science Envoy program that President Obama announced in a June 4, 2009, speech ( http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2009/June/20090603171549eaifas0.6576807.html ) at Cairo University, where he also called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world."
The first envoys ? Ahmed Zewail, Elias Zerhouni and Bruce Alberts ? will visit Muslim-majority countries from North Africa to Southeast Asia from January through May. Future science envoys will travel to other regions as the program expands.
"On science and technology," Obama told the students in Cairo, "we will launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries and to help transfer ideas to the marketplace so they can create jobs. We will open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia and appoint new science envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, grow new crops."
THE ENVOYS
Ahmed Zewail is a professor of chemistry and of physics and director of the Center for Physical Biology at the California Institute of Technology. He received the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his pioneering developments in femtoscience (observing the movement of individual atoms in a femtosecond, or one quadrillionth of a second), which allowed him to study atoms and molecules in motion to see what actually happens when chemical bonds break and new ones are created.
Zewail began his mission January 10 in Egypt, where he was born and studied at the University of Alexandria, later receiving a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. He will also travel to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, meeting with heads of state, government officials and representatives from the scientific, education and business communities to seek opportunities for partnerships.
Elias Zerhouni is professor of radiology and of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and a senior fellow in the Global Health program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He was director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health from 2002 to 2008. He received his medical degree at the University of Algiers School of Medicine before coming to the United States, and is a member of the board of trustees of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
Beginning in February, Zerhouni was traveling to Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.
Bruce Alberts is a professor emeritus in the University of California-San Francisco Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He is editor-in-chief of Science magazine and served two six-year terms as president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences from 1993 to 2005. From 2000 to 2005, he co-chaired the InterAcademy Council, an advisory institution in Amsterdam governed by the presidents of 15 national science academies.
Alberts will travel to Indonesia in May.
"Although the envoys are private citizens," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in a January 11 briefing, "they will share what they learn on these trips with the U.S. government, and the relationships they build will reaffirm our renewed commitment to global engagement."
SCIENCE DIPLOMACY
The first envoys were chosen by the U.S. National Academies of Science with help from the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy and the State Department. They were announced ( http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2009/November/20091103083709bpuh0.9118311.html ) by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in November 2009 in Marrakech, Morocco.
The envoys will investigate opportunities in all areas of science and technology, including mathematics, engineering, health, energy, climate change research and green technologies; identify the strengths of and gaps in scientific institutions; and offer recommendations. Each scientist will carry his own experience and interests into the mission.
"One of my obvious focus areas as a science envoy, because I've been president of the U.S. National Academy," Alberts said in a January 12 interview, "is to try to help the academies in other countries become powerful entities in their own countries for advising their governments, for bringing the wisdom of science to their people."
Alberts is passionate about science education, especially for young people, and about seeing that people in every country have access to all the benefits science can deliver. He knew almost nothing about international science until becoming president of the National Academy, he said, and attending a "science summit" on world population in New Delhi, India, in October 1993 with representatives of national academies of science throughout the world.
"I went to that meeting and got enticed by a second issue besides science education," Alberts said, "which is the ability of scientists around the world first of all to work together effectively to do more than any one of us can do alone. And secondly, the potential to spread science in new ways that I hadn't even thought of in the United States, to what they call in India 'reach the unreached' through science."
In the coming months, according to the State Department, other prominent U.S. scientists will be invited to join the U.S. Science Envoy Program, expanding the scope of the program to countries and regions around the globe.
Learn more about science and technology at America.gov ( http://www.america.gov/global/science.html ).
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