Winners of 2016 TWAS Prizes announced

TWAS Prizes are awarded in nine fields: Agricultural Sciences, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Engineering Sciences, Mathematics, Medical Sciences, Physics, and Social Sciences (called theTWAS-Celso Furtado Prize). This year, there are 10 prize winners: two from Brazil; one from Chile; two from China; two from India; one from Mexico; one from Pakistan and one from Turkey. The prize winners include one woman.

Each TWAS Prize carries a cash award of USD15,000. The winners will lecture about their research at TWAS's 28th General Meeting in 2017, when they will also receive a plaque and the prize money.

Agricultural Sciences

• IsmailCAKMAK of Turkey, for his incisive work on cereal biofortification and stress-mitigating effects of zinc in crop plants.

Biology  (Shared)

• AmitabhaCHATTOPADHYAY of India for his seminal contribution in understanding the role of membrane cholesterol in the organization and function in healthy and diseased conditions.
• ZHOU Qi of China for his outstanding contributions to the understanding of stem cell pluripotency regulation and to both basic research and translational application of stem cells.

Chemistry

• ZHAO Yuliang of China for his pioneering work on nanosafety analysis and nanomedical chemistry leading to new-concept cancer nanomedicine.

Earth, Astronomy and Space Sciences

• MarioHAMUY of Chile for his essential work on Type Ia supernovae, leading to the calibration of its luminosities and the discovery of cosmic acceleration.    

Engineering Sciences

• Carlos ArtemioCOELLO COELLO of Mexico for his pioneering contributions to the development of new algorithms based on bio-inspired metaheuristics for solving single- and multi-objective optimization problems  

Mathematics

• Lorenzo JustinianoDÍAZ CASADO of Brazil for his fundamental contributions to the theory of Dynamical Systems.  

Medical Sciences

• Zulfiqar AhmedBHUTTA of Pakistan for his incisive work on academic pediatrics and public health in Pakistan, which has contributed to shape global child health & policy. 

Physics

• ShirazMINWALLA of India for his seminal and influential contributions to theoretical physics and the discovery of new terms in the equations of charged relativistic hydrodynamics

Social Sciences

• MarildaSOTOMAYOR of Brazil for her extraordinary contribution and innovative research in the field of matching markets