Five Muslim Scientists Scoop Prestigious Mustafa Prize

Tehran: The five laureates of the prestigious biennial Mustafa Prize have received their awards during a ceremony in Tehran, a week after they were picked out as winners for their scientific excellence in their respective fields.

The winners were announced on October 12 in a press conference held in the headquarters of the Mustafa Science and Technology Foundation.

They received their prizes in a ceremony on Thursday, according to a report by the Press TV.

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.

Each of the five won $500,000. They were selected from more than 500 entrants.

Cumrun Vafa, the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University, received the Mustafa Prize 2021 for developing F-theory, which is a branch of string theory.

M. Zahid Hasan, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton University, was awarded for his research on Weyl fermionic semimetals.

Mohamed El. Sayegh, Professor of Medicine and Immunology at the American University of Beirut, nabbed the prestigious prize for his work “Novel Therapies to Improve Renal and Cardiac Allograft Outcomes.”

Yahya Tayalati, Professor of Physics at Mohammed V University, scooped the prize for his special contribution to the “Observation of the Light by Light Scattering and the Search for Magnetic Monopoles."

Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary, Professor Emeritus at the University of Karachi, was awarded for the discovery of fascinating molecules with therapeutic applications.

First launched in 2015, the Mustafa Prize honors scientific breakthroughs within the Muslim world.

It is awarded to top researchers and scientists from the OIC member states 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.

This year, 515 works were submitted to the Iran-based secretariat.

Laureates of Mustafa Prize 2021 would be granted cash prizes amounting to $1 million.

The scientific event is held biennially during the Islamic Unity Week, which celebrates the birthday of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)

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