ISLAMABAD: The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) would confer its most prestigious award for International Cooperation upon Professor Dr. Atta ur Rehman in a ceremony to be held in Beijing on January 10.
This award has been announced in recognition of tremendous efforts made by Prof. Atta-ur-Rehman in building strong collaborations with China in the field of science and technology.
It was due to his efforts that the President of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Chunli Bai visited Pakistan for the first time in the history of the country, along with a 15 member delegation of eminent scientists last year.
It is the first time that the award has been given to any scientist from the developing country.
Due to the efforts of Prof. Atta-ur-Rehman, a large number of collaborations have been initiated between Pakistan and China including those with the Institute of Medicinal Plants Development (IMPLAD), Tsinghua University, Institute of Applied Biophysics, Beijing Genomics Institute and Institute of Laboratory Animal Sciences (ILAS) in Beijing.
The collaborations have also been made with Honan University of Chinese Traditional Medicine in Changsha, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry in Shanghai, Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry in Urumqui and many other institutions.
A book entitled "The Wondrous World of Science" by Prof. Atta-ur-Rehman has been translated into Chinese language and will be published for mass distribution in China in 2014.
Initiated in 2007, the award for International Scientific Cooperation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is to commend and honor those eminent foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to facilitating cooperation with CAS in science and technology to encourage more efforts
It will strengthen CAS's science and technology innovation capacity and lead to improvement in the research performance, education and training, management and reputation in the international scientific community.
The eminent personalities selected for the award are those who have made outstanding contributions to promoting the establishment of strategic partnerships between foreign scientific institutions, universities, enterprises, or international academic organization with CAS.
Prof. Atta-ur-Rehman has 935 publications in several fields of organic chemistry including 712 research publications, 34 international patents, 124 books and 65 chapters in books published largely by major US and European presses.
He is the Editor-in-Chief of 12 European Chemistry journals and the Editor of "Studies in Natural Product Chemistry" 40 volumes of which have been published by Elsevier Science Publishers (Netherlands) under his Editorship during the last two decades.
Seventy nine students have completed their Ph.D. degrees under his supervision.
Prof. Rehman is the first scientist from the Muslim world to have won the prestigious UNESCO Science Prize (1999) in the 35 year old history of the Prize. He was elected as Fellow of Royal Society (London) in July 2006.
He has been conferred honorary doctorate degrees by many universities including the degree of Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) by the Cambridge University (UK) (1987), Honorary degree of Doctor of Education by Coventry University UK (2007), Honorary D.Sc. degree by Bradford University (2010), Honorary Ph.D. by Asian Institute of Technology (2010) and Honorary Doctorate from King of Malaysia (University of Technology, Mara, 2011).
He was elected Honorary Life Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University, UK in 2007.
Prof. Atta-ur-Rehman was conferred the TWAS Prize for Institution Building in Durban, South Africa in October 2009 in recognition of his contributions for bringing about revolutionary changes in the higher education sector in Pakistan.
The Austrian government also honoured him with its highest civil award ("Grosse Goldene Ehrenzeischen am Bande") (2007) in recognition of his eminent contributions.
Successive governments of Pakistan have conferred four civil awards, including Tamgha-i-Imtiaz (1983, President General Ziaul Haq), Sitara-i-Imtiaz (1991, Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazeer Bhutto), Hilal-i-Imtiaz (1998, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif), and the highest national civil award Nishan-i-Imtiaz (2002, President General Musharraf), on him.
Comments
Comments are closed.