The "Atta-ur-Rahman Institute of Natural Product Discovery (RiND)" will be inaugurated at the University of Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Malaysia on Monday during an International Conference on Natural Products, where the great Pakistani scientists Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman, as a guest of honour, will also deliver the keynote speech for the "Jack Cannon Lecture".
The top Malaysian university has set up the said research institute to honour prominent Pakistani scientist Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman. "The decision to establish the institute was announced in March 2011 by UiTM's Vice Chancellor, Prof Dr Sahol Hamid Abu Bakar at International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), Karachi University (KU). The UiTM awarded Rehman an honorary doctorate degree in 2011 and RiND is another accolade for the scientist," said a spokesman of ICCBS. He said that the RiND will work on full-fledged PhD programmes in fields such as organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, neuroscience, proteomics, pharmacology, pharmacognosy and molecular medicine with a special focus on the bioactive constituents of terrestrial plants and marine sources.
Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman, a Fellow of Royal Society member, has contributed over 900 research publications at the international level which include 116 books largely published by major US and European presses and 22 international patents.
He is the Editor-in-Chief of 12 European Chemistry journals while seventy-six students have completed their Ph.D. degrees under his supervision. Prof. Rahman is the only scientist from the Muslim world to have won the prestigious UNESCO Science Prize in 1999 and was conferred with the TWAS Prize for Institution Building in Durban, South Africa, in October 2009.
The Austrian government also honoured him with its highest civil award ("Grosse Goldene Ehrenzeischen am Bande") in 2007. Successive Governments of Pakistan have conferred four civil awards, including Tamgha-i-Imtiaz (1983), Sitara-i-Imtiaz (1991), Hilal-i-Imtiaz (1998), and the highest national civil award Nishan-i-Imtiaz (2002).
He is President of Network of Academies of Sciences of Islamic Countries (NASIC) and the Regional Vice-President of TWAS and is currently the President of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences," he said.
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