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About
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Professor Mehta PhD (Poona) and DSc (h.c.) is a leading researcher in the area of chemical Sciences and specializes in the area of organic chemistry. He is an author of over 400 research papers and has delivered over 200 lectures in major conferences around the world. He is on the Editorial Boards of over a dozen leading international journals in Chemical Sciences/Organic Chemistry and serves on the advisory boards of many R & D outfits and foundations worldwide. Presently a CSIR-Bhatnagar Fellow, he has previously held positions
as the Director of the Indian Institute of Science (1998-2005) and the
President (Vice Chancellor) of the University of Hyderabad (1994-1998),
two of India’s most prestigious academic institutions besides being
Professor of Chemistry (1977-2005). He has been the President of the Indian
National Science Academy (INSA, 1999-2001) and founding Co-Chair of the
Inter Academy Council (IAC, 2001-2006). He is Fellow of the Royal Society
(FRS), Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Fellow of TWAS
and recipient of over 30 medals/awards and numerous Honorary Doctorate
(D.Sc.) degrees. He has been awarded the civilian honor of ‘Padma
Sri’ (2000) and ‘Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur’ 2004
by the Presidents of India and France, respectively. He is deeply interested
in issues related to science and policy, science for sustainable development
and is passionately committed to promoting and fostering international
collaboration in S & T with the object of bridging the knowledge divide.
Catherine Bréchignac, member of French national Académie des Sciences, and member of French national Académie des technologies, President of CNRS since January 2006, and President of "Palais de la Découverte” since 2004. After obtaining her PhD in 1977, she started a new field at the frontier of Atomic and Solid State Physics: the cluster physics as precursors of nano-objects. The study of nanoclusters ranging from a few atoms to several thousand atoms, which is a truly interdisciplinary study, provides a bridge between atomic and molecular and solid state physics. Her scientific achievements gained her a coveted “Académie des Sciences” prize in 1991, the CNRS Silver Medal in 1994, James Frank lecturer, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2001, the Holweck Medal and prize from British and French Physical Societies in 2003, Doctor Honoris Causa of the “Freie Universität Berlin” in 2003, of “Georgia Tech Institute” (USA) in 2006, and of “Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne –EPFL” (Suisse) in 2007. Catherine Bréchignac has been very influential in many ways in
International Sciences and Science Policy: in France, as the founder of
Cluster network (1991), as the Director of the Laboratoire Aimé
Cotton (1989-1995), as the Scientific Director of the CNRS- Department
of Physics and Mathematics (1995-1997), as the Director general of the
CNRS (1997-2000), in Europe as chairperson of the European Union Research
Organizations Head of Research Councils (1998-2000), President of “Institut
d’Optique Graduate School” (2002-2006), and as member or chairperson
of many committees such as Member of the Board of the European Physical
Society (1989-1994), member of the International Union of Pure and Applied
Physics (IUPAP) (1990-1994), as well as member of editorial board of several
scientific journals.
Hernan Chaimovich, born in Santiago de Chile in 1939, received an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the Universidad de Chile in 1962. After two years working with Osvaldo Cori in apyrase enzymology, he spent two and a half years in USA working in Physical Organic Chemistry under the supervision of C.A. Bunton (UCSB) and F.H. Westheimer (Harvard University). Returning to Chile as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry he developed kinetic and mechanistic work studying acid phosphatase and aminoacyl-tRNA synthase, the latter in collaboration with Jorge and Catherine Allende. He moved to Brazil in 1969, as a FAPESP fellow in the Department of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and was later hired in the Department of Biochemistry of the Institute of Chemistry, USP (IQUSP), where he became a Full Professor in 1985. Professor Chaimovich developed a research line in interfacial effects on chemical and biological reactivity using micelles and vesicles as models. Together with his students and collaborators he has contributed to the understanding of kinetic and mechanistic effects of supramolecular aggregates in Chemistry and Biology. His description of vesicle formation using synthetic amphiphiles, and the study of their physical properties, contributed for the increasing applications of these systems as well as for the understanding of the relationships between monomer structure and aggregate architecture. The pseudophase theory with explicit consideration of ion exchange, extended in his group, has been applied for the quantitative analysis of the effects of several supramolecular aggregates on chemical reactions. The contributions of his group, including theoretical and experimental studies of the effect of micelles and vesicles on a number of chemical reactions, have contributed to dissect the effect of these aggregates on chemical reactivity. Graduate students from his group are presently Professors in several brazilian Universities. During his career Professor Chaimovich has also been actively involved in science and university policy as well as in administration. He participated in the formulation of the Bioq-FAPESP project in the early 70'ties and was part of the Management Group of the project. He participated in the Graduate Committee of the IQUSP and has been twice Chairperson of the Biochemistry Department (IQUSP). Professor Chaimovich participated in the establishment of an interdisciplinary graduate course in Biotechnology and an undergraduate Course in Molecular Sciences, coordinated by him for four years. He was a Director of the Teachers Association of the Universidade de São Paulo (ADUSP). Active Member of the Brazilian Society of Biochemistry and Moleculas Biology, he was elected President of the Society in 1994. In recognition of his academic contributions he was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Member of the Ordem Nacional do Mérito Científico e Tecnológico.
Ana Maria Cetto was born in Mexico in 1946. She received her M.A. in Biophysics from Harvard University, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Physics from UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), with honours. Her area of research is: theoretical physics, with emphasis on the foundations of quantum mechanics and matter-light interactions, and a substantial contribution to the theory of stochastic electrodynamics. She is the author of 70 research articles in physics, 100 articles and essays on science education, popularization and policy, and a dozen textbooks, research monographs and science popularization books. She also has a 35-year experience as a lecturer in theoretical physics and electron microscopy. Former head of the Department of Physics and Dean of the Faculty of Sciences, and of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Institute of Physics, UNAM. Coordinator of the project for the Museum on Light (UNAM, inaugurated in 1996). Former editor-in-chief of Revista Mexicana de Física, member of the ICSU Press Committee, of the Board of INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications), and of the editorial boards of various scholarly journals. Founding president of LATINDEX, comprehensive online information system for Iberoamerican and Caribbean scientific periodicals. Former Vice-President of the Commission on Physics for Development of
IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied Physics), Vice-President
of COSTED (Committee on Science for Developing Countries), Vice-President
of Interciencia Association and TWOWS (Third World Organization for Women
in Science). Elected fellow of TWAS (Third World Academy of Sciences),
the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Council on Ideas (1998-2000),
and fellow of the Mexican Physical Society and the American Physical Society.
Member of the External Evaluation Team of IFS (International Foundation
for Science). Member of Council of UNU (United Nations University) and
the Board of IFS, and Secretary-General of ICSU. Former member of Council
and President of the Executive Committee of the Pugwash Conferences (Nobel
Peace Prize 1995).
Roger Elliott is a theoretical physicist who was educated at Oxford University receiving a BA in Mathematics in 1949 and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in 1952. After a period as a Research Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, followed by a brief period as lecturer at the University of Reading, he returned to Oxford in 1957. He was Wykeham Professor of Physics and Head of the Department of Theoretical Physics (1974-1988) and retired in 1996. His research has been concerned with a wide variety of problems related to the properties of condensed matter, particularly magnetism, optical properties, electronic structure, and related properties in both ordered and disordered systems. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976 and served as Vice-President and Physical Secretary (1984-1988). He has been a member of various national committees concerned with science policy including a period as Chairman of the Computer Board for Universities and Research Councils (1982-1986), a body responsible for developing the computing capability of the UK academic sector pioneering developments such as national networks and supercomputer centres. At Oxford he served a term as Senior Proctor and on the University Council and took a particular interest in the Oxford University Press where he served as Chairman and was eventually appointed Chief Executive (1988-1993) of this large international publishing house. This career in publishing led to his election as President of the UK Publishers Association (1993-1994) and subsequently as Chairman of Blackwells Ltd., the academic book selling chain. He was also Chairman of the Disability Information Trust which specialised in providing publications to assist disabled persons and their carers. He has also served for a period on the Board of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and of the British Council. His previous service for ICSU was as Chairman of the Committee for the Dissemination of Scientific Information (ICSU Press) from 1996 to 2002.
Born in 1935 in Pavia, Italy, Giovanni Berlucchi graduated in Medicine at the University of Pavia in 1959. He did post-graduate work at the Institute of Physiology of the University of Pisa as a fellow of the National Research Council of Italy, at the California Institute of Technology as a fellow of the Public Health Service of the United States of America, and at the University of Pennsylvania as a Research Associate. He became a full Professor of Physiology at the University of Siena in 1975, and then moved to the University of Pisa in 1976 and to the University of Verona in 1983. His main research interests concern the neural bases of cognition and behavior. G. Berlucchi is a fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Academia Europaea, the Academia Rodinensis pro Remediatione of Stockholm, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a foreign member of the Society for Neuroscience and the EEG Deutsche Gesellschaft. He was President of the Italian Physiological Society from 1999 to 2001. He has been a member of the Council of the European Neuroscience Association, a Committee member of the European Brain and Behaviour Society, a member of the Council of Scientists of the Human Frontier Science Organization, and is presently a member of the Governing Council of the International Brain Research Organization. He has been the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuropsychologia (1995-1999), a receiving editor for the journals Experimental Brain Research and European Journal of Neuroscience, and has served or serves on the editorial boards of various journals specializing in the brain sciences.
The central theme of Prof. Henry’s research concerns the experimental and theoretical study of highly vibrationally excited molecules. At high enough energies, light interacts with molecules containing XH oscillators to prepare states that are more localized than those expected on the basis of the traditionally accepted normal mode description of molecular vibrations. His group has developed the local mode description of such vibrational states, and this description has now gained general acceptance. These states are studied with overtone spectra, and because of localization, these overtone spectra are extremely sensitive to the properties of XH bonds. The spectra are measured with a variety of spectroscopic techniques including intracavity laser photoacoustic spectroscopy, and are used to study molecular structure and conformation, as well as intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution. His group has also been involved in theoretical studies to determine sources of local mode overtone intensity, as well as investigations of how intramolecular through space interaction affects molecular vibrations. He has authored or co-authored over 120 research papers. Professor Henry received his B.Sc. in 1963 from the University of British Columbia and his Ph.D. from Florida State University in 1967. He started his academic career at the University of Manitoba, where he ultimately served as head of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department. In 1987 moved to the University of Guelph where he also served as chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Occasionally over the last 25 years, he has been visiting professor at the Australian National University, the Institute for Molecular Science in Okazaki, Japan, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Otago. He served as chair of the Chemistry Department Chairs of Ontario Universities, as president of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, and as chair of the Chemical Institute of Canada, of which he is also a fellow. He has chaired the Canadian National Committee for IUPAC and served as scientific program chair of the 2003 IUPAC International Congress held in Ottawa in August 2003. In 2003 he was elected to terms as IUPAC Vice President (2004, 2005), President (2006, 2007), and past President (2008, 2009). Henry has also served in a number of other capacities, including on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry, on the Selection Committee for the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, as a member of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Chemistry Grant Selection Committee, and more. He has been particularly active in trying to create interactions between universities and industry. In addition, Prof. Henry has earned a number of honors, including the
Gerhard Herzberg Award of the Spectroscopy Society of Canada for Outstanding
Contributions to the Science of Spectroscopy, the LeSueur Memorial Award
from the Society of Chemistry Industry, and the Montreal Medal from the
Chemical Institute of Canada.
Uri Shamir is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Founding Director (1992-2003) of the Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. He holds a BSc (1962) from the Technion and a PhD (1966) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prof. Shamir teaches, conducts research and consults in Israel and around the world on hydrology and water resources management. Since 1992 he has been a member of the negotiating team with Israel's neighbors on water. He was Visiting Professor in various universities and research institutes in the US and Canada, and has published widely on research and applications in the areas of hydrology of surface and ground water, water supply systems, planning, design and operation of water resources systems, water policy, and management of international waters. Prof. Shamir was Chairman of the Israeli Association of Hydrology (1984-1986), President of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (1991-1995), Vice President of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (1995-2003) and is currently its President (2003-2007). He is Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Foreign Member of the Spanish Academy of Science, recipient of the 2000 International Hydrology Prize awarded by IAHS, UNESCO and WMO, and recipient of the 2003 Julian Hinds Award for significant contributions to water resources management from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Michel Denis has been trained in cognitive experimental psychology at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and received his doctoral degrees at the Universities of Paris X (1974) and Paris VIII (1987). He holds a position of senior scientist at the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research). He is the head of the Human Cognition Group at LIMSI-CNRS, a computer science institute located on the campus of the Orsay University, where he is conducting empirical research of the cognitive processes involved in human-machine communication. Through continuous collaborations with neuroimaging and neuropsychological units, he has also investigated the brain functions related to visual imagery and the construction of spatial knowledge. Michel Denis has been a member of the French National Committee for Scientific Research (1991-1995, 1996-2004), where he recently chaired a special Interdisciplinary Committee on Cognitive Science (2003-2004). He was Vice-President of the French Psychological Society, in charge of International Relations. He held a position of member of the Committee of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology and was the coordinator of an EC-supported Research Network "Imagery, Language and Mental Representation of Space" (1994-1997). Since 1992, Michel Denis is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS), where he chaired the ICSU-supported project "Psychology in a Multidisciplinary Environment" (involving collaborations with IBRO and IGU). He was elected President of the Union (2000-2004) and is currently Past-President and Chair of the Standing Committee on Communication and Publications (2004-2008). Since 2004, he is a member of the French Committee of the International Scientific Unions (COFUSI), at the French Academy of Sciences. Michel Denis' publications include 12 authored or edited books on cognitive
experimental psychology and around 120 scientific publications (articles
in peer-review national and international scientific journals and book
chapters). He was Associate Editor of the European Journal of Cognitive
Psychology (1996-2000) and is currently Associate Editor of the Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology (2000-2004) and member of
the Editorial Board of the interdisciplinary journal Spatial Cognition
and Computation.
Cynthia M. Beall is a physical anthropologist who has performed groundbreaking research on human evolution and adaptation to the environment, particularly in places where there is little air to breathe. She is known for her analyses of differences in oxygen delivery traits among indigenous populations of the Tibetan, Andean, and East African plateaus. Born in 1949 in Urbana, Ill., Beall graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in biology and earned a doctorate in anthropology from Pennsylvania State University in 1976. She joined the faculty of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, in 1976 and was named S. Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology in 1995. Beall's extensive biological and cultural research among the native populations of the Andes and Himalayas has provided the first firm evidence that these populations have adapted to the harsh thin-air environments by evolving genetic and developmental responses that enhance their bodies' capabilities in harsh thin-air environments. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Committee on Research and Exploration, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, International Research and Exchange Board, and the Luce Foundation. Another area of her research is the influence of the sociocultural environment, which can either create or buffer stress and can have beneficial or detrimental effects on human biology. With a colleague, she is gathering information about the cultural changes that have occurred since the Chinese government disbanded Tibetan communes and assigned families specific land plots. She will examine this policy's effects on factors such as family planning, education, and distribution of land between family members. Beall became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 and is a member of the NAS Council and the Board on International Scientific Organizations of the National Research Council. She was also named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1997, and was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 2001. From 1992 to 1994, she was president of the Human Biology Council. Dr. Beall also serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Human Biology, Journal of High Altitude Medicine and Biology, and Human Biology.
Sergio Jorge Pastrana was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1950. He graduated from the School of Letters and Arts of the University of Havana on History of English Literature and Culture in 1975, and he has done postgraduate studies at the Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Cuba. His interests in international cooperation relate to the history of early international contacts of the Cuban scientific community, and its influence on the building of a national scientific capacity in Cuba, a subject on which he has published and lectured both in Cuba, and abroad. Pastrana has been involved in the establishment and coordination of international programmes of cooperation of the Academia de Ciencias de Cuba since 1975. He has been Secretary to the Cuban National Committee for ICSU since that year. In 1983 he was appointed as head of the Department for Academic Cooperation of the Cuban Academy. From 1992 to 1996 he was the Representative of the Government of Cuba to the Implementing Committee, and eventually to the Executive Council, of the Inter American Institute on Global Change Research (IAI). From 1994 to 1996 he was appointed as Deputy Director for International Cooperation at the Ministry for Science, Technology, and Environment of the Republic of Cuba. Since 1996 he has been the Foreign Secretary of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. He has served in different commissions and boards for Cuban scientific institutions and societies, and presently is a member of the Advisory Commission on International Relations of the Minister for Science, Technology, and Environment of Cuba. Pastrana has been a member of the Caribbean Academy of Sciences since 2000, and he is also the President (until 2007) of the Caribbean Scientific Union, an organization of all academies of sciences of the Wider Caribbean Basin. He is a representative of the Cuban Academy to the Executive Council of the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues since 2003, where he has been directly involved in the groups coordinating initiatives on Biosecurity and Genetically Modified Organisms.
Francis Gudyanga was born in February 1948 in Zimbabwe. He received his B.Sc. (Honours) in Applied Chemistry (Hertfordshire University, UK-1978), his M.Sc. in Analytical Chemistry (Chelsea College, London University-1980), M.Sc. Metallurgy (Brunel University-1983), Ph.D. in Minerals Technology (London University-1988), and a Diploma of Imperial College (DIC) in Electrochemical Engineering (1989). From 1989 to 1999 he taught Extractive Metallurgy at the University of Zimbabwe and served as Dean (1994–1997) of the Faculty of Engineering. His research interests lie in electrochemical engineering, hydrometallurgy, environmental science and Cleaner Production Technology. Francis Gudyanga is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He is a Fellow of the Zimbabwe Institute of Engineers. A member of the Research Council of Zimbabwe since 1991, he has been its Chairman since 2000. In this capacity, Francis Gudyanga has been instrumental in the elaboration of the Zimbabwean Science & Technology Policy (2002), in the implementation of the Zimbabwe Academic and Research Network (ZARNET), which is an Internet Service Provider and in the creation of the Academy of Sciences of Zimbabwe (2003). Involved in the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC) from the very beginning, F. Gudyanga served as its Deputy Director General (Technical) from 2000 to 2003. Prior to this F.Gudyanga worked at several research institutions in the UK and South Africa. Dr Gudyanga serves or has served on several school/college and industrial boards especially in the mining sector and has represented Zimbabwe in many international scientific fora.
Professor Congbin Fu is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a research Professor at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is Director of the START East Asia Center, Beijing, China. Educated at the Department of Meteorology in Nanjing University (1957-1962), the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences (1962-1967) and the Cooperative Institute for Research of Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado (CIRES) (1981-1983), Professor Fu has long been engaged in the study of climate variability and dynamics, including air-sea interaction, air-land interaction, and climate–ecosystem interaction on global and regional scales, in particular the modeling and diagnosis of the variations of the monsoon system and its response and feedback to earth system dynamics. He has served as the chief scientist of several research projects at the national level, such as the “Study of Aridization of Northern China and Human Adaptation”. He has published about 130 scientific papers, 6 books and more than 10 chapters in co-authored books and received several national scientific prizes, such as the Second Prize of Important Research Result Awards on “air-sea interaction and short range climate variation” issued by the Chinese Academy of Science, the Second Prize of National Natural Science Award issued by State Council of China on “Response of Monsoon climate-ecosystem to global change” and a special award on international co-operation issued by the Dr. .Zhou Peiyuan Foundation. Professor Congbin Fu has been actively involved in various international
scientific organizations and collaboration. As a member of the planning
group of the first global change symposium in Ottawa, then as a member
of the SC-IGBP and later as a member of GAIM/IGBP and currently member
of AIMES of IGBP, he has been thoroughly involved in the development of
the IGBP and other international projects to promote multidisciplinary
and multinational collaboration activities. Since the 1990’s, serving
as a member of the TEA committee of START, member of the scientific committee
of APN (Asia and Pacific network of global change research) and the director
of START TEA center and Vice President of PSA, he has been involving in
the development of regional networks of global change research and science
capacity building in the developing world. Starting from the new millennium,
he been mainly involved in the development of integrated regional study
of Global change under the leadership of ESSP and START supported by ICSU.
Serving as the chair of the Scientific Committee, Professor Fu is one
of the main instruments in the establishment of the Monsoon Asia Integrated
Regional Studies (MAIRS). In addition, Professor Fu serves also as a member
of other international scientific organizations, such as the International
Climate Change Committee/IAMAS of IUGG, the EB of the Pacific Science
Association, the Asia and Australia Monsoon Panel (AAMP) of CLIVAR/WCRP
and the Implementation Task Team of the Coordinated Enhanced Observation
Period (CEOP)/WCRP, etc.
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