Malaysia Plays Host to Young Women Researcher Award

Malaysia was host of this year's The Young Women Researcher Award organized by the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) for Developing Countries, Third World Organization for Women in Science (TWOWS), National Science Centre, and SCOPUS-Elsevier. The awards were given on November 9, 2009 to women researchers from the developing countries in four categories, namely life sciences, agricultural science, medicine, and engineering and technology. More than 50 applicants were received from around the developing countries, with China and India submitting the most number of applicants.

The first prize under the life science category was shared between Drs. Maria Corazon Abogado De Ungria from UP Diliman, Philippines and Mai Thi Quynh Le from National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Vietnam. Dr. Yabin Zhu from Ningbo University, China was the runner-up. Under the agricultural category, Dr. Dilfuza Egamberdieva from National University of Uzbekistan swept the first prize with Drs. Huixia Shou from Zhejiang University, China and Wanting Ling from Nanjing Agricultural University as runner-ups. Dr. XiangMing Fang from Zhejiang University, China emerged as the winner under the medicine category with Dr. Leena Leelasvatanakij Suntornsuk from Mahidol Unviersity, Thailand, and Dr. Shekoufeh Nikfar from Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Iran as runner-ups. The award for engineering and technology went to Dr. Guanghui Ma from Chinese Academy of Sciences, whereas runner-ups were Dr. Durga Basak from Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science and Dr. Joongjai Panpranot from Chulalongkorn University.

This inaugural award to encourage excellence of women in science and technology from the developing world was supported by Scopus-Elsevier and spearheaded by Prof. Farida Habib Shah, one of the fellows of TWAS and President of the Malaysian TWOWS Chapter. 

For more news from Malaysia, contact Mahaletchumy Arujanan at maha@bic.org.my.