L’Oréal - UNESCO For Women in Science Honors Seven Women

Under the patronage of the President of the Council of Ministers, Mr. Saad Hariri, represented by His Excellency the Minister for Women’s Affairs, Mr. Jean Oghassabian, and in the presence of Her Excellency the Minister of Administrative Development, Doctor Inaya Ezzeddine, the L’Oréal - UNESCO For Women in Science Levant and Egypt program honored seven Arab women researchers for their promising scientific projects, during an award ceremony held on Thursday October 5th, at L’Ecole Supérieure des Affaires (ESA) - Beirut.

 

Before an audience of official, diplomatic, scientific, academic, and media representatives, Professor Mouin Hamzé, Secretary General of the National Council for Scientific Research in Lebanon; Mr. Phillippe Patsalides, General Manager of L’Oréal Levant; and Dr. Claudia Abi Nader, representative of the Lebanese National Commission for UNESCO, rewarded seven researchers coming from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria for their exceptional work.  

 

The seven women scientists were honored for their promising research projects in various fields, such as computer engineering, microbial environment, pharmacology, microbiology and molecular biology, and received fellowships from the L’Oréal - UNESCO program to help them pursue their research in their respective fields. Selected by a panel of eminent scholars from across the region, chaired by Professor Mouin Hamzé, the seven fellows for 2017 are: 

 

Dr. Areej Abuhammad - Jordan: Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Jordan; specializing in Pharmacology and Drug Discovery.

- Dr. Arwa Al-Shuwaikh - Iraq: Assistant Professor, at the Microbiology Department, Faculty of Medicine of Nahrain University in Baghdad; specializing in Molecular Virology.

- Dr. Elise Noujeim - Lebanon: Researcher in the National Council for Scientific Research in Lebanon; specializing in Microbial Ecology and Biological Control.

- Dr. Menattallah Elserafy - Egypt: Researcher at the Center for Genomics - Zewail City of Science and Technology; specializing in Molecular Biology and Genetics.

- Mrs. Basma Mostafa - Egypt: Assistant Lecturer at the Faculty of Computers and Information at Cairo University, and PhD researcher at the Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique at the University of Montpellier, France; specializing in Optimization and Mathematical Models.

- Mrs. Carine Jaafar - Lebanon: PhD student in the Cell and Molecular Biology Program at the American University of Beirut; specializing in Molecular Biology and Biology.

- Ms. Nour Ghadban - Syria: PhD student in Computer and Automatic Control, in the Engineering Department Faculty of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Tishreen University, Lattakia; specialized in Audio Visual Speech Recognition. 

 

Since its inception in 1998, the L’Oréal - UNESCO For Women in Science program has achieved great progress in women's participation and roles in science. As of this year, the total number of women scientists that were awarded the program’s fellowship reached 2,820 women, of whom 2,723 won fellowships from 115 countries around the world, among them are more than 100 fellows from the Arab World. Additionally, 97 women won the distinctive title of Laureate for their achievements in science, and two among them were awarded the Nobel Prize.