The forty new Fellows bring the total TWAS membership to 1190. Twelve new members are women.

Twenty-six members hail from Brazil (4), China (12) and India (10). One each (12 total) live and work in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Germany, Jamaica, Jordan, Mexico, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda. Two live in Finland and Kazakhstan, where TWAS membership was not represented up to now.

The new TWAS Fellows, who will be inducted at the Academy's 28th General Meeting in 2017, are:

01-Agricultural Sciences

• CAO, XiaoFeng (China): (F) PhD, Professor, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. The nominee has made remarkable contributions towards understanding epigenetic regulation in higher plants. Her pioneering work elucidates novel mechanisms of epigenetic control of genome integrity and plant development through histone methylation and RNA metabolism in plants. Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she has received the L'Oreal Young Female Scientist Award, the National Outstanding Scientist Award, the DuPont Young Scientist Award and the CAS Excellent Performance Award, among others.
• FANTA, Demel Teketay (Ethiopia): (M) PhD, Professor in Forest Science, Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, Gaborone, Botswana. The nominee has done extensive research on diversity, population structures and regeneration ecology of woody species, dispersal mechanisms and agents of woody plants, forests and livelihoods, forest coffee ecosystems, land use and land cover changes, ecosystem services and edible wild plants. International Fellow of the Forestry Unit of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (KSLA), Member of the African Academy of Sciences and Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, he has ranked as Number 1 in the Ranking of scientists in Botswana Institutions according to their Google Scholar citations public profiles, and has received the Trophy from the Wondo Genet College, the Gold Medal and Certificate of Appreciation from the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and the Trophy-Key to Success Award, among others.
• VARSHNEY, Rajeev Kumar (India): (M) PhD, Research Programme Director, Grain Legumes and Director, Center of Excellence in Genomics, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru, India. The nominee has decoded genome sequences for chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, pearl millet, mungbean, sesame and adzukibean. He has also developed superior lines/varieties with enhanced yield in chickpea and groundnut that will provide more income to poor farmers in developing countries. Member of the three Indian science academies, he has received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, the Young Crop Scientist Award, the Illumina Agricultural Greater Good Initiative Award and Plaques/Certificates of Appreciation from the Philippines and Vietnam, among others.

02-Structural, Cell and Molecular Biology

• LI, Peng (China): (F) PhD, Professor and Vice Dean, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. The nominee’s research accomplishments are in apoptosis and lipid metabolism. She purified caspase-9 and uncovered its role as a central node to link apoptotic signals to the core machinery for apoptotic initiation. She also identified CIDE family proteins as major regulators of obesity, diabetes and hepatic steatosis and their novel regulatory role in lipid droplet fusion and growth in adipocytes and hepatcoytes. Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she has received the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Award, the Arthur Kornberg Memorial Lecture Award, the Tsinghua University Guohua outstanding scholar award and the Young Scientist Award of Singapore, among others.
• RUBINSTEIN, Marcelo (Argentina): (M) PhD, Investigator, National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET) and Associate Professor, School of Exact and Natural Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The nominee has contributed significantly to the understanding of brain genes involved in appetitive behaviours, addiction and obesity. He has also developed mouse molecular genetics and transgenic technologies in Argentina and South America. He has received the TWAS 2014 Prize in Biology, the Dr. Bernardo Houssay Award, the Ranwell Caputto Medal, the Florencio Fiorini Annual Award and the Rebeca Gershman Award, among many others.

03-Biological Systems and Organisms

• CHIANG, Ann-Shyn (Taiwan, China): (M) PhD, Professor, National Tsing Hua University, Department of Life Science, Hsinchu, Taiwan, China. The nominee has made outstanding contribution to our understanding of memory formation using a connectomics approach. Academician of the Academia Sinica, he received the TWAS 2012 Prize in Biology, the Y.Z. Hsu Science Award, the National Lectureship Award of the Ministry of Education and the Outstanding Research Award three times, among others.
• KHURANA, Paramjit (India): (F) PhD, Professor, Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi, India. The nominee has made pioneering contributions in the areas of Wheat and Seribiotechnology and Functional Genomics of Abiotic Stress Tolerance. In addition to participating in sequencing the Rice and Tomato genome, her group also sequenced the complete chloroplast genome of mulberry. Member of the three Indian science academies and of OWSD, she has received JC Bose National Fellowship, the Prof. Archana Sharma Memorial Award, the Street Memorial Lecture Award and the Shri Ranjan Memorial Lecture Award, among others.
• RENTALA, Madhubala (India): (F) PhD, Professor and Director, School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Rentala’s research focus is on Kala-azar, a major public health problem in parts of India.  Major contributions have been functional genomics and proteomics, identification of novel drug targets, development of diagnostic biomarkers for drug resistance in Leishmania and producing the first indigenous DNA and protein vaccines. These are also effective against antimony drug resistant clinical isolates from Kala-azar patients. Member of all three Indian science academies, she has received the Hari Om Trust JC Bose award, the young scientist award from IUB, the Career Research Initiative Award from Wellcome Trust UK, she has been an invited speaker in many national and international meetings, and has received the President of India, Visitor Group Award 2016, the UGC-Israel Science Foundation Research Award, and the 2016 senior women Bioscientist Award, Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (DBT), among others.
• VALENTE GAIESKY, Vera Lúcia da Silva (Brazil): (F) PhD, Full Professor, Department of Genetics, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil. The nominee has contributed to the detection of several families of transposable elements in natural populations of drosophilid species in the neotropics; studies of chromosomal evolution in several neotropical flies; phylogenetic relationships between neotropical flies and establishment of chromosomal physical maps. Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, among others, she has received Recognition from the Rectorate of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

04-Medical and Health Sciences incl. Neurosciences

• ALI, Nahid (India): (F) PhD, Chief Scientist and Head of Infectious Diseases and Immunology Division, CSIR - Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India. The nominee has contributed significantly to pathogenesis of Kala-azar disease, developed new strategies for diagnosis, protective vaccination and anti-leishmanial chemotherapy. Her work on immunopathology of Kala-azar provided vital clues for its reactivation as PHKDL. Member of the three Indian science academies, she has received J.C. Bose National Fellowship, the Prof. A.N. Badhuri Memorial Lecture Award, the Top 10 Innovators Award and the National Women Bioscientist Award, among others.
• BOUSKELA, Eliete (Brazil): (F) PhD, Full Professor, Laboratory for Clinical and Experimental Research on Vascular Biology (BioVasc), Biomedical Center, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The nominee advanced our understanding of the microcirculation, the last frontier of cardiovascular sciences. She deployed her science and discoveries to devising treatment of health problems with approaches that are affordable and directly applicable to the population of developing nations. Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the European Academy of Science and Arts, she has received the Tiradentes Medal by the Government of Rio de Janeiro and was the first women from Latin America elected as Associate Member of the Académie Nationale de Médicine of France.
• FORRESTER, Terrence (Jamaica): (M) PhD, Chief Scientist, UWI Solutions for Developing Countries, UWI SODECO, Kingston, Jamaica. The nominee has described metabolism of protein, amino acids, lipids in severe acute malnutrition (SAM); dietary cysteine supplementation to improve clinical outcome. He has also discovered developmental origins of kwashiorkor and marasmus, thus long-term cardio-metabolic consequences of SAM and NCD prevalence in African populations. Member of the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, he has received the Vice Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research, the Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence, the Boehringer Ingleheim Award, the Musgrave Gold Medal and the Order of Jamaica, among others.
• STEIN, Dan (South Africa): (M) PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cape Town, South Africa. The nominee has worked on neuropsychiatric disorders, taking his work from bench to the bedside and from bedside to community. He has played an important role in research on obsessive-compulsive and related disorders. Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa, he has received the TK Kambule Award, the Ethics in Psychopharmacology Award, the Alan Pifer Research Award, the Kenneth Warren Prize and Stellenbosch Rector's Award for Excellence in Research, among many others.

05-Chemical Sciences

• LI, Chao-Jun (Canada): (M) PhD, E. B. Eddy Professor of Chemistry and Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Green Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. The nominee has pioneered a wide range of new synthetic reactions for Green Chemistry. Well-known examples include Grignard-type reactions in water, alkyne-aldehyde-amine coupling, and Cross-Dehydrogenative-Coupling (CDC) among others. Member of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Sciences), he has received the Dayu Zhang Lectureship Award, the R.U. Lernieux Award, the Canadian Green Chemistry and Engineering Network Award and the Innovator of the Year Award, among many others.
• SINGH, Vinod Kumar (India): (M) PhD, Director, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal, India. The nominee has contributed significantly to the area of asymmetric synthesis. During the last two decades, he has developed a variety of chiral ligands for enantioselective reactions such as deprotonation of epoxides, allylic oxidation of olefins, ene reaction, aldol reaction, Friedel-Crafts alkylation, alkyl addition to imines, asymmetric organocatalytic reactions, etc. He has completed the total synthesis of several biologically important natural products. Fellow of all 3 science academies of India, he is the winner of the Padma Shri, the Goyal Prize and the Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru National Award, among others.
• TAN, Weihong (China): (M) PhD, Distinguished Professor and Director, State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, and Distinguished Professor, University of Florida; Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, China. The nominee has made pioneer contributions in bioanalytical chemistry and chemical biology. He developed a cell-based aptamer selection technology to generate molecular probes for cellular sample recognition. He also pioneered aptamer based biomarker discovery and detection. Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he has received the National Natural Science Award several times, the American Chemical Society Florida Award for Outstanding Contributions to Chemical Sciences, the Packard Science and Technology Award and the Whitaker Foundation Biomedical Engineering Award, among others.
• YU, Jihong (China): (F) PhD, Professor, Academician, State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China. The nominee has done important work on the rational design and synthesis of inorganic nanoporous functional materials with the assistance of computational techniques leading to function-led targeted synthesis of inorganic materials. Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she has received the National Prize for Natural Science twice, the Bau Family Award in Inorganic Chemistry, the 6th Chinese Youth Woman Scientist and the 19th China Youth Science and Technology Award, among others.

06-Engineering Sciences

• AL-NIMR, Moh'd Ahmad Mohammad (Jordan): (M) PhD, Professor , Faculty Member,  Editor-in-Chief / Energy Conversion and Management Journal - Elsevier, Mechanical Engineering Department, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan. The nominee has contributed to the work on novel energy systems that utilize more than one energy resource or produce more than one output. His work also includes modelling and investigating the behaviour of wide range of thermal systems; better understanding of the behaviour of porous media and non-conventional heat conduction models. There is no science academy in Jordan. He has received the TWAS 2013 Prize in Engineering Sciences, the Ali Mango Award for Distinguished Research in Jordan, the Khalifa Award for Education and the King Abdullah II Award for Innovation-Renewable Energy, among others.
• LIU, Weimin (China): (M) PhD, Director, State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China. The nominee’s work is in the area of development of a series of new space lubricating materials and techniques, high temperature self-lubricating materials, ionic liquids lubricants, high performance eco-friendly lubricant additive materials, surface functionalization of engineering materials, space tribological experiment systems. Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, among others, he has received the National Award of Natural Science twice and the National Award of Technology Invention twice.
• LU, Gaoqing (Max) (Australia): (M) PhD, Provost and Senior Vice-President, The University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia. A leading scientist in materials science and chemical engineering.  the nominee has made significant and sustained contributions to nano-materials science including synthesis of highly reactive single crystal TiO₂, new insights into the surface chemistry and modifications of nanoporous materials. Member of the Australian Academy of Science and Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, among others, he has received the Queensland Greats Awards, the IMMA Life Time Achievements Award, the Australia-China Achievement Award and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Award for International Cooperation.
• PAL, Nikhil Ranjan (India): (M) PhD, Professor, Electronics and Communication Sciences Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. The nominee has done pioneering work in modelling, measuring and managing probabilistic, fuzzy and evidential uncertainty; computational intelligence based theory and algorithms for data mining and image analysis; integrated methods for feature selection and system identification and applications in diverse areas. Member of the Indian National Science Academy, The National Academy of Sciences, India, and the Indian National Academy of Engineering, he has received the Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Award, Best Paper Award, Best scientific contribution and the INAE Chair Professorship by the Indian National Academy of Engineering, among others.
• RAMAMURTY, Upadrasta (India): (M) PhD, Professor, Department of Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. The nominee has contributed to the understanding of deformation, fatigue and fracture in the number of new classes of materials. Member of the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Academy of Engineering, he has received the TWAS 2015 Prize in Engineering Sciences, the CNR Rao Prize Lecture in Advanced Materials, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and the Metallurgist of the Year (India), among others.

07-Astronomy, Space and Earth Sciences

• CHEN, Fahu (China): (M) PhD, Professor at Lanzhou University, School of Earth and Environment Sciences, Lanzhou, China. The nominee has proposed and confirmed Westerly Climate Regime concept of Asian climatic change during the Holocene; demonstrated occurrence of rapid changes in both Asian summer and winter monsoons; proposed that agriculture facilitated permanent human occupation of Tibetan Plateau during the late Holocene. Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, he received the National Science Award, Second class, China, 2007, the National Excellent Scientist award, China, 2005 and the China Youth Science and Technology award in 1996, he is also part of the national Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars.
• CHOUDHURI, Arnab Rai (India): (M) PhD, Professor, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. The nominee has made fundamental contributions on the formation of sunspots and the generation of 11-year solar cycle by the dynamo process. He is one of the originators of the flux transport dynamo model, which he used to make the first successful prediction of a solar cycle from a theoretical model. Member of all three Indian science academies, he received the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship and the Rustom Choksi Award for Excellence in Research in Science, among others.
• FERREIRA, Valderez P. (Brazil): (F) PhD, Full Professor, Department of Geology, Center of Technology and Geosciences, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil. The nominee has developed fundamental petrological work on granitic rocks as a contribution to understanding the origin and magmatic processes of granitic rocks and their role on the Precambrian crustal evolution of NE Brazil. She is a Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of Pernambuco, the Geological Society of America, Geochemical Society, Geological Society of Brazil and the Brazilian Geochemical Society.
• KULMALA, Markku Tapio (Finland): (M) PhD, Professor, Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland. The nominee has contributed significantly to the earth surface-atmosphere interactions and feedbacks, COBACC feedback loop, comprehensive continuous observations and Gas-To-Particle Conversion. Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, The International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea and Chinese Academy of Sciences, among others, he has received the Fedor P. Litke Gold Medal, the Bayer Climate Award, the Wilhelm Bjerkenes medal and honorary professorship of the universities of Nanjing, Shandon and Fudan.

08-Mathematical Sciences

• DE LOS REYES, Juan Carlos (Ecuador): (M) Dr. rer. nat. / Ing. Mat., Director, Research Center on Math. Modelling (MODEMAT) and Professor Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Quito, Ecuador. The nominee has made substantial contributions to the study of optimality conditions and the development of numerical methods for PDE-constrained optimization problems with nonsmooth structures given either by PDE with control and/or state constraints, or by variational inequality constraints. Member of the Academy of Sciences of Ecuador (ACE), he has received the J. Tinsley Oden Faculty Fellowship at Austin), Visiting Fellowship of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge and the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, among others.
• GRÖTSCHEL, Martin (Germany): (M) PhD, Professor, President, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Berlin, Germany. Former President, Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB). The nominee’s main areas of research are discrete mathematics, optimization, operations research. His special focus is on the design of efficient algorithms for hard combinatorial optimization problems, with application in telecommunications, chip design, energy distribution, public transport, etc. President and Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Academy of Sciences and Engineering and Foreign Associate of the US Academy of Engineering and Chinese Academy of Sciences, he has received the Alwin-Walther Medal, the John von Neumann Theory Prize, the Fulkerson Prize, honorary doctorate of Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology and other universities, among many others.
• KHANDUJA, Sudesh Kaur (India): (F) PhD, Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Punjab, India. The nominee has done commendable work in algebraic number theory and valuation theory. She has generalized the classical Eisenstein-Dumus-Schonemann irreducibility criteria, Hensel’s Lemma and Ore’s Theorem. She extended the well-known Dedekind’s theorem regarding splitting of primes. Member of the three Indian Science Academy, she has received the Professor V V Narlikar Memorial Lecture Award of INSA (2015).
• PUJALS, Enrique (Argentina): (M) PhD, Full Research, Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The nominee has contributed to develop a theory about robust dynamics and the role of homoclinic bifurcation as a universal mechanism to describe the way to produce very rich and complex dynamics. Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, he has received the TWAS 2009 Prize in Mathematics, the Order of Scientific Merit, the Ramanujan-ICTP Prize, the Mathematical Union of Latin America and the Caribbean Award in Mathematics, among others.
• ZHANG, Pingwen (China): (M) PhD, Professor, School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China. The nominee has made outstanding contributions to mathematical theory and computational methods of complex fluids, particularly axial symmetry of Doi-Onsager equation, relation of different models of liquid crystals and numerical methods of nucleation. Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he has received the Feng Kang Prize and the Second Grade National Natural Science Award of China.

09-Physics

• MENCHACA-ROCHA, Arturo (Mexico): (M) Doctor, Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México DF, México. The nominee has contributed to the study of heavy-ion nuclear reactions, and compared them with liquid-drop collisions, solving long-standing riddles. He was first to study A=2,3 antinuclei production in LHC p-p collisions. He obtained internal image of Teotihuacan’s Sun-Pyramid using muons and developed detection techniques for AMS and ALICE-CERN. He leads the ALICE-CERN upgrade effort concerning the scintillator-based part of Fast Interaction Trigger. Member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, he is an appointed Member of the Presidential Advisory Council for Science and has received the National Scientific Research Prize, the Fernando Alba Medal and the National Sciences-and-Arts Prize. He is General Coordinator, Presidential Advisory Council for Science of Mexico.
• TRIVEDI, Sandip (India): (M) PhD, Director and Senior Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Colaba, Mumbai, India. The nominee showed accelerating universe can arise in string theory, solved moduli stabilization problem, constructed first models of string inflation. He pioneered study of flux compactifications, dynamical supersymmetry breaking and attractor mechanism for non-supersymmetric black holes. Member of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi and the Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore, he has received the TWAS Prize for Physics (2015), the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Physical Sciences, among others.
• TURKI KAMOUN, Najoua (Tunisia): (F) Professor, Head of synthesis and multiscale analysis of nanomaterials in Physics Condensed Matter Laboratory, University of Tunis El-Manar, Faculty of Science, Physics Department, Tunis, Tunisia. The nominee has contributed significantly to the study of transparent conductive oxides (TCO): ZnO, SnO₂, In₂O₃, TiO₂), binary semiconductors (In₂S₃, SnS, CdS, Cu2S, ZnS, PbS), ternary (CuInS₂, In_(2-x)Ga_xS₂, P3HT) and quaternary compounds (CuIn_(1x)Ga_xS₂:CIGS and Cu₂ZnSnS₄:CZTS) for opto-electronic applications, photocatalysis and gas sensors. She has been charged with CMCU scientific projects and the AUF project between France and Tunisia and projects between Tunisia and Algeria.
• WANG, Wei Hua (China): (M) Doctoral Degree, Director of Key Lab of Extreme Physics condition laboratory, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. The nominee has demonstrated that elastic moduli as readily measurable parameters are critical for describing most fundamental issues such as deformation and relaxations in glasses which has been extensively used to develop ductile glasses. Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he has received the P. Y. Zhou Prize of Chinese Physical Society and the Second class National Award of Natural Science of China, twice.
• WANG, Yifang (China): (M) PhD, Director, Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), CAS, Beijing, China. The nominee has led the Daya Bay reactor neutrino experiment, which observed a new type of neutrino oscillation, and determined the corresponding neutrino mixing angle theta-13, opening the door for the future neutrino oscillation experiments. He also led the BESIII and JUNO experiments. Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he has received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Nikkei Asia Prize, the WKH Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics and the Ho Leung Ho Lee Scientific and Technological Progress Award, among others.

10-Social and Economic Sciences

• BAKIBINGA, David Justin (Uganda): (M) DPhil, Professor, School of Law, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. The nominee has made contributions to company law and governance in Commonwealth countries with focus on Uganda, UK, Ghana, Canada, Australia; analysis of equity, property and trusts law focusing on Uganda and Nigeria; revenue law and taxation focusing on income tax in Uganda since 1997 and Intellectual Property law in East Africa. Member of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences and the African Academy of Sciences, he is also member of the Uganda Law Society, East African Law Society.
• CHU, Yun-han (Taiwan, China): (M) PhD, Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, China. The nominee is a world-renowned scholar of democratisation and East Asian political economy and a pioneer in developing theories and methods for studying the consolidation of young democracies through survey research. He launched the Asian Barometer Survey, the region’s first and foremost comparative survey. Member of the Academia Sinica, he has received the National Science Council Outstanding Research Award three times and the Outstanding Achievement Award of the University of Minnesota, USA, among others.
• YESPOLOV, Tlektes (Kazakhstan): (M) Professor, Doctor of Economic Sciences, Rector, Kazakh National Agrarian University, Almaty, Kazakhstan. The nominee has contributed to the concept of formation of effective market system in the agricultural sector. He has created a scientific school of economists – agrarians and has contributed to manpower development. Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan, of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, he has received the Order Parasat, the Order Barys II degree, The Order of Glory of Kazakhstan, Medal of the Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan Aul sharuashylyғy salasynyң үzdіgі (Excellence in Agriculture) and the Medal For the Development of Science of Kazakhstan.
• ZHENG, Xiaoying (China): (F) PhD, Director/Professor, Institute of Population Research/WHO Collaborating Center of Reproductive Health and Population Science, Peking University, Beijing, China. The nominee’s interdisciplinary theoretical field and experimental work in poor areas of China has contributed to understanding the interaction of environmental, medical and social conditions on population health and disability. She has received the Third Prize, Outstanding Achievement Award in Higher Education Science Research twice, the 2015 TWAS-Celso Furtado Prize, the Soong Ching Ling Pediatric Medicine Award by Song Ching Ling Foundation, among others.