The TWAS Council at this year's TWAS General Meeting in Vienna, Austria, chose two distinguished researchers to give the TWAS Medal Lectures on their work next year at the Academy’s annual General Meeting. The two researchers are a woman and a man, Samira Omar Asem (Kuwait), and Subra Suresh (USA).

Samira Omar Asem is Principal Research Scientist at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research. She serves as Executive Board Member and Vice President for the Arab States of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), Regional Councillor for the West Asia Region of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and sits on the Board of Directors for the Asia Region of the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SER), USA. She is advisor and consultant to many local, regional and international organizations. She holds a PhD in Wild Land Resource Science from the University of California at Berkeley (1990). Omar Asem has extensively contributed to the conservation and sustainable development of renewable natural resources.

Indian-born Subra Suresh (ScD, 1981, MIT) is President of Carnegie Mellon University. He has previously served as Director of the National Science Foundation of the United States and as dean of engineering and Vannevar Bush professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is world renowned for his pioneering work on the mechanical properties of engineered and biological materials and for establishing novel connections between cell biomechanics and human diseases. He has authored over 240 research articles, 20 patents and 3 books. He has been honoured with the Senior Humboldt Prize, Gordon Moore Distinguished Professorship of Caltech and Brahm Prakash Professorship of India.