2017 Mustafa(pbuh) Prize Laureates Announced

Mustafa(pbuh) Science and Technology Foundation (MSTF) hosted a press conference of the ceremony which is set to start on 1 December, as Mahdi Safarinia and Hassan Zohoor and Hamidreza Rabiee responded to the questions by international reporters.
According to MSTF Media, during a press conference at the Institute of Culture, Art and Architecture held in Tehran Tuesday, Mahdi Safarinia, the president of MSTF, Hassan Zohoor, head of the Mustafa(pbuh) Prize Scientific Committee, and Hamidreza Rabiee, director of Information and Communication, Science and Technology of Mustafa(pbuh) Prize, highlighted the main assessment committee policies for evaluating the scientific works of the nominees.

“In the three specialized fields of the Mustafa(pbuh) Prize, the nominees should be Muslim and frequently travel to their home countries, but they do not have to be necessarily Muslim in the fourth general field which includes top scientific achievements in all areas of science and technology. However, there would be no other limitations regarding gender, religion, and age,” said Hassan Zohoor, head of the Mustafa(pbuh) Prize Scientific Committee.
“The nominees were elected among 700 Muslim scientists, 200 scientific institutes, and organizations in the Islamic world,” said Hassan Zohoor, head of the committee.
“The primary and final assessment processes of the Mustafa(pbuh) Prize, while 241 scientific works were selected during the first phase and finally two of them were presented for the prize,” head of the Mustafa(pbuh) Prize Scientific Committee underlined.
According to Mr. Zohoor, 363 international institutes, 51 Islamic countries and 1622 scientists from 28 countries had attended the nomination process of 2017 Mustafa(pbuh) Prize.

On the other hand, director of Information and Communication, Science, and Technology of Mustafa(pbuh) Prize Hamidreza Rabiee described the role of the policy-making council as proposing general criteria and introducing measures by the Islamic centers of the world to be taken into consideration by local and international workgroups of the Mustafa(pbuh) Prize.
“Information and Communication, Science and Technology of Mustafa(pbuh) Prize jury include 7 international members, together with 2 Iranian representatives, and international counsellors,” he said.
“The counselling group comments on the scientific works and scientifically investigates the nomination process. However, the members of the Mustafa(pbuh) prize policy-making council are among the well-known scholars of the universities in Europe and the Islamic world countries,” he stressed.

Sami Erol Gelenbe (born 1945, Turkey), a computer scientist, electronic engineer who applied mathematician at Imperial College, London, UK, and M. Amin Shokrollahi (born 1964, Iran) a Professor of Math and Computer Science who has worked on a variety of topics including coding theory and algebraic complexity theory, are the two laureates introduced by Rabiee to the international reporters at the press conference.
The 2017 Mustafa(pbuh) Prize is going to be granted to Gelenbe due to his pioneering research on “Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computer Systems.” He invented the random neural network and the eponymous G-networks or Gelenbe Networks as a model for queueing systems.

Shokrollahi is also to be prized in the field of Information Theory in recognition of his outstanding work on Communications Raptor Codes – the world’s most advanced forward error correction (FEC) code for data networks – Raptor codes invented by Shokrollahi in 2001, provide protection against packet loss by sending additional repair data used to reconstruct “erased” or “lost” data.

The president of MSTF Saffarinia said: “Mustafa(pbuh) Prize ceremony is the most significant part of the Foundation’s volumes of programs. Nevertheless, the MSTF has other considerable activities at different levels which go beyond the prize.”
The third meeting of the Science and Technology Exchange Program will be held simultaneously with the ceremony of awarding Mustafa Prize in Tehran.
Meanwhile, Knowledge Application and Notion for Society (KANS) forum is one of our other programs, organized for students that will contribute to the “environment, health, energy, economy, Islamic banking and information and communication technology,” Mr. Saffarinia added.

On the other hand, Mr. Saffarinia emphasized on the endowment process of the establishment and operation of the Foundation, and announced that major scientific works, as well as international investors, will be introduced on 3 December.
The prize will be awarded in four categories, namely “Life Science and Medical Sciences,” “Nanoscience and Nanotechnology”, “Information and Communication Science and Technologies” and “Top Scientific Achievement in other fields”
Laureates in each section will be granted $500,000, financed through the endowments made to the prize. The laureates will also be commended with special medals and certificates.
The Mustafa(pbuh) Prize policy Council, tasked with supervising various procedures of the event is comprised of high-profile universities and academic centers of OIC member states. The prize will be granted to the works, which are deemed to have improved human life and made tangible and cutting-edge innovations on the boundaries of science or have presented new scientific methodology.