TEHRAN – The busts of the 2017 Mustafa Prize laureates – the Iranian Professor Mohammad Amin Shokrollahi and the Turkish-French academic Sami Erol Gelenbe - were set up at the Pardis Technology Park in Tehran on Monday.

Held biennially, the Mustafa Prize is a science and technology award, granted to top researchers and scientists from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states.

The award is presented in the fields of life and medical science and technology, information and communication science and technology, nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Several officials including Pardis Technology Park Director Mehdi Saffarnia, deputy vice president for international and technological affairs Ali Morteza Birang attended the event, Mehr reported.

The Mustafa Prize eyes peace, prosperity and safety and plans to develop science and technology between Islamic countries, Saffarinia who doubles as the managing director of Mustafa Foundation said during the ceremony.

“We plan to boost the relation between researchers in the Islamic countries and create a synergy in the field of science between the countries,” he explained. 

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) award was given to Professor Gelenbe, a computer scientist, electronic engineer and applied mathematician for his pioneering research on “Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computer Systems”.

Professor Shokrollahi, an Iranian professor of math and computer science, who worked on a variety of topics including coding theory and algebraic complexity theory, was honored for his “Technology and Information Theory”.

The first two previous rewards in 2015 were in nanotechnologies, health sciences and drug delivery and the two this year were in the field of securing networks and mathematics.

The first round of the Mustafa Prize awards occurred in 2015 in Tehran in which Professor Omar Yaghi from Jordan, a specialist in nanosciences, and Professor Jackie Ying from Singapore in bio-nanotechnology category, were the recipients.

SB/MG