View this email in your browser

Year 2024 – Vol. 36 – N.3

Building bridges through science diplomacy

EDITORIAL

Seeding Sciences in the Global South

Lilliam Alvarez Díaz, TWAS Secretary-General

No country can achieve sustainable development without also building its strength in science and technology. This implies inexorably a need to reinforce science education, to train a critical mass of researchers, to create research infrastructures facilitating an environment in which innovation can thrive, and more.

The task is enormous: Governmental policies, financial backing, strategies, and well-defined priorities to seed and development of STI are all needed. Furthermore, universities and scientific centers must fund research and development, create inclusive avenues to ensure that the talent pool incorporates women, and establish robust education policies that can stand the test of time. And it must be done in countries where resources are scarce—in which fundamental needs such as food, water, and education compete with R&D for funding.

The advice of scientists, including leading scientists of TWAS, must be heard as we define our priorities in the face of urgent challenges in our developing nations and particularly in the UN-identified Least Developed Countries (LDCs). 

Science Diplomacy

Science diplomacy: Leveraging wisdom and action

AAAS and TWAS hosted the 11th edition of the flagship science diplomacy course, supported by Sida.

Nations need scientific advice to inform decisions for which there are daunting questions. And important answers can often be found in a rapidly growing field of science diplomacy, participants in this year’s course on the subject learned. Science diplomacy is a broad way of describing how the fields of science and diplomacy continually support one another, and by doing so they also help society as well.

Science diplomacy: from role-playing exercise to win-win solutions

At the 2024 AAAS-TWAS Course on Science Diplomacy, early-career scientists and policymakers from developing countries learned how to settle disputes and reach agreement.

Active listening, respect, and the ability to negotiate are indispensable skills for aspiring science diplomats. And, during the workshop, 20 participants from around the world were exposed to role-playing simulations to train these skills.

Introducing science diplomacy in Guatemala

After attending the AAAS-TWAS Course on Science Diplomacy, Guatemalan physicist María Eugenia Cabrera Catalán aims to build a scientific network with colleagues from neighbouring countries.

This year, she attended a science diplomacy course for the first time in her life. As a physicist, her concept of what science diplomacy was, as well as how it could be useful, was quite vague. However, through participating in the 11th AAAS-TWAS Course on Science Diplomacy, she realized that group discussions and simulated scenarios offer practical opportunities to challenge new skills.

Izmir Institute of Technology honoured with leadership award

An Alumnus of the TWAS Young Affiliates programme, Yusuf Baran of Türkiye, has received recognition on behalf of his scientific institution from Her Majesty Raja Zarith Sofiah, Queen of Malaysia.

Baran received the 2024 Leadership and Management Team of the Year, for his project 'A New University, A New Vision for the City', with the Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH), in Izmir, Türkiye. Through this project, the IZTECH administration convinced all interested parties, including government bodies, to make the Institute a hub for Türkiye, and this gave Izmir a new role as a global research and innovation centre. In the wake of this, IZTECH Technopark was tripled.

Biosecurity: where science and diplomacy combine

The latest event in TWAS’s science diplomacy series addressed respecting and navigating international treaties about biological dangers, from pandemics to weapons.

From virus detection to preventing biological weapon development—biosecurity is an arena in which science and diplomacy must ultimately combine, said the participants at a course co-organized by TWAS. The event brought 18 early-career researchers from low- and middle-income countries to Trieste, all life scientists for whom science diplomacy was new, to teach them about the field, as well as research responsibility.

TWAS HIGHLIGHTS

Turning light into energy

At a CAS-TWAS Centre of Excellence for Biotechnology symposium held in Beijing, China, energy experts described strategies to obtain clean energy from inexhaustible sources like sunlight and bacteria.

Every 1.5 millionths of a second the Sun releases more energy than all humans consume in an entire year, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This endless source of energy is something humanity is trying to exploit, replacing fossil fuels to meet the needs of an ever-growing population. However, the contribution of solar energy to global renewable electricity production remains low at 3.6%.

Rebuilding scientific knowledge post-crisis

Scientific organizations can foster a cohesive response for the support and integration of at-risk, displaced, and refugee scientists, said experts at Trieste Next TWAS round table.

The best time to start the reconstruction of a war-torn country is during the crisis itself, and both displaced scientists and international research institutes can play a crucial role in this process. This was the key message from the four panellists who attended the TWAS Round Table at Trieste Next on 27 September. Counsellor Alessandro Garbellini, head of the Office for Space, Scientific Multilateral Cooperation and Intellectual Property, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI), was one of the panellists.

A passion for problem-solving

Indian mathematician Neena Gupta received the 2023 TWAS-CAS Young Scientist Award for Frontier Science for providing a long-sought solution to an algebraic problem.

Throughout her childhood, she dreamed of a career in mathematics. And now her dream has come true. Today, she is an outstanding researcher and an award winner for her breakthrough discoveries in affine algebraic geometry. Mathematician Neena Gupta of India is the recipient of the 2023 TWAS-CAS Young Scientist Award, established in 2020 to acknowledge the scientific achievements attained by young scientists under 45 living and working in a developing country.

Fighting a silent killer in Burkina Faso

Burkinabé scientist Sanata Bamba-Pakotogo received the 2023 TWAS-Abdool Karim Award for improving healthcare for pulmonary fungal infections in her country.

TWAS has honoured a scientist dedicated to combating chronic pulmonary aspergillosis, a fungal disease that affects over 300,000 people each year. This disease poses a particular threat to those who have previously had tuberculosis (TB). Her innovative intervention has revolutionized the treatment approach for former TB patients with aspergillosis, who are frequently misdiagnosed and treated as if they had TB again.

Introducing science communication to international students

The UWC Adriatic met TWAS staff from the Public Information Unit during an interactive session about science communication and journalism.

On 23 October 2024, the TWAS Public Information Unit taught a class at the United World College of Adriatic in Duino, Italy, teaching students there how science communication works and why it matters. Around 25 students from all over the world, including developing countries, attended. TWAS staff taught them about the Academy’s role in the world, the difference between science communication and science journalism, the importance of storytelling, how journalists conduct interviews, and how to write a popular science story while avoiding jargon.

IN MEMORIAM

Support TWAS

A donation contributes to the advancement of science,
engineering, and technology in developing nations.

The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS) works to support sustainable prosperity through research, education, policy and diplomacy.

TWAS was founded in 1983 by a distinguished group of scientists from the global South and global North, under the leadership of Abdus Salam, the Pakistani physicist and Nobel laureate. As of January 2024, TWAS had 1,416 elected Fellows representing over 110 countries; 13 of them are Nobel laureates. It is based in Trieste, Italy, on the campus of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).

Through almost four decades, the Academy’s mission has remained consistent, namely to:

• Recognize, support and promote excellence in scientific research in the developing world
• Respond to the needs of young scientists in countries that are lagging in science and technology
• Promote South-South and South-North cooperation in science, technology and innovation, and
• Encourage scientific and engineering research and sharing of experiences in solving major problems facing developing countries.

With its partners, it has graduated over 1,000 PhDs and offered hundreds of postdoctoral fellowships to developing world scientists. The Academy also hosts prestigious scientific awards in the global South, has offered numerous research grants, and supports exchange visits for scientists.

TWAS hosts and works in association with two organizations, also hosted on the ICTP campus: the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) and the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) .

At its founding in 1989, OWSD was the first international forum uniting women scientists from the developing and developed worlds. Today, the organization has more than 8,200 members. Their objective is to strengthen the role of women in the development process and promote their representation in scientific and technological leadership.

IAP represents more than 140 national and regional science and medical academies worldwide. It provides high-quality analysis and advice on science, health and development to national and international policymakers and the public; supports programmes on scientific capacity-building, education and communication; leads efforts to expand international science cooperation; and promotes the involvement of women and young scientists in all its activities.

TWAS, a programme unit of UNESCO , receives its core funding from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

TWAS NEWSLETTER
Produced quarterly by The World Academy of Sciences
for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS)

Strada Costiera 11, 34151, Trieste, Italy
e-mail: info@twas.org | website: www.twas.org 
 
TWAS Council: https://twas.org/council 
TWAS Executive Director a.i.: Atish Dabholkar
TWAS Public Information Unit: https://twas.org/press-room