Address by Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of the ceremony to award the UNESCO Medal For Contributions to the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies UNESCO, 11 October 2016 Dear Excellencies, Dear friend Kharkin, Dear Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to welcome you to UNESCO for the 6 th award ceremony of the UNESCO Medal for Contributions to the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies. This Medal was born in 2010, from an initiative by the Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems, with the goal to shine light on the benefits of progress in nanoscience and nanotechnologies for our societies, for our economies, I would say, for all of us. This is one of the most exciting new branches of science, and UNESCO is committed to nurturing its full potential to support all societies, especially developing countries, to take forward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to improve education, to bolster healthcare, to facilitate transportation. In this spirit, I wish to congratulate our first laureate, Dr Darwish Al Gobaisi from the United Arab Emirates. Dr Al Gobaisi is a driving force behind the Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems this is the world s most comprehensive knowledge base on sustainable development, bringing together 8,000 experts from 110 countries to create a unique virtual dynamic DG/2016/159 Original: English
library, equivalent to approximately 600 printed volumes, evolving under the aegis of UNESCO. I think we can say that Professor Kharkin is the soul of this initiative which started over 20 years ago. Dr Al Gobaisi is Editor-in-Chief and co-chairman of the Joint Committee with UNESCO. Dr Darwish Al Gobaisi, I am pleased to invite you to receive the UNESCO Medal. If you allow me, our second laureate is the pioneering Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from the USA. It is the first time in the history of this medal that it has been awarded to an institute and I believe this is a good evolution. UNESCO is proud to associate itself with this new option because we are all aware that research is the fruit of teamwork. MIT s core mission, as we know, is to advance knowledge and educate students in science and technology to best serve the scientific community and society in the 21 st century. Many of the scientific breakthroughs and technological advances, fuelled by MIT s spirit of interdisciplinary exploration, have been in the field of nanosciences and nanotechnologies. I am very happy that Professor Mildred Dresselhaus, representative of Professor Rafael Reif, President of MIT, is here to receive the UNESCO Medal. The St Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics is our third Laureate. The St Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, a leading Russian technical university, has established one of the most important Innovation Technologies Centers in Saint Petersburg, along with two Business Incubators, to create synergies between the research, education and innovation activities with nanoscience and nanotechnologies as a focus. DG/2016/159 - Page 2
I would like to mention here that the Scientific Advisory Board held a meeting in December in Saint Petersburg, and I would like to once again, thank the Russian Federation for hosting this event. It allowed us to witness the cutting edge technology and great educational infrastructure this city has to offer. I am honoured to invite Professor Vladimir Vassiliev, Rector of the St Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, corresponding member of the Russian Academies of Science and of Education, to receive the UNESCO Medal. Our next Laureate is Professor Jung-Il Jin, whom we met before here in Paris in 2011 during the launching event of the International Year of Chemistry Dr Jung-Il Jin is professor at Korea University in Seoul, former President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and Chairman of the Korean Federation of Science Culture and Education Societies. His research has focussed on liquid crystalline and poly-conjugated polymers and the materials science of DNA, about which he has published some 400 articles. Allow me once again to thank the Republic of Korea for the excellent cooperation we enjoy and in particular for the International Year of Chemistry, where we celebrated the great solutions that Science offers to solve issues related to health, to the availability of fresh water, to bring sustainable perspectives for our societies. I am pleased to invite Professor Jung-Il Jin to receive the UNESCO Medal. Our next laureate is Professor James Floyd Scott, Director of Research at the Physics Department of Cambridge University, United Kingdom. Professor Scott is referred to as the father of integrated ferroelectrics and he has been awarded the Gold Medal of the Materials Research Society for fundamental contributions to the materials science of oxides underlying current and future electronic devices. It sounds complicated, but I am sure our life would be more difficult without them. DG/2016/159 - Page 3
I invite you, Professor Scott, to receive the UNESCO Medal. Professor Аnton Grigorievich Naumovets, Academician, First Vice-President of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, is our next laureate. Professor Naumovets is Chief Researcher at the Institute of Physics, and member of the European Academy of Science, Art and Literature and of the United Kingdom Institute of Physics. His scientific activity has focused on surface physics, electron emission phenomena and nanoelectronics, about which he has authored more than 200 scientific publications, and monographs. I remember that we celebrated the 60th anniversary of Ukraine s membership to UNESCO in 2014 in Kiev, exactly at the National Academy of Science and I cannot think of a more appropriate place to hold such event. Could I invite you, Professor Naumovets, to receive the UNESCO Medal? Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Allow me to congratulate you all once again. We are living in times of great change, of new technologies, new discoveries, when we must do everything to shape progress for the benefit of all this calls for creating and sharing new knowledge and this is why your work, your engagement is so important. For the same reason, I welcome the initiative of Magister Press to translate the UNESCO Science report - towards 2030 into Russian and I invite you all to the brief presentation of this Russian edition later today. This report monitors the state of higher education, science, technology and innovation worldwide and places a wealth of information and data on the development path countries are following at the disposal of member states. Translating it into Russian will make its findings available to a large part of the planet and contribute as such to building the knowledge societies that we need to achieve real sustainable development. DG/2016/159 - Page 4
Let me thank also the Russian Federation and in particular Magister Press and the St Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO) for sponsoring this Russian edition of the UNESCO Science Report. I also wish to thank the International Commission for the Development of the Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) for its contribution to the Russian publication of the Encyclopaedia of Space Science. In this spirit, I thank you all and for being here again, to remind us all of the importance of the S in UNESCO and I am glad to reiterate our commitment to Sciences here at UNESCO, through the promotion of Science Education and by advocating for Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) Education, in particular with girls, to make full use of the talent our societies have to offer, by exploring and promoting Science as a tool to offer solutions for the challenges we face, and, something we consider very important here, for the power of science to bring people together, and contribute as such to peace. Allow me to finish by wishing you all every success in your future endeavours. DG/2016/159 - Page 5