The professors Ahmed Zewail, Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, Calif., USA and Nobel laureate in Chemistry 1999, and Rita Colwell, Director for NSF in Washington, DC, are two of the newly elected foreign members of the Academy.
Ahmed Zewail is presently the Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics, and the Director of the NSF center, the Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (LMS), at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In addition he has contributed actively in promoting research and education in the Third World. He has also given popular presentations for high school children at the Academy. He became a new foreign member of Class IV (Chemistry).
Rita Colwell, who became elected as a new foreign member in Class VIII (Engineering Sciences), is Director for NSF (the National Science Foundation) in Washington. Before that she was President of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, 1991-1998, and she remains Professor of Microbiology and Biotechnology (on leave) at the University of Maryland. She is a prominent scientist and her research into the spread of cholera and its preventive measures has received international recognition. At the NSF, she has initiated programmes intended for women and minority members in Mathematics and Engineering Sciences.
The Class for Engineering Sciences also elected four other foreign members: Ursula Keller, a prominent laser researcher from ETH in Zürich, Switzerland, Graham Goodwin, ARC Federation Fellow, Australia, Nobuhide Kasagi, University of Tokyo, Japan, the director for DFKI (Deutsches Institut für Künstliche Intelligenz) Wolfgang Wahlster, Universität des Saarlandes, Germany.