Senator Richard Lugar (R–IN) has announced three new science envoys to the Muslim world: former NSF director Rita Colwell, currently at University of Maryland, College Park, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; Gebisa Ejeta of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana; and Alice Gast, president of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
They will join Bruce Alberts, former president of the National Academy of Sciences and editor-in-chief of Science (publisher of ScienceInsider); former NIH director Elias Zerhouni, and Nobel Prize winner Ahmed Zewail of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The envoys program was announced last fall by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton following a June speech in Cairo in which President Barack Obama called for a “new beginning” in relations with the Muslim world. The White House quoted the envoys as saying their travels have been fruitful thus far:
We were welcomed everywhere," said science envoy Zewail, who traveled to Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, and Dubai.
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