UK award for ICDDR,B scientist

An International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) scientist has received the prestigious ‘Senior Investigator Award’ from the UK-based Wellcome Trust.

Dr Shah M Faruque, director of ICDDR,B’s Centre for Food and Waterborne Diseases, is the first Bangladeshi to get this award.

The award is in recognition of his outstanding track record in research, ICDDR,B said in a statement on Sunday.

Under this award, the trust is expected to provide $2.7 million over five years to conduct research towards generating knowledge to control cholera epidemics in developing countries.

ICDDR,B executive director, Prof John Clemens said this award recognised the ground-breaking and world class research conducted at this institute, and would have “long-lasting effect on the quality of scientific research conducted in Bangladesh”.

Wellcome Trust was established in 1936 as an independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health.

The aim of this trust is to “achieve extraordinary improvements in health by supporting the brightest minds”.

Apart from funding biomedical research, it supports the public understanding of science.

The award is given to internationally renowned scientists who are chosen by a panel of leading global scientific experts through a stringent selection process.

“This award comes as recognition for our previous contribution, and will help to facilitate further research in cholera control, as well as help develop the scientific skills of junior scientists at ICDDR,B,” Dr Faruque said.

He and his research team had discovered how otherwise harmless Vibrio cholerae bacteria turn pathogenic, causing cholera, and the mechanisms by which the pathogen persists in the aquatic environment in countries where cholera is an epidemic disease.

Leading journal ‘Nature’ published that research.

UN agency WHO estimates cholera kills 120,000 people, mainly children, every year, and infects three to four million in poor countries in Africa and Asia, resulting in devastating economic impact.

Dr Faruque was also the first Bangladeshi recipient of the World Academy of Science’s TWAS prize in Medical Sciences in 2005.

He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Science and the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.