The Royal Society was established in 1660. Fellowship is awarded to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science. Some of the illustrious past Fellows were Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking.
Five TWAS Fellows have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2025. They are:
• Quarraisha Abdool Karim, TWAS President
She is TWAS president and the associate scientific director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is a leading South African infectious diseases epidemiologist whose seminal contributions have shaped the global HIV prevention landscape, notably in prevention technologies for women.
• Mohamed H.A. Hassan, TWAS Immediate Past President
He is the president of the Sudanese National Academy of Sciences. He was professor and dean of the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, University of Khartoum, Sudan; chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for International Development, Germany; president of the InterAcademy Partnership; and both a founding executive director and former president of TWAS.
• Chennupati Jagadish
He is a distinguished professor emeritus at the Australian National University (ANU) and president of the Australian Academy of Science. He is the head of the semiconductor optoelectronics and nanotechnology group at ANU. He has published more than 650 journal papers, holds five United States patents, and has contributed as co-author or co-editor to over 15 books.
• Ravigadevi Sambanthamurthi
She is a scientific consultant at the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) in Malaysia. She is the founding director of the Advanced Biotechnology and Breeding Centre at MPOB. She led the oil palm genome project, producing the first publicly available genome reference, published in Nature, and enabling key discoveries like the SHELL gene, the most important oil yield determinant.
• Wang Yifang
He is a professor and the director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Chinese Academy of Sciences. He obtained his BSc in nuclear physics from Nanjing University, China, and his PhD in high-energy physics from the University of Florence, Italy. He is the author of more than 500 scientific papers and the chief editor of two books.