On March 22, 2024, eFood chief editor, Prof. Mohamed A. Farag, received the UNESCO–Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences, in recognition of his long and distinguished career in the life sciences. UNESCO will hold an award ceremony during the tenth Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development on April 23 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Prof. Farag is not only an outstanding editor in eFood, but also a specialist of metabolomics, who is one of the pioneers in this field in Africa. He assesses changes in the composition of a metabolite present within a cell, an organism or a tissue. Moreover, Prof. Farag has developed a metabolomic platform that is the first of its kind. With the use of this platform, researchers can monitor the volatile compounds emitted by microbes for both medical and agricultural applications.

This prize rewards exceptional research that has contributed to improving the quality of human life, Prof. Farag was awarded this prize for his seminal work in agrochemical discovery using metabolomics, which has already aided in identifying novel biocontrol agents from soil bacteria that can boost plant growth.

Prof. Mohamed Ali Farag

Pharmacognosy Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University

Dr. Mohamed A. Farag is a Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University and a German Humboldt Scholar. Prof. Farag received his Ph.D. from Texas Tech University, and served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Nobel Foundation, and at the James Graham Brown Cancer Center in U.S.A. Prof. Farag focuses on plant metabolomics and natural product chemistry. He has received the Abd el Hameed Shoman Award (2016), the Egyptian National Scholarship Award (2012), the Cairo University Award (2009), and the TWAS-Award in Scientific Diplomacy (2014). Prof. Farag has published over 300+ scientific papers in journals such as PNAS, Plant Pysiology, Plant Journal, Trends in Food Science & Technology, etc., with over 18,000 citations and h-index 58. Prof. Farag currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of eFood and Journal of Advanced Research.

More information: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/laureates-china-egypt-and-greece-win-unesco-equatorial-guinea-international-prize-research-life