 You're also probably going to have some... Yeah, I'm going to make it more fast. So, no, it's not going to be like that. So, I would... No, I have done it all, I've done it literally. The first few minutes it gets better. It's fine, I think that's not important, but I was just wondering. So that we are a bit more... Hello, hello, welcome, welcome back, welcome back. Okay, so, welcome everybody. Good afternoon. It's a great pleasure to see all the young faces here, coming from so many different countries, so welcome. This is perhaps your first... This is your first major event at ICTP that you're attending. I'm also very happy that this is a... After two years, you know, it's nice that you are... We are able to really see each other in person, unlike the last two years. You can also live a more normal life, you know, take a stroll by the seaside, which was not the case last two years. So, welcome. And it's, I think, a nice introduction for you to be present to this spirit of the Salam Award ceremony, to really get a feeling for the spirit of the center. I'm pleased to have Ahmed Salam here, the son of our founding director, Abdul Salam, who will formally introduce the 2022 award winners and the winners themselves. So, we have three of them here. Let me very quickly introduce them. I think Ahmed will say more about them. So, sincere welcome to Professor Malik Maza, whose career has been intertwined with that of ICTP for decades. You know, given the conversions of his own vision for fostering research and inling isolation of scientists in Africa, which is the same mission as ICTP, especially through the creation of NanoafNet, which is the pan-African voice in the area of nanoscience and nanotechnology, which is recognized worldwide. And now, as I was discussing with him yesterday, the next step is going to be accent, and ICTP is looking forward to collaboration on that front. Then, the next person, awardee is Madame Kancheta Mosca, whose history with ICTP also spans almost the entire life of the center itself. And the diploma program's numbers, you know, last year we celebrated and some thousand students had graduated in the last 30 years. I mean, they speak for themselves. But it was Kancheta, who through the early days in 1991, until her retirement in 2002, she provided the support, you know, both actual secretarial support, but also moral support to the students to endure this one year of very intense study and cultural change. And you will understand what I mean. Sometimes it can be difficult, especially in the beginning months. So, and finally, warm welcome to Professor Adnan Shehab Eldin, whose relationship with ICTP also date back to 1976, after he met Abdul Salam in Kuwait. And at that time, he was the vice president of Kuwait University and director general of Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, which is one of the most important research centers in the Gulf world. Since then, he has been very supportive of ICTP activities. Even when he left Kuwait for positions in UNESCO, IEA and OPEC in Vienna, very steadfast support when he was the director general of KFAS. And I really cannot think of better ambassadors for the mission of ICTP than these people who are here in very different parts of the world in very different roles. And so, it's a very pleasure for me to welcome you to this wonderful ceremony. And it's actually a special occasion because I want to now sincerely thank Adnan for being the first one. This was one of the little surprises I had promised to the staff meeting. He's going to be the first one, and I think it's very appropriate that he's the first one to contribute to the International Science Endowment Fund that I mentioned before to the staff, which is our effort to increase our resources. And his contribution will allow ICTP to apply for grants, primarily for the support of students. So, thank you, Adnan. So, it's for all of you here for the students. And the creation of such a fund together with this contribution, this is our, really, we have been in the last two years, we have been really working hard on this. This is the cornerstone of our new effort to raise funds from more broadly than our institutional donors so far. And I really want to personally thank Adnan for his support. On another note, I'm also very pleased. I mean, today we will have another little surprise for the diploma students which I will come to later, which is once again related to the diploma program. For now, I will congratulate the three winners and I give the floor to Ahmed. You can go there. The name for the most gracious ever merciful. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it is a great pleasure to be with you again after the gap imposed by COVID. And it's always very emotional for me to stand here because this is where my father stood all those years ago and I have been visiting here now. As I said to my son, Kasim, who's with me on this trip, I first visited ICTP 57 years ago, which puts a pretty interesting age on me. I was a very little boy then, but it's 57 years I've been coming here and that probably puts me almost unique in the category of visitors to ICTP. And I have many, many memories of being here, many memories of being with my father and those very first days in the Piazza Oberdam, the centre-triest, sitting in his office with him, playing on the blackboard while he did his work and I used to rub out his work and did my drawings on the blackboard, which he was not very pleased with, but he forgave me then. So it's an honour to represent the whole family, my sisters who cannot be here and my brother as well, and to represent the whole Salam family. And it's a very important time for us because it's a generational commitment that we have to ICTP. I won't take up too much of your time with some of the war stories of ICTP, but the thing that I wanted to talk about was essentially the essence of ICTP and the centre was not created nor did it come about because of a scientific need. It came about because of a humanitarian need and that need was recognised by my father. As many of you know, the Salam in Arabic means a servant of peace and that name was not a name just given to him in an ordinary fashion. Again, as some of you will have seen in the film, you'll know I've told the story that his father, before he was born, my grandfather, before my father was born, had a dream and in that dream he was given a son and he was told in that dream to call the son of the Salam. So we believe that God gave him his name and that's a very important sign. And as you know, my father lived up to that name and for us, ICTP remains his greatest legacy. This legacy came about from an extreme and as Nigel Calder, when he stood here in 1997 and gave a talk about my father, he talked about his cosmic anger and that anger was an anger and a passion to address the inequality between the developing world and the developed world and the arrogance of the developing world believing that they could repress the developed world and people like you, just by accident of their birth who were deprived of opportunities in their own countries and that was his driving passion. He, my father himself, was of course deeply affected by the predicament of whether to leave his family back in 1952-1953 or leave his country or leave physics and it was at a very heavy heart that he chose to leave his family and leave his country. And if you can remember, some of you will be aware of the fact that in those days the only form of communication was good old snail mail. You wrote a letter and it took three weeks to get to the person and you waited three weeks for the reply to come. Nobody had telephones in those days in Pakistan. There was no question of direct dialing. If somebody, I remember when my father used to book a call he had phoned the operator, book a call and my grandfather didn't have a telephone. He didn't have the money to have a telephone. So the message would go to the neighbour who had the telephone to say we're going to phone tomorrow. Can you please come and make sure that my grandfather comes and sits in your house and waits all day for that phone to ring? And that was how they used to communicate. So you can imagine the impact that had on my father not having any communication with his family at all for weeks on end. And that was a huge wrench for him. And in his mind he vowed that no one else should ever have to face that decision. And he also knew that for any country to grow economically and be independent economically it needed to have access to science and technology and it needed access to science and technology in its own home territory where people could benefit from the education that they received and take it back to their own countries and give that education further to the citizens of their own countries. And that essentially was the essence of ICTP for people not to be part of the brain drain leaving their countries for the developed countries where the opportunities were much brighter and much greater. That's as I said with how ICTP was born and father fought incredible prejudice and ignorance at the highest levels in order to make this dream a reality. And I saw firsthand how hard he worked how hard he fought and how he overcame the doubters by his intellect and his charm. He beat the objectors to setting up ICTP and here we are all these years later and there's you the younger generation about to take over. His dreams have come true and it's wonderful to see the results of all his hard work. And it wasn't just at the beginning that he fought so hard. Throughout his life he had to work hard to keep the lights on, literally keep the lights on. And at this stage I must pay full tribute to UNESCO, the IEA for their support but above all else for the generosity of the Italian government who as Atheish will know have gone out of their way over many years to support ICTP and have taken a great pride in ICTP and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. Now while father was working so hard to keep the centre's lights on, literally he was also doing his own work and he was running the centre and typically he would say his day was divided into three parts. One for his visitors and students one third for his science and third to run the centre. That would have broken many a lesser man but somehow he made it happen and he gave all the visitors and the students his time, his support and his commitment. And yet through all this he never forgot his humble roots and never forgot to make time for everybody who needed it and he sacrificed himself, his life, his family and ultimately his health for the sake of his students and the ICTP. And it exists that we the Salam family remember as a spirit of Salam and it is this spirit that we wish to keep alive the spirit of selflessness of sacrifice, of commitment and a genuine love for humanity. The spirit of Salam award is an award given by the family to a person who has worked tirelessly and without limits in the spirit of the Salam well beyond their job specification. Someone who's gone beyond their defined role and gone out of their way to guide, help, mentor or just be there for members of ICTP family. And we passionately believe it is critical and essential to keep the spirit of Salam alive and to remind everyone that this is the essence of ICTP and it was a quality of other Salam. It's what differentiated ICTP then it differentiates it now and it's what makes it unique even in this day and age. I'm absolutely delighted that we have such incredible recipients today and honoured to have them with us today. I just wanted to say the award is open to all and we want to recognise the scientific staff the administrative staff the maintenance staff every single person is eligible for this award because that's where my father treated everybody. He didn't have any hierarchy between people everybody was just as important to him and if anyone has touched your lives and helped you please nominate them put their names down and nominate them for award for next year we really want to make this as inclusive as an award and a recognition as possible. I'll end with a few thoughts from one of father's collaborators a student and a deep friend of his Professor Riaz Adline who wrote in his recently published autobiography he suggested Salam's work and life summarised in two words curiosity and compassion Viktor Weizkov said compassion without curiosity is ineffective and curiosity without compassion is inhuman curiosity led Salam to seek unity in the various phenomena of nature but it was his compassion which led him to seek unity in mankind and to work for the benefit of mankind and this was a crowning achievement for Salam's work and the creation of the ICTP and its development is testament to other Salam Ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for your time and I'll go on to the great pleasure of introducing of the Salam's personal vision and his relationship and if I start with Malik who as Atisha just said he has gone well beyond his own work specification to put it in a very crude sense and out of his way to go beyond the sense of duty and work with the ICTP office of external activities and played a crucial role in helping science not only in Africa but also in other Islamic countries and in Pakistan as well which is always very close to my father's heart we're deeply in gratitude Malik and we absolutely recognise and honour the work that he's done in father's memory perhaps Conchetta has done more in her own way by being as a mentor and a support which is what father spent so much time doing and maybe Conchetta you subconsciously picked up the vibes from my father and that gave you the ability to support the young students and help them which is a critical part of what they do as Satish said it's a very intense course and the fact that you've been able to hold their hands, guide them through it has been wonderful thank you so much from all of us Adnan is the exception because of course he's not a member of ICTP staff but his incredible commitment to my father and the man who stood up in the face of a great deal of opposition and constantly supported and worked for my father made us feel that he had to be recognised and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude and even more so now with the teacher's recent announcement thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all three of you for your help and support thank you very much I believe Professor Naan if you'd like to step up and I'll take my apologies we're starting with you first Program director Professor Dabholkar sorry Professor Salam dinner, junior and senior colleagues first of all I wish to express my gratitude to the ICTP family and to my two senior colleagues here present with us I'm really thrilled to be in this Kingdom here of the ICTP for us in Africa it is the mecca of science it is the Vatican of science it is Jerusalem of science whenever we come here to ICTP and we go back we are fully fully under and we know that we have enough resources to be able to come with the sound impact so far in Africa so I wish to share with you some slides colleagues just to show you how the compass of Ustad Abdul Salam was used by us from Africa and in the south in general to trigger more or less and pursue on his footsteps next please I wish to single out some of the initiatives that I was involved in either initiating or implementing with a number of colleagues from the family of the ICTP here the Condas and Meta the international relations office and others I would like to single one the first one is the LAM network that Prof. Ahmed Wa-Gay and Prof. Paul Bouabatsua from Ghana and Senegal respectively have initiated and implemented and it was in the early times of late Galena Denardo his soul stays in peace the other one the LAM network was created during the era of Ustad Abdul Salam himself but after that it has created a huge boost of lasers and optics photonics in the African continent and then after the African Union in that time NEPAD has came with the possibility to widen this LAM network and to give it more resources and so on and therefore there was a creation of the African laser center which is based indeed in South Africa supported by the South African government at a certain extent but driven by African fellows who have been mainly from the ICTP photonics and optics labs here the other one that I would like just to mention the idea was more or less took place somehow from the condos and Meta division and that is the African material research society which was created in Pretoria but supported by the NSF in the U.S. that was in the 1999 then in 2005 I was a student here and I was coming and that the ICTP has opened its doors for us and I came here and let Gallino de Nardo may his soul he assisted us as well as with the photonic community that is Johnny Amela and the International Office of course have allowed us to initiate here and to launch in 2005 in Adriatico the nano science African network which became extremely very dynamic and we were emulating and copying the model of the ICTP somehow or more or less the diploma program that my left angel has initiated with the late Abdul Salam and 2006 of course again the ICTP was the source of initiating the African physical society the IFPS that was in Dakar in 2006 and again with the condos and Meta and Ralph and Johnny Amela and other colleagues we came with initiating the African network for solar energy that was the idea was born here the ICTP of course and it was launched in Linz in Austria and in 2013 in that time I must admit we have had the support very robust support letter and moral commitment from the ICTP and the UNESCO requested us to apply and to be awarded the soul UNESCO nano South and that was created in 2013 and of course among others I'm just singling out some there is assessment there is quite a large cohort of initiatives in Africa and running extremely very well very smoothly and effectively next please and this culminated of course colleagues by the creation of the ICTP Africa in East Africa the AFAR which is how can I say the moon of the ICTP in Africa as the one in Brazil we do understand that how can I say the sun and the moon both of them do shine but one is the source of light the other one does reflect it we do understand our mother institution is ICTP and in Trieste and ICTP is in East Africa in Rwanda for which the patron is the Honorable President Kagame as a patron and as a moral guarantee showing that in effect policy makers now in the African continent are convinced about the science and the technology I would like just to mention that and if you allow me to do so the first revelation to the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi was read on the on the name of his almighty and that was read the commandment where the table of commandment was written therefore Moses has to read also and so on and so on so it's extremely important the education is the cornerstone of any belief and so on and therefore we continue in that regard next please I wish to share with you some hard fact as we saw as we say as St. Thomas comes St. Thomas on a caucus convo as St. Thomas and only what we see here we have duplicated at a little at the nanoscale of course at our level and not at the level of the mother institution ICTP but we have duplicated having somehow and emulated what Honorable Madame Mosca has initiated with Ustad Salam created something equivalent of at the post-graduate level and we have fellows from Burkina Faso, Uganda Cameroon South Africa and so on and so on a number of African countries and but we have not neglected those who are in a difficult situation those who are in a war zones, Yemen and Ethiopia and other parts of the world and in particular here in Libya for example the gentleman and his wife next please as again the nanoathlete has allowed us more or less to embark in this program that Honorable Mosca has more or less initiated with Ustad Salam, late Ustad Salam sorry here so we within the UNESCO chair we increased more or less the number and in particular the gender aspect I was just telling some of the colleagues is that the first believer in Islam was Khadija the wife of the wife of Rasul Sallallahu ala Muhammad I do firmly believe that likely the Islam would not have such a dimension all over the word if the first believer was not a lady and I also go that route and say that there would be no Christianity if there were no married a virgin if there was no married a marriage there would be no no Christianity so the role of women in this society and therefore we embark in gender equity next please and that is really a must for us it's a must for us humanity for since historical dates have neglected the half of humanity we cannot do that we have to embark in I can say boosting the education and bringing our sisters and our mothers within the same path as we have had the chance to do next please next please so we embarked in a co-diploma we embarked in a co-diploma and I can say as you can see fellows from Hong Kong countries they do indeed embark with us and they end by getting an anglophone diploma some of them they get two double diplomas because they go back home where I can say have a massive somehow a large amount of databases and results they go back where they can also work on other subjects and so on next please next next please just a typical example junior senior and junior colleagues just to give you an idea when you publish you are cited if you if the research work that you are doing is of an interest such colleagues from China from Russia from wherever they are they will write your work that means they have read it and they have been interested by it and as you can see colleagues before we were at some turns 20 per year citations once we embarked in 2005 with the nano Fnet and the chair which were for which the ICTP was emulated somehow or copied somehow duplicated at a small level as you can see the application there was a rise of an exponential type of rise of that and we always look how much we are doing in 2022 we are at around 3700 thank you next please again colleagues I would just give back to Caesar which belongs to Caesar and to Cleopatra which belongs to Cleopatra is that yes indeed we are extremely concerned to the UNESCO and to the spirit of Abdul Salam late Abdul Salam and in that regard the Trieste system has played a major role in that regard in particular the the ICTP Abdul Salam ICTP center and colleagues I would like just to share with you this today we have we inherit we inherit in different ways we have two generations of late Abdul Salam we are very well aware that the DNA is inherited 50% from our mothers and 50% of our fathers we have the living DNA of late Abdul Salam with us today and but we have there is another inheritance type approach that is the spirit and that spirit of Abdul Salam is with us it's not DNA but it is and it's entangled with the natural DNA and may his spirit stays forever in effect we from the African perspective again Abdul Salam Legacy and Abdul Salam center and his vision is somehow the equivalent of the North Star or the Southern Cross stars that we use as a compass to guide ourselves and we will ensure that his legacy will stay forever Shukran Jazeera now we call on concerto please as you can see I'm very nervous I'm not used to speaking in front of large audiences but I'm honored to accept this spirit of Salam award and thank the Salam family the director of the center and the awards committee for bestowing it upon me and I still feel all I did was my job as best I could I greatly admired Professor Salam and always remember the sense of mission he instilled in all of us who were fortunate enough to work under him working at the center was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life especially when I was secretary of the diploma program and met such deserving young people many scientists thought the program wouldn't work but I remembered that Professor Salam had had an ICTP degree program in his heart already in the 1970s and I was confident that if all of us Professors Yulu and Ranj Bardaimi who were the acting heads of the program the coordinators the lecturers and the ICTP staff did our best to make it work it would many scientists I think everybody for their collaboration because it was the combined effort and commitment that made the program become one of the most successful here at the center without everyone's input it would never have been this good I loved working for the students getting to know them on a personal basis throughout their good and bad times I know how difficult it is to live in a foreign country with a different climate nor its language and customs studying under lectures who had new ways of teaching and such a diverse group of students as classmates in fact during their time in the program some told me that they had never slept even one night away from their own home others had never seen snow or had never seen women dressed in a certain type of attire some had never met a person of a different culture thus began the shared lunch hours and afterward coffee meetings with the students outings or parties to mark special occasions including whenever the coordinators and lecturers so they would be together on a more informal basis the students brought a youthfulness to the center and despite some difficulties they all made it through I'm sure that you new students will also succeed in doing so I enjoyed every minute of the diploma program sharing the students joys and woes their fears and satisfactions learning from as well as helping them they became the other children I didn't have because I have only one and with many of the students warm, friendly and lasting relationships were formed I remember each of the past students for some personal characteristics they had or for some particular event that happened during their stay from time to time I'm still in touch with a good number of them and have met, so to speak their new families wives, husbands and children as they form many have won prestigious awards, honors and grants many have their own laboratory or research group still others are now in important positions all tell me they are doing their best to help young students advance whether in their home country or from their adopted country much like Professor Salam himself did so thanks go to them as well for the success of this program I close by sending them all my most affectionate regards wishing all of you including Patricia and Sandra who worked so hard to look after the students the best in the future and again thanking those who were so kind as to grant me the award the honor and recognition are appreciated and will be cherished thank you so much and last but by no means least Professor Naan it would be a great pleasure good evening and thank you very much Dr. Ahmed thank you very much Dr. Ateesh for your kind words and distinguished guests members of the faculty students fellows all of you I extend to you my sincerest greetings tonight in accepting this award that is very dear to my heart I want to thank the family of Dr. Salam for bestowing on me this honor with my co-recipient and Ateesh for his really doing such a great job thank you all it is a privilege for me to be among select awardees not only this year to all of those years because the award recognizes the dedication of the Salam had for humanitarian passion vision for the development and advancement of science and technology and innovation in the developing countries and that to me is very dear that's what I have devoted my career and there is a reason why I devoted my career because I was one of the many lucky scientists that were touched by Dr. Salam in person as we say not virtually and I have been influenced by his guidance and inspired by his vision and dedication you know my first encounter with Professor Salam was in the 70s before I came to ICTP in Kuwait he used to come to Kuwait especially after 73 to advocate to urge the region to use its wealth to build centers of excellence to re-store Ummatul Alam that's the words that he used and we maintained our relationship we interacted through not just the 70s but the 80s and 90s until God rested him from the endeavors that he committed himself to do and you know Professor Salam recognized something very important that I believe in and he taught me that that science development flourishes with diversity and openness open system diverse system survive I was recently in a conference in Italy in Lake Como a guy from Toyota on electric vehicle cells chose to talk about biodiversity is the reason we are all here because that maintained resilience in the evolution of human being against extension the dinosaurs 70% of living things disappeared with that big extension but because there was diversity immense diversity survived and we are better than anything applies throughout he considered science to be the ultimate endeavor of the human mind and the spirit and he stressed its fundamental role in the advancement of the societies and civilization so basic science is really an important thing for the mind and the spirit and it drives development drives technology and that's very important basically was very passionate dedicated to the revival of scientific leadership in the Muslim country and in the developing world at large and he stressed often that what we need is to promote the development of science culture in the society science culture during his multiple visits in the 70s and later on Professor Salam devoted special attention to advocate for the establishment of science centers centers of excellence he talked to the leaderships of these countries directly the ME is the prime minister the minister of education in Kuwait in the Gulf states when he was speaking in meetings in conferences he never get tired even though he may have spoken 100 times and no result he continued until some result happened I have no doubt that because of what is urging advocacy many of the current centers of excellence in the Gulf in the Middle East are to some extent they owe to his advocacy including for example the Kuwait foundation for the advancement of science which was established soon after he visited Kuwait first few years and it's a unique combination between private and public funded by the private sector but patronized by the Amir of Kuwait as being the chairman of the board and was established in 1976 after few of his visits so the foundation of course as I said it's a very unique in that sense I do recall of course my first visit to the center in 1976 and I was here in August 1976 with I was vice rector of Kuwait university as was mentioned earlier but I was accompanying the president of the university Dr. Hassan to sign an agreement to formalize the cooperation that was already taking place between Kuwait university and the center which allowed young scientists from all over the world working at Kuwait university to come and spend few weeks few months at the center so we formalized that in an agreement for five years and then later on it was taken up by KFAS in 1981 Dr. Adnal Akil came here and signed it with Professor Salam and since then that agreement continued to be renewed by other colleagues and I was very privileged myself to have the opportunity to continue to provide that support of KFAS and I'm confident that this will be maintained because it's in the interest of Kuwait and it's the interest of the region and Kuwait will not survive if the region does not survive and it's the interest of the region because the region will not survive if the world does not survive so I am confident that this partnership will continue in one way or another because it had expanded in scope that allowed Salam's lectureship post-docs, fellowships diploma students and so on and I really was very privileged to have played a part in it small part I think my predecessor Dr. Adnan Dr. Alishchamplan played a bigger part in making it happen at that time my job was easier is to maintain it and strengthen it so I'm sure that others who will come after us will also provide that kind of support because it's the interest as I said of Kuwait and the leadership of Kuwait has thrived itself proud throughout its history before oil on helping others and we continued that tradition after oil we are proud to help in a small way in a big way wherever it happens that's the tradition of the Kuwait society 1981 I was privileged to interview myself Professor Salam during the visit he had soon after Kefas signed an agreement with ICTP in Kuwait TB in English and rather than talk about it if you allow me I will show two video clips from that if I could have the first clip Walter Professor Salam would you tell us about your work in physics for which you have been awarded the most distinguished scientific prize in the world first I would like to say that I'm very honored to be in Kuwait I think Kuwait with its traditions of stability freedom democracy is really an ideal type of city-state which could rival Athens in the past so far as Arab and Islamic countries are concerned it is a great pleasure of course for me to be in a brother Muslim country the next trip to where the end I think the message spoken powerfully with dedication and science what happened can we play it again perseverance dedication to science to pure science and to applied science because I think they go hand in hand I think not only you are a great scientist but you are a great human being and we would like to thank you for this opportunity to be with us here in Kuwait and we wish that we would have an opportunity and occasion to see you in the future if you have anything else that you would like to tell us please do so once again iterate what I said before that Kuwait has a very great future and I hope that it becomes the center of that Umatul Elmphil Islam which we have talked about so salamu alaykum to you and to your listeners thank you very much I would ask Walter to show quickly a few pictures that depict the relationship between KFAS Kuwait and Dr. Salam and the center the first one is the signing of the agreement let's go back that's the signing of the agreement between KFAS the next one is in a TWAAS conference right after the invasion and the liberation of Kuwait 1992 I believe first major international conference that the Sheikh Jabir the emir of Kuwait with Abdul Salam sitting right next to him went to Kuwait right after the liberation of Kuwait and he went and Kuwait embraced the third world academy of science meeting in Kuwait the first thing we did after liberation of Kuwait is to embrace the international scientific community in the third world as a sort of say thank you but also to say welcome to Kuwait we would like to continue our collaboration these are you know powerful words that he uttered and when I listen to his explanation in the rest of the video which I cannot show you it's long in simple terms an exciting new frontiers of physics is being explained that was Abdul Salam he could do the science in simple way but he could be a very strong advocate of how science should be organized in the society I believe that he also recognize something which I mentioned earlier that we in Kuwait we pride ourselves is to help each other that's the spirit, humanitarian spirit and that's what he embodied throughout his life and I think that I said earlier this is what Kuwait pride itself in being open whether it is the Syrian refugees whether it is Sudan, whether it is in science whether it is in disasters before oil and after oil Kuwait society was always like that and it will remain like this this is why I'm very happy to assist the ICTP leadership Professor Atish in particular in developing and establishing various modalities for supporting including setting up a fund and what's important regardless whether it is an international fund or a program or an activity what's important is that we all get involved in it the grassroots is much more important in my view than one donor so I would urge all of the faculty all of the alumni, all of the students today or in the future to make a contribution I have a rule thousand by a thousand gives you one million we have one thousand alumni make one thousand euro you get a million and if you can do that with a matching from a big donor that million becomes ten millions and that's really what I've been working with Atish and Kareen and others here to try to make this thing happen as a reality I'm committed to support in all of your efforts to make it happen and in conclusion because if this happens then I think we have kept the torch of salam spirit shining brilliantly as it should always it was uttered before me and it's when it shines brilliantly what does it do it becomes a beacon for you the students to guide you in your endeavors so that you become a torch for others and so on I think I once again would like to thank the salam family the leadership of ICTP for the honor that you have bestowed on me in my core recipients which I wish to congratulate them and I wish to reiterate that I dedicate the recognition of this award to my family to my friends to the leadership of my country and to the citizens because when we make contribution it is not the leadership only that makes the contribution it's the whole country that makes that contribution willingly thank you all keep the inspiration and the spirit of salam alive and being always a shining bright beacon so thank you Ahmad and congratulations once more to the recipients today it was really wonderful to hear I mean it's always and you know you have seen it yourself now it's really wonderful to see the real impact and how ICTP has touched the scientific lives as well as the personal lives of so many people around the world and it's not it's a legacy that we all respect and honor and it gives us additional strength to really make ICTP shine even brighter in the future and I would like to thank the salam family as well as recipients here and also the kind words of Ahmad to help us in our endeavors to you know go bigger and this is the ambition that we should all have so I also have another small I had announced in the staff meeting that there is another surprise that is waiting for us so I hope we will be joined shortly by professors Monica and Kaiser Shafi from Delaware are they? Hi Kaiser, hello Monica welcome as you can I hope you can see the audience here it's a collection of all the new students who have come here the faculty all the staff members and the salam ok, Ahmad is sitting in the corner and the recipients of the salam the spirit of the salam award so I'm very happy to it's my pleasure to introduce both of them Kaiser and Monica Shafi are I'm friends and supporters of ICTP so in 2022 their support through the International Science Fund which I mentioned allowed the creation of the Kaiser and Monica Shafi prize this prize will be awarded to the best diploma student of the year to recognize and encourage the next generation of young scientists so ICTP on behalf of ICTP I would like to thank them both for this initiative it's only a beginning they like Abnam they are really very committed and they are helping us to spread the world around and really reach out to a bigger and broader community of ICTP's well wishers so thank you very much for the initiative and commitment to ICTP and its mission let me say just quickly a few words about Kaiser by way of introduction I have met him personally a number of times and it's a pleasure to have him here on this special occasion he is a Pakistani American theoretical physicist and inaugural Barthol Research Institute Professor of Physics at the University of Delaware he studied physics at Imperial College and that should ring a bell for you because Salam as you know was at Imperial before he came here he received his B.S.U. honors and Ph.D. and his advisor was in fact Abdul Salam the late Professor Abdul Salam and he subsequently joined him at the International Center for Theoretical Physics and from the early 1980s until 1997 he co-organized many several weeks long summer schools at ICTP and as you know many of them are really very high profile international schools in the field Kaiser has done pioneering research in areas ranging from grand unification to Kaluzak line theories and inflationary cosmology and supersymmetric theories so welcome Professor Shafi and I would like to now introduce you to Professor Monika Shafi she is Ilya Sahuja Professor Emerita of German Literature at the University of Delaware where she also was the chair of Women and Gender Studies she is the author of several books on German and Austrian literature numerous publications on contemporary German literature so before giving the floor to to Professors Monika and Kaiser Shafi I request the diploma co-ordinators who are present here to introduce themselves just so that even though you are not able to be here in person you will get a sense of some of the colleagues who are working on this so we'll start with high energy physics Kaiser this is close to your closer to your heart I would say Professor Paolo criminally Paolo I've met here in 2019 nice to meet you actually I'm not the coordinator of the high energy diploma but Giovanni Villadoro cannot be here today so but I am currently the head of the high energy program so nice to see you again then we move to the condensed matter section and statistical physics Misha Kiselev Hello I'm Mikhail Kiselev I'm coordinator of the post graded program in condensed metaphysics and the whole post graded program unit at ACTP so I welcome all students to ACTP and I give a microphone to my colleague Ricardo Yes Professor Ricardo Farnetti who is the Earth and Science Earth System Physics section Yes my name is Ricardo Farnetti and I'm the coordinator of the Earth System Physics Diploma Program nice to meet you in mathematics Professor Stefano Lozato Hello good afternoon my name is Stefano Lozato I'm also standing in for the coordinator Professor Gaccia but I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to thank you for your kind interest I was also for 10 years at Imperial College actually before coming here and I'm also the coordinator of a very similar program to the Diploma Program in Lahore, Pakistan so it's a very great pleasure to meet you Okay and finally this is our newest section in Quantitative Life Sciences Professor Matteo Marcilli Hello I'm Matteo Marcilli very pleased to to meet you I'm yes the coordinator of the Diploma Program with these great students here and thank you very much for your interest and support Okay so now I give the floor to you Manik and Kaiser Thank you very much Can you hear me? I can hear you I'm not sure about the audience No we can hear you No you can hear Well thank you very much for this opportunity Atish It has been a pleasure really to listen to the distinguished speakers of the bodies of this Spirit of Salam award I mean this center is a very special place in our hearts for Monika too because sort of as young students like I see the diploma students who have just joined we learned at ICTP how to grow up as a scientist really quite frankly So I heard Ahmed Salam's speech I don't know whether he remembers it we heard him in 2016 right at that 90th anniversary for Salam that was held in Singapore was a scientific meeting with a lot of distinguished speakers actually So I have briefly to summarize briefly I have connections to Abdul Salam of course being my PhD advisor and then after completing my training I came to ICTP for a year actually and eventually it was decided that after Salam got his Nobel Prize at CERN at the time that I'll come back to Trieste and be the staff member there but due to family reasons we decided to move to the US but it is no exaggeration to state that ICTP has been a very important place for me throughout my entire career actually it's an institution that I feel very loyal to like we heard from others too and that I wish to succeed and grow in every way possible So some of you have just arrived at the ICTP you should look at the history read about it and it's also documented in the photos on display as you enter the reception area of ICTP I was last there about three years ago before Covid came So very special place for me and it's a place where actually I've enjoyed and that's where I met Conchata also in case she remembers us and in fact you make lifelong partnerships friendships in fact when you come to ICTP I have collaborators now especially one or two of them with whom I have collaborated for the last almost 50 years or so So starting in the early 80s I was spending basically every summer at the ICTP co-directing the summer schools in high energy physics and cosmology with Professor of the Salam with Yogeshpati Antonio Masiero who is at the university in Padua and many others one or two alas have passed away but these were very good schools since we started with phenomenology and then string theory came along and so then it became a very extensive school and many of the well highly acclaimed theoretical physicists and string theorists actually around the globe came to ICTP to attend the summer school then I can assure you there are many of them we have the best speakers and Abdul Salam philosophy was look these people are coming from around the globe make sure you get the best people who know the subject and who can teach well and that was the goal for many years I stopped going there primarily because Professor Salam passed away that was my intimate connection but I kept my connection with ICTP at some level and this is where I also met in the early 1990s as we heard the diploma program was starting at ICTP and I used to see them because Monica and I were the young children, two young children we would stay in the Adriatico and that's where we would meet at lunch, at dinner sometimes even for coffee breaks you know some of the students so even though a couple of students in fact did my did their degree with me PhD degree and then finally at ICTP diploma course I have met many more mostly in high-energy physics and cosmology but also in condensed metaphysics and some in mathematics just because I've been to different countries and so on and who came and introduced themselves to me so what was special about these diploma students was not only their level of preparation, solid foundation in depth knowledge but also their enthusiasm and motivation their energy qualities that are critical actually for a successful career but this I think I cannot imagine any other place in fact which can offer a better preparation for a PhD program in these sciences I'm thinking of the top place you can look at the graduate programs for preparing for a PhD and I think ICTP is ranked amongst the top if not right at the top so given my decades long association with the ICTP having worked at the ICTP in different roles and feelings as excited about this mission as I did when I first came there a long time ago it was a logical step for me and Monica to endow some kind of an award and now prize in this case for the diploma I'm sure the administration at ICTP will tell you more about it but discussing this venture with the current ICTP leadership we decided it would be best to open it to all fields that would be what Abdu Salam would have wanted I think not restrict oneself to any particular area so not just restrict to high energy physics, cosmology or condensement just open it to all the fields and motivate as much as possible as possible I'm sure you guys are already well motivated this is one of the best programs you can attend so it's wonderful really to see this group of young scientists successful and enjoyable stay at the ICTP last but not least I would like to acknowledge Monica thank you and my wife Monica who's as you heard from German literature but has always supported this effort of mine in the summers to commit oneself Abdu Salam used to tell me why can't you have a school for three months in the summer now of course we used to have it for several weeks six to eight weeks was not so common but she has been always very supportive while we directed the schools and with a lot of advance planning and organization she managed to get her own work done while we went yesterday so that was also important so good luck and I hope to see you all in person next August during the award ceremony thank you very much again to actually to the ICTP administration especially the director Atish the diploma director Misha Corrine and Sabrina from the development office who have always been very kind to work and I look forward to interacting with them in the future and making more taking more initiatives for the near future thank you very much thank you very much Monica would you like to say add something can you hear me yes can you hear me oh yes we can so greetings actually I hope the technology works I'm on my iPhone here in New York and it's an absolute pleasure and a great honor to be part of this gathering of this meeting even if it's all I wish we could heard this it does bring back many many only second to what Kaiser has said about our long association with the ICTP and as you can imagine Kaiser and I very much work as a team and we were delighted that we were able to create this prize this award and do a little bit from our part to support the mission of the ICTP which is absolutely unique in the world I believe and to honor the legacy of the late professor up to was being such a role model not just for Kaiser as a scientist but for both of us apologize for the dark parking in the background so that's what happens if you work from home so thank you so much for creating this event and also I wish to extend my greetings specially to the incoming students I wish you a most wonderful year of intense research friendships collaborations and I also hope you get to explore Trieste which is really unique city in Italy and the Italian culture so best of luck to all of you from me thank you thank you very much okay so thank you very much all of you for attending I would like to again congratulate the winners of the spirit of the of the salam prize thanks again to Ahmad and the salam family and the Shafi family for the support that they are continuing the mission of ICTP in this manner I think it's really very apt that they are the first to launch this new initiative of the international science fund of ICTP and I really am very grateful and I hope this is a beginning of you know a very important initiative which will help the mission of ICTP so so I would like to normally what we will do now is that we will exit this room and we will go to the terrace for light refreshments I will leave the students here they can interact with the professors Monica and Kaiser Shafi you can ask them questions and then you can join us later on the on the terrace we will keep you some refreshments and so thank you very much again