Prof. Hamid M.K. Al Naimiy, Chancellor of the University of Sharjah, General Director and Founder of the Sharjah Academy for Astronomy, Space Sciences and Technology (SAASST) and President of the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Sciences (AUASS) in the United Arab Emirates, is a renowned scientist in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics and a leader in education. He received his PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Manchester, U.K., in 1977. He is the founder of seven (7) observatories and space centers in various countries, such as Iraq, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, including SAASST (the most recent one) founded in 2014. He has published more than 30 books (in the fields of astronomy, space sciences and education), authored over 800 scientific articles, published in newspapers, magazines and journals, and refereed over 130 publications in indexed journals. Professor Al Naimiy has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Khalifa Award for Education 2009/2010 (in the field of higher education), UAE, and the IAU and UNESCO Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Success of the International Year of Astronomy 2009.Dr. Hussein Elmehdi is the Dean of Academic Support Services and an Associate Professor of Biomedical Physics at the Department of Applied Physics and Astronomy. Dr. Elmehdi is very active in several research areas covering biomedical applications of ultrasound, environmental acoustics, health & environmental physics, online education, and remote learning. Dr. Elmehdi participates in several well-funded international and national research projects. Dr. Elmehdi has over 100 refereed publications in high impact factor journals, well-known international conferences, and book chapters as well as two registered patents. Dr. Elmehdi has received numerous excellence awards and recognitions in research, teaching and community services. Among these awards are the prestigious UoS Excellence Award in Research (2014); University of Sharjah Excellence Award in Teaching (2015, 2012); UoS Excellence Award in Community Services (2011), Transformational Leadership Awards (Tahawil Tech) 2020, UOS Excellence Award in Leadership (2021), UNESCO-ICHEI Higher Education Digitalization Pioneer Case Award (2023).Prof. Ihsan A. Shehadi earned his Bachelor's degree from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and his Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry from Northeastern University, Boston- Massachusetts, U.S.A. After being appointed as a research scientist at the Northeastern University, he joined the Department of Chemistry at UAEU as a faculty member. In 2010, Dr. Shehadi joined the faculty at the Department of Chemistry at University of Sharjah (UOS). During his service at UOS he served as chairman of the Department of chemistry (2014-2018), Chairman of the Academic Accreditation (2016-2017), assistant dean (2018-2019) and vice dean of college of sciences (2019-now). He also held the responsibility of acting dean on numerous occasions. Prof. Shehadi has published more than 55 peer evaluated research papers in reputable international journals and conference proceedings in the areas of physical chemistry, computational chemistry chemical education and heterogeneous catalysis. During the past few years, his research is focusing using computational chemistry and bioinformatics tools (Docking, Molecular Dynamic simulations, sequence alignments, active sites searches, structural genomics) to search for potential inhibitors for selected enzymes.
