The Institute for Maltese Culture and The Institute of Cellular Pharmacology recently created an award called the Marie Amélie Gleizes-Dewavrin Award for Art and Science.
The aim of this award is to recognize Maltese people working in the field of art and science in Malta who have excelled in their work in and out of Malta and in so doing helped to improve the image of Malta and its scientists in the international field. In order to help these people to further promote their work and the image of Malta an award of ten thousand Euros is being made available.
This year the Marie-Amélie Gleizes-Dewavrin Award for Art and Science, under the patronage of the French Ambassador to Malta and the Maltese ambassador to France, was dedicated to the field of science. Next year it will be dedicated to the arts.
This year’s recipient of this award was Professor Carmelo Agius of the Department of Biology, University of Malta who was presented with his award at the end of last week by the French ambassador, M. Jean-Marc Rives at a ceremony at the French residence in Zebbug. Among several distinguished guests present for the ceremony were Prof. Jean Alexis Grimaud, former director of the Pasteur Institute and Prof. Jean Pierre Gauthier, lecturer in the Faculty of Sciences of Lyon and who is also involved in the study of mineral sciences and a recognized specialist of gemstones. They are both members of the jury which decided that Prof Agius should be this year’s recipient. Also present were Madame Gleizes-Dewavrin who had set up The Institute for Maltese Culture in 1998 and Mr Charles Saliba and Dr Gilles Gutierrez who are behind The Institute of Cellular Pharmacology at the Mosta Technopark, also established in 1998. It may be remembered that a few years ago they discovered a new molecule for therapeutic use and christened it Maltandianol.
Among its comments as to why Professor Agius was selected as being worthy of this award, the jury said that he had established the basic concepts for the utilization of the marine environment for fish farming in Malta and subsequently a healthy fish farming industry was developed. Professor Agius also reorganized the marine biology department at the University of Malta and created the Aquaculture Centre at Fort San Lucian.
In his witty acceptance speech Professor Agius commented that despite several drawbacks “Maltese scientists have far from underachieved and I am sure we all feel proud when we are exercising our skills in some far off land and we are asked from which country we come from. More so when one remembers that on passing through immigration to enter some distant land the immigration officer had to take out a hand lens to find Malta on the globe.”
Prof. Agius is presently taking part in the creation of a training centre in Guatemala to train future engineers in the field of Marine Biology and Fisheries. In his own words: “The idea of this award is to disseminate technology developed in Malta beyond these shores. It is my intention to use a good part of this award to further this scope but this time to countries less fortunate than us. For the past two years I have been following the work of a young Maltese missionary priest in inland Guatemala where living conditions can be pretty desperate. This priest has built a school, community centre, introduced the internet and so on. It is my intention to use this money to improve the teaching of science subjects in these communities and to set up useful projects for the communities such as subsistence fish production projects.”
(from Malta Indipendent online)