Dr Zewail is a Linus Pauling Professor at the California Institute of Technology who won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research in femtochemistry. He serves on Obama’s Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In January 2010 Dr Zewail was appointed one of the first US science envoys to the Muslim world. The group of scholars visited Muslim countries from North Africa to Southeast Asia to find opportunities to develop the fields of science and technology in the Muslim world.