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Zakya Kafafi
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SPIE Fellow Zakya Kafafi, adjunct professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Lehigh University, received the Kuwait Prize in Applied Sciences (Clean and Sustainable Energy Technologies) from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS). His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah presented the award to Kafafi at a ceremony in Kuwait on 5 December 2018.
The purpose of the Kuwait Prize is to raise the visibility of the achievements of Arab scholars and researchers around the world in various fields of knowledge. Prizes are awarded each year in selected topics in Fundamental Sciences, Applied Sciences, Economics and Social Science, Arts and Literature, and Arabic and Islamic Scientific Heritage.
According to the KFAS news release, Kafafi was awarded the prize for her research on the use of organic solar cells to generate clean and sustainable energy and improve the performance and stability of these cells. She joins a select group of 120 distinguished Arab scientists and scholars who have been awarded the prize since it was established in 1979.
Kafafi is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of the SPIE Journal of Photonics for Energy. She has published dozens of manuscripts, review articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings with SPIE, as well as serving on programs committees and as conference chairs for several SPIE events. For her continual involvement in and support of the Society, she was named an SPIE Fellow in 2005.
