About Us - Honorary Board

Based in London and Washington, The Scholar Ship Research Institute is directed by Dr. Ravinder Bhatia and advised by members of its international honorary board. The board helps promote the Institute’s educational mission while providing expert guidance for research programmes. 

Dr. Jane Goodall
President, Jane Goodall Institute

Jane Goodall began her landmark study of chimpanzees in Tanzania in June 1960, under the mentorship of anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey. Her work at what was then called the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve would become the foundation of future primatological research and redefine the relationship between humans and animals.

In 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which continues the Gombe research and is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. The Institute also is widely recognized for establishing innovative, community-centered conservation and development programs in Africa, and the Roots & Shoots education program which has 8,000 groups in 96 countries.

Dr. Goodall travels an average 300 days per year, speaking about the threats facing chimpanzees, other environmental crises, and her reasons for hope that humankind will solve the problems it has imposed on the earth. She continually urges her audiences to recognize their personal responsibility and ability to effect change through consumer action, lifestyle change and activism.

Dr. Goodall's scores of honors include the Medal of Tanzania, the National Geographic Society's Hubbard Medal, Japan's prestigious Kyoto Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research 2003, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, UNESCO Gold Medal Award, and the Gandhi/King Award for Nonviolence.

In April 2002, Secretary-General Kofi Annan named Dr. Goodall a United Nations “Messenger of Peace.” In 2004, in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, Prince Charles invested Dr. Goodall as a Dame of the British Empire, the female equivalent of knighthood. In 2006, Dr. Goodall received France’s highest recognition, the French Legion of Honor, presented by the Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in Paris.

Dr. Goodall’s list of publications includes her latest book Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating, two overviews of her work at Gombe — In the Shadow of Man and Through a Window — as well as two autobiographies in letters, the best-selling Reason for Hope, and many children's books. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior is the definitive scientific work on chimpanzees and is the culmination of Jane Goodall's scientific career.

Dr. Goodall has been the subject of numerous television documentaries and is featured in the large-screen format film, Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees (2002). Discovery Channel Animal Planet specials featuring Dr. Goodall include: Jane Goodall’s Return to Gombe, Jane Goodall’s State of the Great Ape, When Animals Talk, and Jane’s Goodall’s Heroes.

Dr. Eduardo Gutierrez 
Senior Adviser & Consultant to the UN Secretariat 

Dr. Eduardo Gutierrez has served for 33 years with the United Nations in many capacities including as Senior Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General, Senior Adviser to the UNESCO Director General on the reform of the organization and Senior Adviser to the Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP). Dr. Gutierrez is currently finalising a major paper on "Human Security in Latin America and the Caribbean" to be included in a book on the subject of Human Security, under preparation at the University of Dresden. 

Professor Goverdhan Mehta
President, International Council for Science

Professor Goverdhan Mehta is Bhatnagar Fellow and Honorary Professor, Department of Organic Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He is President of the International Council for Science. He is a leading researcher in the area of chemical Sciences and specializes in the area of organic chemistry. He is an author of over 400 research papers and has delivered over 200 lectures in major conferences around the world. He is on the Editorial Boards of over a dozen leading international journals in Chemical Sciences/Organic Chemistry and serves on the advisory boards of many R&D outfits and foundations worldwide. Presently a CSIR-Bhatnagar Fellow, he has previously held positions as the Director of the Indian Institute of Science (1998-2005) and the President (Vice Chancellor) of the University of Hyderabad (1994-1998), two of India’s most prestigious academic institutions, besides being Professor of Chemistry (1977-2005). He has been the President of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA, 1999-2001) and founding Co-Chair of the Inter Academy Council (IAC, 2001-2006). He is Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Fellow of TWAS and recipient of over 30 medals/awards and numerous Honorary Doctorate (D.Sc.) degrees. He has been awarded the civilian honor of ‘Padma Sri’ (2000) and ‘Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur’ 2004 by the Presidents of India and France, respectively. He is deeply interested in issues related to science and policy, science for sustainable development and is passionately committed to promoting and fostering international collaboration in S & T with the object of bridging the knowledge divide.

HE Jan Axel Nordlander
Swedish Ambassador for Human Rights

His Excellency Jan Axel Nordlander is the Swedish Ambassador for Human Rights. His tasks are threefold: to represent Sweden’s seat at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and in other international organizations such as OSCE’s Human Dimension meetings; to undertake country visits, alone or with other EU Human Rights Ambassadors; and on behalf of the Swedish government to liaise with Swedish and international NGOs. He has retained his interest in education, and has been for many years a trustee of a graduate school in Asia and a fellow of a Swedish research institute. 

Professor Jacob Palis
Secretary-General, Third World Academy of Sciences

Professor Jacob Palis is based at the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA) in Brazil. He is President, Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS). He is Vice-President of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He is Member of the Board of the InterAcademy Panel. Born in 1940 in Uberaba, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Graduated in 1962 at the Engineering School of the University of Brazil (now Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). Due to his performance, including entrance examination, he was awarded the prize University of Brazil. Still, he felt all along an attraction for Mathematics and Physics so that he would understand more profoundly the concepts and formulas he was confronted with in the Engineering disciplines. This finally led him to become a mathematician immediately after graduation. He then spent about a year and half at IMPA. In the Fall of 1964 he initiated his Ph.D. program in Mathematics at the University of California, concluded three years later under the supervision of one of the greatest living mathematicians, Steve Smale (Fields Medal, 1966). After a short period as Assistant Professor at that University, he returned to IMPA, where he has been ever since. He thought at that time, that two great challenges were to produce in a continuous basis first rate research in Mathematics in Brazil as well as to form new high quality researchers also on a regular basis. He has since then taken active part in the development of Science, particularly in research and in advising new talents. He directed so far thirty five Ph.D. theses in Dynamical Systems of students from ten different countries, most of them in Latin America and some in Europe. This represents a main contribution to the existence of a Latin American School in Dynamical Systems internationally recognized as a high level research group. He published approximately seventy research works, that occupy more than a thousand pages of the best international periodicals in the field, like Annals of Math., Acta Math., Inventions Math. and Publications Math. Inst. Hautes Études Scient. In the sixties, he worked on questions related to the global stability of dynamic systems. The results obtained together with Smale, led them to the formulation of a basic conjecture in the modern theory of dynamical systems, corrrelating the concepts of hyperbolicity and stability. The last part of the proof of this conjecture was about twenty years later, by one of his brilliant Ph.D. students, Ricardo Mañé. In the seventies, he dedicated himself to the study of bifurcations, i.e., change of dynamic structures in systems that depend on parameters and, increasingly to the study of chaotic systems, that is, systems sensible to initial conditions. He adopted a more probabilistic point of view than the geometric-topologic one common in the sixties, that resulted in the formulation of a global conjecture for the set of all dynamical systems. According to this conjecture, the majority of the systems has their essential behavior determined by a finite number of attractors (hyperbolic/strange). This conjecture may be combined with others on evolution equations, especially those who govern turbulence of fluids, leading to a more comprehensive scenario for this difficult and important phenomenon. He has been awarded the Prizes University of Brazil (1962), Moinho Santista (1976), Third World Academy of Sciences (1989), National Brazilian Prize for Science and Technology (1990), Brazilian National Order of Scientific Merit (1994) and the Interamerican Prize for Science (1994).