Prof. John H Lienhard V

Good morning.  I first met Mohammed Jameel in a phone call.  He got in touch with me to discuss some ideas we had developed at MIT about a water and food research program.  I laid my ideas before Mohammed, and he went off and thought about these and he was inspired!  And he came back and he asked MIT to create the Abdul Latif Jameel Water & Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), which we did in 2014.

I’m privileged to direct that lab.  J-WAFS funds advanced research all over MIT directed at providing safe and stable supplies of water and food throughout the world to people at all levels of society and in many countries and places.  We have developed a number of remarkable scientific and technological ideas in the course of this.  We have created companies as a result of this.  And in my mind most importantly we have educated a legion of students who will go out and become future leaders in water and food research, multiplying our impact far beyond what we could accomplish at MIT by itself.

However, as I’ve learned more about Mohammed and the Jameel family, I’ve come to understand the full scale of their efforts to provide for the human race through advanced programs.  They’ve created the [Abdul Latif Jameel] Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, which uses blind studies to determine which interventions against poverty are effective and which are not, and they have had enormous reach around the world.

The Jameel family has created [the] Jameel Clinic (J-Clinic) which is marrying artificial intelligence in the practice of medicine to provide better diagnostics, and more rapid treatments for disease.   They’ve created the [Abdul Latif Jameel] World Education Lab (J-WEL), which is aiming to educate educators, so that they can return to their own universities and be more effective in their work.

And outside MIT they have created [the] Jameel Institute (J-IDEA),which is looking at infectious disease at Imperial College London.

However, the Jameel family also operates Community Jameel, which is a broad charity reaching out across the Middle Eastern Region – they do jobs creation, and other forms of outreach touching the lives of many many thousands of people, across that region and elsewhere.

The Jameel family has also made major commitments to the arts: they’ve they’ve created a beautiful gallery at the Victoria & Albert museum, with stunning artifacts from Islamic art.  They have also created – very special in my mind – the Jameel Art Center in Dubai, which is reaching out into the community to bring them in contact with contemporary art.  It’s not simply ‘art on display’ to come observe but it’s actually community interaction and teaching and programs for children; as well as nurturing of local artists who are specializing around the region.

For all of this I think I can only say thank you to the Jameel family for their generosity and their concern for the well-being of everyone.

We all owe them a great debt for their contributions to making a better world and I hope to see what comes in the future, and where this may continue to blossom and develop.

Thank you.

 

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