The British Council is pleased to announce the finalists for a prestigious award celebrating the outstanding achievements of the UK’s international alumni. They are selected by our panel of judges as best representatives for the impact of UK higher education in their chosen career path and the impact they have made for the development of Egypt.
We are proud of them!
Business and Innovation Award
University of Birmingham
Ayten Halim has 12+ years experience in Strategic Marketing and Marketing Consulting field. With a diverse background spanning through several fields ranging from international Retail brands to Education and Service sector. Focused on providing rigorous and challenging strategic marketing plans, utilising active-marketing techniques and hands-on approaches for both digital and offline marketing.
Dina is a media entrepreneur, a bilingual journalist and a journalism trainer and speaker. She spent the last 14 years working for BBC Monitoring as a digital journalist and then as a senior journalist. Her work involved reporting day-to-day political, social, economic, cultural and media developments in Arab countries.
She is the founder of Egab; a media startup that empowers local journalists from across the Middle East and Africa to get published in regional and international media outlets.
Mohamed Kotby is a Judge and a senior counselor in the Egyptian State Council Judicial Courts since 2006, Kotby settles judicial disputes of Public Law and administrative law nature, where he reviews the claimant requests, the defenses of the defendant from a legal perspective.He received his Master’s Degree from Queen Mary University. He was also able to apply for the PhD in law, which he is currently enrolled in the final year in Middlesex University in London.
Culture and Creativity Award
Royal Holloway, University of London
Mohamed was named as 'The Best TV Presenter in the Arab World' by Cairo International TV and Radio Festival, 10th edition, for his TV investigation 'Peace and Revenge' about the violations of the UN troops in Somalia (Cairo, July 2004). In 2003, he received the Bronze Award from Cairo International TV and Radio Festival, 9th edition, in recognition of his series of interviews with Islamic fundamentalists in Britain.
Sarah is a professional multimedia consultant, journalist, filmmaker, and content creator. She is a multimedia consultant for BBC Arabic’s BBC Xtra. Director and producer of shows for different channels and content creator for creative and entertainment online shows. Sarah’s, knowledge, powerful storytelling skills, and expertise changed the quality of the content produced in different news while addressing critical issues and representing underrepresented groups in the pan-Arab media.
Hanan is an Egyptian independent documentary film Producer/Director and assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Communication and Mass Media at the British University in Egypt. She is Chevening alumna and holds a master’s degree in media production and TV documentary production from the University of Salford. In 2018, she won BBC’s best short documentary film award at the BBC Arabic Festival for her film ‘The town the men left’. Hanan’s goal is to put theory into practice and to best serve society.
Science and Sustainability Award
University of Oxford
Hesham is an Egyptian palaeontologist and the founder of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Palaeontology Center (MUVP-C), the first vertebrate palaeontology programme in the Middle East. He led the discovery and description of Mansourasaurus shahinae, a species of sauropod dinosaur from Egypt, which has improved understanding of the prehistory of Africa during the latest Cretaceous period. His work has helped popularise palaeontology in Egypt.
Marco is a PhD-holding lecturer who successfully designs and executes biological experiments and develops novel analytical methods. He has a track record of developing high impact publications, presentations, and collaborations with a broad basis of chronic diseases and cancer. In 2017, Marco was awarded the ‘Best poster award’ by Newcastle University for the poster entitled: SULFATASE-2, secreted from cancer-associated fibroblasts, which promotes hepatocellular carcinoma cell growth.
Rania has recently been selected by Women of Egypt as one of the top 100 distinguished women in Egypt and by the Hall of Fame in Science. She is also a pioneer of Computational Pharmaceutics school in Egypt which includes the integration of modelling and simulation of drug carriers and the exploitation of mathematical relationships, and machine learning methods in the selection of the most appropriate pairs between the drugs and their carriers in the body.
Aya is an Egyptian environmental researcher and entrepreneur. She is the CEO and co-founder of Recyclizer, a plastic recycling start-up. On top of her responsibilities as a wife and a mother, Aya has shown persistence and success in her social, academic, and professional life. She was chosen amongst the leading environmental experts and professors in the world to present her research paper in the Climate Expo Conference, April 2021. Aya also won the Bioscience Egypt Environmental Science Award.
