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Dr. Hani Najm received the 2023 Great Arab Minds Award for Medicine in recognition of his outstanding contributions to pediatric and adult cardiac surgery and to the treatment of congenital heart disease.

Dr. Najm is internationally recognized for advancing the treatment of complex congenital heart conditions in newborns, children, and adults. He has introduced innovative surgical approaches that have helped achieve a mortality rate of less than one percent in recent years, despite the complexity of the cases he treats.

Born and educated in Riyadh, Dr. Najm graduated from King Saud University’s College of Medicine in 1985. He completed general surgery training at Ottawa Civic Hospital, followed by cardiothoracic surgery training at Toronto General Hospital and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). He also completed fellowships in pediatric and adult congenital cardiac surgery at SickKids and at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, Canada.

After returning to Riyadh, Dr. Najm spent 16 years developing the Children’s Heart Center at King Abdulaziz Medical City before joining Cleveland Clinic in January 2016 as Chair of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery.

He has personally performed more than 5,000 open-heart operations. He previously served as President of the Saudi Heart Association and Editor-in-Chief of its journal. He was also a member of the editorial board of the Saudi Medical Journal and an Associate Professor at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences.

He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the American College of Cardiology, lectures internationally on congenital heart surgery, and collaborates on research initiatives, including a multicenter database supporting evidence-based practice in congenital heart disease.

Professor Yasmine Belkaid received the 2024 Great Arab Minds Award for Medicine in recognition of her exceptional contributions to immunology.

An internationally recognized expert in host-microbe interactions, Professor Belkaid has transformed our understanding of how the microbiota shapes immunity and chronic inflammatory diseases, such as Crohn’s disease and psoriasis. Her work has paved the way for new therapeutic strategies that harness the microbiota to treat immune-related diseases.

Born in Algiers in 1968, Professor Belkaid earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry from the Houari Boumediene University of Science and Technology. She later completed a Diplôme d’Études Approfondies at Paris-Sud University and, in 1996, earned a PhD in immunology from Paris-Sud University and the Institut Pasteur, where her research focused on the innate immune response to Leishmania infection.

She moved to the United States for postdoctoral research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases. In 2002, she joined the Molecular Immunology Division at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (Ohio), then returned to NIAID in 2005, where she established the Microbiome Program and the Laboratory of Host Immunity and Microbiome. She later became Director of the National Institutes of Health Center for Human Immunology. In March 2023, she was appointed President of the Institut Pasteur for a six-year term beginning in January 2024, making her the institute’s second female scientist president and its seventeenth since its founding in 1887.

Professor Belkaid has published more than 220 scientific papers on infection, immunity, the microbiome, and nutrition. Her honors include the Robert Koch Prize (2021), the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2019), and the Sanofi–Institut Pasteur Award (2016). She is also a strong advocate for gender equality in science and for supporting early-career researchers.

Dr. Nabil G. Seidah received the 2025 Great Arab Minds Award for Medicine in recognition of his pioneering contributions to cardiovascular health and to advancing our understanding of how the body regulates cholesterol.

Throughout his research career, Dr. Seidah has focused on the fundamental biological processes that govern how the body handles fats. His discoveries have helped protect millions of people from heart attacks and strokes and have advanced knowledge of fatty liver disease, lipid disorders, obesity, inflammation, cancer metastasis, and the mechanisms by which viruses enter human cells.

Born in Egypt in 1949, Dr. Seidah studied at Cairo University and earned his PhD from Georgetown University in 1973. He joined the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) in 1974 and currently serves as Director of the IRCM’s Neuroendocrinology Research Unit. He is also a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Université de Montréal.

Among his most significant achievements is the discovery and cloning of seven of the nine known proprotein convertase enzymes. In 2003, he discovered the PCSK9 enzyme, which plays a central role in regulating blood cholesterol levels. That breakthrough led to the development of PCSK9 inhibitors, a new class of medicines now widely used to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Seidah has published more than 815 scientific papers and has received numerous honors, including appointments as an Officer of the National Order of Québec (1997), the Order of Canada (1999), the Léo-Pariseau Prize (2018), the Kuwait Prize-2021 (KFAS) for Applied and Basic Science (2021), and the J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine (2023).