Bangladeshi-born American scientist Dr Shafiqul Islam jointly won the prestigious Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW).
The prize was awarded to the team of Dr Shafiqul Islam (Tufts University, USA) and Dr Rita Colwell (University of Maryland at College Park) for their outstanding performances in developing and testing a model that uses chlorophyll information from satellite data to predict cholera outbreaks at least three to six months in advance, according to foreign ministry sources in Dhaka.
Dr Rita Colwell is an internationally-acclaimed oceanographer and microbiologist who has spent the bulk of her career studying the V. cholerae bacterium that causes cholera. She and her colleagues have found V. cholerae in oceans around the world, in isolated lakes and rivers untouched by fecal contamination, and even in volcanic springs in
Iceland.
Dr Islam has applied Colwell’s findings to relate chlorophyll levels and cholera outbreaks in the Bay of Bengal.
Using satellite data from Nasa, he developed a satellite-based model to predict potential cholera outbreaks at least three to six months in advance.
The model has been tested with chlorophyll information from satellites over the Bay of Bengal region to predict cholera outbreaks in Bangladesh.
The team is currently working on testing the model with ground-based
observations.