President of the United States of America Barrack Obama published the names of 105 young researchers who are to receive the “Presidential Early-Career Award for Scientists and Engineers”. Among the winners is Dr. Ervin Sejdić, lecturer at the University in Pittsburgh, who had to leave BiH in 1992 because of the war.
Based on my previous work, the award is for my contribution in the field of bioinformatics, analysis of biomedicine data. I work a lot on the analysis of data that will tell us more about human swallowing, walking, etc. I also work a lot on making models of how human body changes as it ages, with different diseases such as the Parkinson’s disease or brain stroke. Thus, the award is more for the overall contribution to the science than for a single scientific paper,” Dr. Sejdić explained.
Dr. Sejdić highlighted that the award he received in the USA represents a great captital for future scientific research:
“All my future work rests on the Presidential Award. It is one huge stepping stone for all future grants that I will apply for and it gives me, a young scientist, the opportunity to compete with greater and a lot more experienced scientists. In fact, that is what this award gives us – some kind of possibility to be a little more flexible with our research in the future and work on risky ideas. Here, especially in the North America, being a professor at one of the universities means that you have to provide significant means for your research”, Dr. Sejdić said.
Ervin Sejdić said that, even 23 years after the war that took thousands of citizens to all sides of the world, BiH still does not use its “goldmine”:
“That goldmine is called the BiH diaspora, especially the diaspora with high positions abroad. You must understand that we had 4.5 million residents in 1992. Unfortunately, I have lived in cities larger than the entire BiH. Speaking from my own experience, I can say that we are totally underused by BiH as the country which has a lot of qualified staff educated in the Western countries. Of course, I understand that this is all due to the general situation in politics. However, I believe that BiH must wake up and admit that potentials of that country could be used far better,” Dr. Sejdić highlighted.
Lecturer at the University in Pittsburgh said he would be happy to cooperate with people from BiH:
“I would be happy to publish works with researchers from Tuzla, Zenica, Sarajevo, Mostar, Banja Luka… I almost established some contact with the University in Zenica, where there are a lot of young people, young staff ready to connect and make something in BiH. I believe that we, who are coming from abroad, will cooperate a lot easier with such people,” Dr. Sejdić concluded.
(Source: fokus.ba)
