Vatican offers Makerere University don top papal award

Happy. Prof Noble Banadda. COURTESY PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • Having emerged as the best student in his undergraduate class at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania where he studied Food Science and Technology, he won a scholarship that saw him ending up at Leuven, first to pursue a post graduate degree in Process Engineering and later a doctorate in Chemical Engineering which he completed in 2006.

Kampala. Prof Noble Banadda, 43, from the department of Agricultural and Bio-systems Engineering at Makerere University has been chosen as the 2018 Pius XI Medal award winner.

The Pius XI Medal is a global award given every two years by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to a scientist under the age of 45, who has conducted and shown exceptional promise in scientific research.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences focuses on areas such as science and technology of global problems, science to solve problems of the developing world, scientific policy and bioethics.

And so like many firsts before, Prof Banadda is the first African to win the award since it was first established by Pope John XXIII in 1961.

Prof Banadda has been a man of many firsts. He was the first black African to get a PhD in chemical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit-Leuven in Belgium, one of the oldest universities in the world.

Professor at 37
In 2012, at the age of 37, he became the youngest person ever to be promoted to full professor in the department of Agricultural and Bio-systems Engineering at Makerere University. A year later, he became the youngest fellow to be admitted to the Uganda National Academy of Sciences.

To date, there have been 28 winners, including Aage Bohr, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, who was awarded the medal in 1963 and Stephen Hawking, another celebrated physicist who won it in 1975.

As the current head of the department of Agricultural and Bio-systems Engineering at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences - Makerere University, Prof Banadda credits Leuven for setting the stage for his academic and research journey.

Having emerged as the best student in his undergraduate class at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania where he studied Food Science and Technology, he won a scholarship that saw him ending up at Leuven, first to pursue a post graduate degree in Process Engineering and later a doctorate in Chemical Engineering which he completed in 2006.

Prof Banadda has researched and published widely in international journals on bio-systems engineering and renewable energy.