Speaking on the sidelines of a foundation meeting focused on unveiling a new funding platform designed to facilitate contributions from supporters around the world, Ali Akbar Salehi said the foundation had spent years working to build a network of scientists from the Islamic world and should now complement that effort by establishing a global network of people willing to support science.
“If the production and exchange of knowledge can be global, why shouldn’t support for science be global as well?” Salehi said, adding that a network could be established alongside the scientists’ network to connect people seeking to contribute to scientific progress.
Addressing the foundation’s new approach to scientific participation through cryptocurrency transfers, Salehi said, “Cryptocurrency is not an end in itself for us; it is a tool.”
He said the central question was how to make it easier for someone anywhere in the world to support a young scientist or contribute to a scientific project. New financial technologies and digital assets, he added, could help reduce some of the geographical barriers to international participation.
“We want to put this potential at the service of science,” Salehi said, stressing that the initiative should not be viewed simply as a cryptocurrency project, but rather as part of the foundation’s broader effort to globalize participation in the financing of scientific research.
Salehi also highlighted the tradition of waqf (endowment) in Islamic civilization for suppuring scientific projects, saying its underlying principle had remained unchanged while its instruments and mechanisms could evolve to meet contemporary needs. A modern donor, he said, might choose to support medical research, the development of a new technology, a young scientist or a project at the frontiers of knowledge.
He also pointed to examples of Mustafa Prize laureates who have endowed part of their resources to support scientific causes, adding that some of the funding for the foundation’s Young Scientist Medal is provided through such endowments.
“A scientist honored yesterday can become the patron of tomorrow’s scientist,” Salehi said.
He called for greater use of emerging technologies to narrow the gap between philanthropic supporters of science and leading researchers, saying the ultimate objective was to make scientific support as borderless as science itself.
“Just as science knows no borders, participation in shaping the future of science should not stop at borders either,” Salehi said.
Hossein Amiri - seyed mohammad kazemi
