Taiwan’s Asia University Added World Renowned Scientist Ruth Arnon to its International Advisory Board
Since its founding two decades ago, a central mission of Asia University (AU) in Taichung, Taiwan, is to educate students who can be citizens of the challenging world in the 21st century. To this end, AU has strived to render its “products” to be global in mindset and relevant in attitude.
To this end, today, the founding and current president of AU, Dr. Jeffrey J. P. Tsai, excitedly declared that:
“Following our university’s journey to excellence, we are fortunate to declare that Dr. Ruth Arnon, a truly profound intellect in every sense of the word and one whose scientific discovery has benefitted humanity, has graciously agreed to join our International Advisory Board.”
Currently, Dr. Arnon is Paul Ehrlich Professor of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. At the Weizmann, Dr. Arnon served as the Head of the Department of Chemical Immunology (1975-1978), the Dean of the Faculty of Biology (1985-1988), Director of the MacArthur Center for Parasitology (1984-1994), Vice President for International Scientific Relations (1995-1997), and Vice President of the Institute (1988-1992).
From 1995 to 2001, Dr. Arnon was the Chairperson of the Sciences division of the Israel Academy of Sciences. Later on, she was elected as President of the Israel Academy. Arnon also served as Secretary-General of the International Union of Immunological Sciences, the President of the European Federation of Immunological Societies, and is also a member of the European Union Research Advisory Board.
As a world renowned scientist, Dr. Arnon has published more than four hundred articles in biochemistry and immunology.
One specific area where Dr. Arnon is especially world renowned is her work in understanding the science of multiple sclerosis, a dreadful disease that has affected 2.3 million people in the world.
Building on the scientific understanding from their over three decades of scientific work, Dr. Arnon and her collaborators Dr. Michael Sela and Dr. Dvora Teitelbaum “discovered that a laboratory synthetically produced material could suppress a disease found in animals.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Arnon) Thus, their work became a model and the basis of a drug for the disease.
The drug was eventually commercialized by the Weizmann Institute and became a “blockbuster” known as Copaxone®. It was licensed to Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd. In 2007, Copaxone’s® global market share was 34% and sales was $US1.7 Billion. In fact, a significant fraction of the $3 billion endowment of the Weizmann Institute was a result of this drug.
According to Dr. Tsai: “In the 21st century, universities, especially those in the robust Asia Pacific area need to think-out-of-the-box in its development. To this end, we need people who do not follow “normal” paths in action and in mindset. The truly unusual life experiences of Dr. Arnon as a scientist, as a high level local and national scientific and educational administrator, and last but not least, as someone who had amassed enormous experiences with the complexities of transferring knowledge to commerce will be invaluable and irreplaceable to AU.”
“As a rapidly growing university, we are simply elated that we have the honor and privilege to have the opportunity to tap into the wisdom and experiences of such a unique individual as Dr. Arnon,” exclaimed Dr. Tsai.
AU in Taichung, Taiwan, was founded in 2001, a visionary, pioneering, dynamic, and fast-growing university. With the mission of educating students in undergraduate and graduate levels appropriate for the world in the 21st century, AU is now ranked as the top non-medical private universities in Taiwan. Today, the university has six colleges, 9,500 and 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students, respectively, and number of 515 outstanding faculty members.
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