Professor Chérif Matta, B.Pharm.Sci, Dipl, PhD, HDR, FRSA, FRSB, FInstP, FRSC, FAAS, FAAAS, is Professor and Chair/Head of the Department of Chemistry and Physics at Mount Saint Vincent University. He is an Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University, Laval University, Saint Mary’s University, and Zewail City of Science and Technology.
Prof Matta is the Director of Accreditation and a Member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC). He has recently served as the Chair of the Canada Research Chairs (CRC)’s Interdisciplinary Adjudication Committee (IAC) and a Member of the Multidisciplinary Selection Board of the Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) – both programmes of the Tri-Council of Canada. He has been/is a member of several Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) adjudication panels, a Member of the College of Reviewers of Compute Canada, and of the African Academy of Science (AAS). He has also recently served as a Member of the Comité multidisciplinaire de Microbiologie/Virologie of the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et Technologies (FRQNT). Prof Matta is an elected Member of the Commission on Quantum Crystallography of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) and also serves as a Member of the Canadian National Committee for Crystallography (CNCC).
CAREER PATH
Prof Matta obtained a BPharmSci from Alexandria University (Egypt), a PhD in theoretical and quantum chemistry from McMaster University (Canada), and a Habilitation to Direct Research from the Université de Lorraine (France). Postdoctoral training opportunities opened for him at the University of Toronto and at Dalhousie University.
Prof Matta counts ca. 200 publications including research papers, book chapters, and four books. He has given some 250 lectures in more than 30 countries. His research in theoretical and computational chemistry focuses on the effects of electric fields on biochemical reactions. A developing branch of Matta’s research in recent years is mitochondrial biophysics.
Prof Matta received the “Excellence Initiative” Distinguished Visiting Professorship by the Minister of Science and Higher Education of Poland, the Research Excellence Award from Mount Saint Vincent University in 2017, the Lady Davis Fellowship in 2016-2017 (see RESOLUTION 1267 by the Nova Scotia Legislature congratulating Matta), the 2016 NSERC/CRSNG-Acfas “prevue par l’image” Prize, the Third Molecular Graphics and Molecular Simulation Society (MGMS) Silver Jubilee Prize of the Molecular Graphics and Molecular Simulation Society in 2009, and the John C. Polanyi Prize in Chemistry in 2014. Matta was the 2021 Science Atlantic Notable Scientist Speaker of the Year. He has been elected as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
The Stanford University study on citations of 7 million authors standardized by scientific field during 1998-to-2018(Table-S4-career-2018) places Matta 43,797th among 7,000,000 scholars, among the top 0.6% worldwide.
Profile: https://aasciences.africa/fellow/498.
ADVOCACY FOR THE FRENCH LANGUAGE
Prof Matta is passionate about the role of the French language in science in bilingual Canada. For examples of this, see a video of Matta’s testimonial in front of the Canadian Parliament, his recent radio interview, a conference he co-organized on theoretical chemistry in Latin languages, his many talks/round tables at Acfas conferences on the role of the French Language in science, an example of his publications on the subject, an example of an original scientific publication he published in French, or his participation in french-science competitions in Canada (2016 Preuve par l’image Acfas-NSERC Prize).