Mohamed H. A. Hassan is Executive Director of the Third World Academy of Sciences, an autonomous international organization founded in Trieste, Italy, in 1983 by a distinguished group of scientists from the South under the leadership of the late Nobel laureate Abdus Salam of Pakistan. It was officially launched by the then Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1985. Hassan is also President of the African Academy of Sciences, Secretary General of the Third World Network of Scientific Organizations, and serves on a number of committees with other organizations worldwide. He was born in the Sudan in 1947 and holds a Ph.D. in Plasma Physics from the University of Oxford, UK (1974). A former professor and Dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Khartoum, he received the order of scientific merit of Brazil and is a fellow of TWAS, AAS, and the Islamic Academy of Sciences as well as an honorary member of the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences. His research areas include theoretical plasma physics, physics of wind erosion and sand transport.