Speakers

Prof. Mustafa Zülküf Altan is a full time professor in ELT at the Department of Foreign Languages Education at Erciyes University, Turkey. He has published both in Turkey and abroad. He is the author of four books including 2015 best educational research award winning book “Educational Gridlock of Turkey: Entrepreneurial Teaching Entrepreneurial Teacher”. His research interests include teacher education, teacher development, individual differences in foreign language learning, alternative assessment, intercultural communication entrepreneurial teaching and innovation & education.

How to Create a Culture of Entrepreneurship and Innovation

We live in a time of unrivaled social, economic, technological and environmental problems and desperately are in need of change and improvement in many different areas on a global scale. These concerns and ever increasing need of change are placing pressure on education systems and calling into question many of the traditional models, content and processes of education leading to new thinking about the nature of education, what learners should know and what they should be able to do as a result of their education in order to be able to come up with innovative solutions to these concerns and meet the needs of nations and the globe in general.

With the above picture in mind, educating young people becomes the key to future innovation and entrepreneurship. So it is a good and critical idea to ask ourselves if we are on the right track. Innovation and entrepreneurial initiatives start with the power of human thought. Ideas, inspiration and creativity all come from humans, not machines. Since the technology is the product of human innovation, the greatest technology cannot reproduce what the human mind can do.

It is obvious that current educational models, assumptions about learning and approaches to learning and teaching are unable to equip individuals for these new and unexpected challenges since present education systems all over the world are almost exclusively based on a world of yesterday! Therefore, as educators we need to create alternatives. That is, we desperately need for an educational paradigm shift to educate more individuals with entrepreneurial mindset to create innovation in each and every area of life.

Entrepreneurship and Innovation are usually thought as a notion of business, capital, commerce and growth and this way of thinking usually misleads us drastically to understand the real power of entrepreneurship and innovation and their vital relationship with education.

The globe needs individuals who are more creative, innovative, and able to come up with solutions to both present and future concerns in every sector of the societies they live in. What is education for? What kind of people do we wish to develop? Why do we need more innovation and innovative individuals? How can this vision be accomplished? Who can bring this vision to come true? This keynote speech will highlight the importance of implementing an entrepreneurial education carried out by entrepreneurial teachers to foster the right mindset to create a real entrepreneurial culture in order to live in a better and peaceful world.

Dr. Mahomoodally, Fawzi Mohamad is an associate professor and former head of department at the faculty of science, University of Mauritius.  Fawzi is an alumni of the Harvard University, USA, and recipient of several awards. He has authored 214 scientific publications (133 full scientific papers in ISSN/impact factor journals, edited 4 academic books, 36 book chapters, and 41 abstracts in international/national conferences). He is recipient of >40 fellowships/travel grants. In 2011, he was invited as a key speaker at the 14th Asian Chemical Congress (Thailand); ASM-GM (Boston, USA), the ICAAC meeting in Colorado, USA and 6 strategic meetings in Washington DC, USA. In 2018, he was an invited speaker for at the ISE 2018, Dhaka and plenary speaker for Creative Educational Society’s College of Pharmacy, India. He was invited to the commonwealth conference (Bangalore) by the Royal Society, UK, the Young leader session with Nobel Laureates at the STS forum, Japan and Fellow of African Science Leadership Programme, South Africa. He is presently the PI/co-PI of 6 research grants/consortium (total of 13 million MUR). He has organized/instructed >15 international/national workshops/training courses. Fawzi works in the field of health sciences, with a deep-rooted interest towards documenting/validating the use of complementary/alternative medicine and indigenous/traditional knowledge pertaining to the use of natural products (medicinal herbs/spices/food plants/animal products/practices). He endeavours to develop therapeutic bio-products from medicinal herbs/food plants to address global health, wellness, and food security issues. He is presently collaborating with private companies to translate his research into commercial therapeutic bio-products.

Bioprospecting nature and traditions for new therapies

Nature has always been an inspiration for the discovery of new therapies to alleviate human suffering and buffer the mortality and morbidity associated with both communicable and non-communicable diseases. With the recent award of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Youyou Tu, for her discovery of the anti-malarial drug Artemisinin, drug discovery from nature and traditional medicines has been intensified. This has subesequently resulted in a paradigm shift geared towards the translation of traditional medicine into clinical setting. Interestingly, the past decades have witnessed a renewed interest in validating traditional claims surrounding the use of herbs to manage and/or treat plethora of human ailments.This presentation will highlight the importance and contribution of traditional medicines, particualy herbal medicines, in the drug development process and will overview recent work conducted in this area from the tropical island of Mauritius.