Qatari Hala Sultan Seif El Issa was ranked third in the list of the Royal Society of Chemistry that includes 175 experts, researchers and specialists in the field of chemistry.

El Issa, who is the head of the department of Chemistry and Earth Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Science in Qatar, the state incentive award in pure and applied sciences for her significant contributions in the domain of organic chemistry.

She is the first woman from the Arab Gulf to get a fellowship from the German foundation of Alexander von Humboldt, which is awarded internationally to scientists younger than 40. El Issa’s name was included among the names of "175 personalities in chemistry” by the foundation located in England, for being the most influential experts, researchers and specialists around the world in the field of chemistry.

Head of the chemistry association in Qatar, El Issa is an accomplished Qatari researcher. She graduated with a degree in chemistry from the University of Qatar and put noteworthy effort into scientific research in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom and Germany. Her scientific interests revolve around the environment as well as the photochemistry of medicinal plants and natural compounds.

El Issa represented Qatar in the United Nations between 2005 and 2013 and presided over many of the committees that aim to ban the use of organic pollutants and pesticides. In 2010, she was elected as the first Arab specialist and Chairman of the Chemical Reviews Committee that’s adherent to the Rotterdam Convention.

This article was originally published in Arabic on YallaFeed .