ATA: Who Are We?
The time period between the ninth and the 13th centuries was known as “the Golden period of the Arab sciences.” The Arabs during this Golden Age were involved in toxicology and medicine, contributing to sentinel work on toxic substances, such as that by physician and scientist Hunayn bin Ishaq in the ninth century all the way to Ibn al-Suri in the 13th century.
Today’s Arab toxicologists founded the Arab Toxicologists Association (ATA) as an SOT Special Interest Group. ATA was founded in 2019 by professionals of Arab origin with expertise in various areas of toxicology working in Arab countries and all over the world, including in the US. ATA brings together experts from industry, academia, and government to collaborate and discuss existing and emerging toxicology issues in the Arab countries and around the world. As an SOT Special Interest Group, the ATA vision is to develop the next generation of toxicology leaders for the Arab region, create organizations of toxicology in Arabic countries, and provide education through webinars, courses, and newsletters for all toxicologists in the Arabic region. This will help increase the awareness of toxicology issues, risk assessment, and related toxicology research available to address current environmental, health, and toxicological issues that affect Arab nations.
Accomplishments
In the last two years, we have collaborated with the AACT and presented a webinar on “Overview of Nonclinical Safety Assessment for Antiviral Drugs and Vaccines Development.”
We issued two newsletters, available on ATA website. The newsletters covered many interesting topics, including interviews with Arabic toxicologists in the US, in addition to articles on hot topics as such coronavirus and the evolution of HIV therapies.
We organized a virtual reception during the 2021 SOT Annual Meeting that was attended by 200 scientists from different countries and held another virtual reception on March 29, 2022.
We offer the following awards to toxicologists, students, and postdocs:
- Graduate Student Best Abstract Award
- Distinguished Scientific Presentation Award
- Best Publication Award
- Outstanding Professional Award
- DR. BURHAN GHANAYEM Outstanding Graduate Research Award
The full descriptions of these awards are available on the ATA website.
We encourage you to join the ATA if you are not a member yet and to get involved in any of its several Committees (Award, Program, Newsletter, etc.). You will meet other toxicologists from different countries, and you will have a chance to collaborate scientifically with others, find mentors who can help you in your career, and find different possibilities of job positions. Explore the ATA website for more information.
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