Ahmed Zewail

In the Middle East, it is clear that peace will never be reached without solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A two-state solution must be found and enforced.

In Egypt, every family is suffering from the deteriorated schooling and university system of the Mubarak regime. What families want most of all is to secure a good education for their children.

Higher education should be based on quality, not quantity; receive merit-based funding; and be free of unnecessary bureaucracy. Not the least of the benefits of educational reform is to foster the pride of achievement at national and international levels.

Like everywhere in the world, people of the Middle East aspire to liberty and justice. They wish to have a better life and a decent education for their children.

Syria may appear to be a small country, but it is just the type of entangled conflict that can lead to a world catastrophe. It does not take much imagination to see Syria as the Sarajevo of the 21st century, leading to world war.

Every effort should be made to help build the new democratic nation with reconciliation and forgiveness, for the sake of Egypt and not for the benefit of a party or a group.

Despite differences of faith or even the occasional collisions between them, Egypt is united.

Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious - but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance. Women made up nearly half my class at university, and my senior academic adviser there was a woman. In Alexandria, my friends were Christians and Muslims.

In today's world, America's soft power is commonly thought to reside in the global popularity of Hollywood movies, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Starbucks.

Let me put it this way: There is nothing in Islam that is fundamentally against the quest for knowledge.

I'd rather have the influence than the power, and the influence to me is to build institutions of independence and democracy, to regain for Egypt prestige in education and science and technology.

In adapting to life in the melting pot of America, I discovered that the same soft power of science has a huge influence in building bridges between cultures and religions - and has the potential to do so with the Muslim world.

The U.S. can still maintain research institutions, such as Caltech, that are the envy of the world, yet it would be hubristic and naive to think that this position is sustainable without investing in science education and basic research.

Human resources are just tremendous in Egypt, but we need the science base; we need the correct science base.

The soft power of science has the potential to reshape global diplomacy.

Investing in science education and curiosity-driven research is investing in the future.

Curiosity - the rover and the concept - is what science is all about: the quest to reveal the unknown.

From the dawn of history, science has probed the universe of unknowns, searching for the uniting laws of nature.