Why does the United States attract millions of international students? America offers some of the best educational and research opportunities attracting students from around the world. About half of doctoral degrees are earned by international students according to the Center for Immigration Studies. For high-tech STEM fields the percentages are higher. The most prestigious award is the Nobel Prize - can you guess how many recipients came to America from other countries? The numbers are staggering:

“Immigrants account for approximately 35% of U.S.-affiliated academic Nobel Laureates, reflecting their critical role in driving American excellence in research and innovation. Approximately 44% of immigrant Nobel Laureates in academic disciplines attended U.S. institutions for their highest educational degree.” (Institute for Immigration Research)

Who knows among us today who will be the next Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, or Nikola Tesla? International students coming to study and work in America are essential resources that we must respect and support with the hope that they can stay and continue to support American innovation.

I’m very grateful to be a colleague and friend of Dr. Mahmoud Sherif who now lives and works at the Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of Delaware in geochemistry and is originally from Cairo, Egypt. Here’s a link to his LinkedIn profile.

I learned about his exceptional work in 2019 when I supported the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the occurrence and treatment of naturally-occurring radioactivity in Middle Eastern - Northern African groundwaters. If you’re interested in these efforts, please see my three related blogs describing trips to Jordan in 2018, Saudi Arabia in 2019, and the IAEA headquarters in Austria in 2020. For the Jordan trip, I gave this slide presentation to the 9th International Symposium on Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material.

Specific to the research that Mahmoud performed, here’s a great article from the University of Delaware’s UDaily in 2016 stating: “doctoral student Mahmoud Sherif is studying the origin and distribution of natural radioactivity in the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in Egypt.

More recently, Mahmoud and I supported the IAEA with examining geochemical data from Libya to address concerns about radioactive groundwater and he took the lead on preparing the technical report.

Currently at FSU, he’s working for the National MagLab’s Center for Rare Earths, Critical Minerals, and Industrial Byproducts where the largest, high powered magnet in the world is located. Mahmoud is working in the field of gamma spectrometry to measure radiation from natural and engineered materials.

Mahmoud wrote to me this week and said, “I am currently working in the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory as a postdoc. I have established a very good gamma spec laboratory here. I am also helping establish a gamma spec unit in other places in the USA.”

I look forward to staying in contact with Mahmoud on all his vital research and academic adventures!