Hossam Haick, whose breakthrough work in nanotechnology has garnered global accolades, says his success as an Arab citizen of Israel proves that education knows no boundaries and is key to improving his community's lot. At just 40 years old, Haick has been repeatedly recognized as a leader in his field. He also teaches a popular online course in his spare time to thousands of students across the Arab world from his lab at Israel's oldest university, the Technion. Israel's Arab minority, which makes up 20 percent of the population, has long had strained relations with the Jewish majority, ties that have deteriorated amid a five-month wave of Palestinian-Israeli violence. Suspicions have been mounting against Arab citizens, who often identify with their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza. While Israel's Jewish population has produced a number of Nobel Prize winners and developed a booming tech sector, Israel's Arabs have often been left behind. They tend to be poorer and less educated than Jews, suffer discrimination in areas like housing and employment, and are underrepresented in academia and the high-tech world. Haick and his mound of academic degrees, his 28 patents and his 40-page resume defy the statistics. He says that's because academia judges him based on his abilities, not his ethnicity. "I'm not treated as an Arab ... I'm treated as a special scientist, and this is nice," said Haick. "But unfortunately when I get out of the Technion to reality, things change a bit." — AP
