DOHA: The World Innovative Summit for Education (WISE) has announced a panel of high-profile nine-member international jury, which has already reviewed the short listed 45 entries of the first WISE Award.

The jury panel include Susan J Bodily, Director, RAND Education; Nicholas Burnett, Assistant Director General for Education, UNESCO; Godon Gee, President Ohio State University Zhou Qifeng, president, Beijing University; Mike Gibbonns, CEO, Richard Rose Federation; Dr Anoop Gupta, Corporate Vice President, Technology Policy and Strategy, Microsoft Corporation, USA; Dr Amy Gutmann, President, The University of Pennsylvania; Patrick M Callan, Founding President, National Centre for Public Policy and Higher Education; and Dr Christian Bode, Secretary General, German Academic Exchange Service.

The WISE organisers said the jury panel has already reviewed the short listed entries. The panel will select the six laureates out of it and will be announced this month end.

The WISE is a biennial global collaborative initiative by Qatar Foundation. The WISE Award 2009, is aimed at recognizing and celebrating outstanding achievements and practice within three different themes in the field of Education- Pluralism, Sustainability and Innovation in Education.

The first year of the initiative received more than 395 entries. While the Pluralism segment attracted a total of 103 entries the Sustainability and Innovation categories received 69 and 226 entries respectively.

Applications were drawn from all over the world. The maximum numbers of entries were received from Africa-110. Asia and Oceania (92), Europe (80), Middle East (35), North America (56) and South and Latin America (25) were among other countries that sent the entries.