Nobel Prize winner (2006) George Smoot (center) is pictured with Dr. Tayeb A. Kamali (R) Vice-Chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology, and Dr. Bob Richards (L) CEO of CERT during meetings in Abu Dhabi on July 28. Professor Smoot is the American astrophysicist and cosmologist who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics with John C. Mather for their discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. This work helped cement the big-bang theory of the universe using the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE-project can be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science".

Dr. Smoot is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2003 he was awarded the Einstein Medal.