Rana Dajani

Rana Dajani is a Jordanian molecular biologist and tenured professor of biology and biotechnology at Hashemite University. She earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Iowa.

Education Dr. Dajani first gained a General Certificate of Education from the University of London in 1985, before studying for her bachelor's degree in biology at the University of Jordan. She then pursued her master's degree, also in Biology, at the same university in 1992. She won the First Honors Award for both. She attended the University of Iowa in 2005, earning a Ph.D. in molecular biology.

Career Dajani's career life is extensive, having been described as “not a straight line, but a zigzag of priorities and opportunities.” Starting out as a lecturer at the Philadelphia University immediately after graduating from her Master's program, she then taught for five years at the Amman Academy. Around 2005, she was an assistant professor at the Hashemite University, moving on to become a tenured professor. In September 2012, she visited the Genetics Department at Yale University as an assistant professor. She has also been a mentor at Stanford University's AMENDS program since 2012, and an advisor on the Fetzer Advisory Council on the Natural Sciences at the Fetzer Institute. In addition, since March 2019, she has been a member at the advisory board for Mustafa Prize Foundation. At the moment, she is a visiting scholar at the University of Richmond and a consultant for the company Alpha Sights. She is also the co-founder of the Islamic World Academy for Young Scientists (ISESCO). Other than a substantial list of faculty academic appointments, she has appeared as a judge on several prize-winning initiations such as the Nature Inspiring Award, the Hult Prize at the Hashemite University, and Innovation lab IRC.

Extending out of her own field, she also founded an NGO called, We Love Reading, “Taghyeer” (the Arabic word meaning change), training women to read aloud, and establishing libraries in different areas in Jordan, inciting a love of reading in young children in 2009. She was the director for the Center for Service Learning at the Hashemite University from 2009 to the year 2010, then became the director of the Center for Studies at the same university, from 2011 to 2012. She has been appointed a Higher Education Reform Expert by TEMPUS Jordan.

Dr. Dajani's work branches out, seeing as she is a freelance journalist from the year 2011 to the present. She has been an editor at Frontiers in Immunology and Muslim-Science.com. She has also consulted for many companies, including DQS UL Jordan, Triangle Research Group and Epic Education.

Dajani is a strong advocate for the empowering of women, being a member of many organizations such as ASRF Women Innovators in Charge Jury in July 2016 and has been on the UN Women Jordan Advisory Council since 2013 to the present. Mentoring many, she also created a toolkit needed in order for the women she trained to “pay it forward” and train others as well.

We Love Reading After graduating and returning to Jordan, Dajani realized that Jordan has no public libraries, unlike the 9,000 present in the States, in almost every neighborhood. After research, she realized that children who read for pleasure grow up to exhibit stronger language skills, better academic performance, and a greater emotional intelligence. Due to that, she set out to start a program that would initiate a love of reading in young children. She began her first read-aloud session in a mosque, which can be found in almost every neighborhood in Jordan and allows for all to enter. As the read-alouds garnered more popularity, she began training other women in the techniques of storytelling as well.

Since its founding in 2010, We Love Reading has trained over 7000 women to read aloud and established about 1500 libraries across different areas in Jordan. By 2024, the programme has established over 4,000 libraries in 60 countries, going so far as to be present in many refugee camps. In October 2017 she was selected by Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study as a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program at Harvard University.

List of received awards

Below is a list of the awards she has received; UNHCR MENA Nansen Award 2020 for ‘We Love Reading’ Arab Science and Technology Foundation 2019 Award in service of the advancement of science and technology Jacob Klaus Social Entrepreneurship Award 2018 PEER Award 2014 for the project “The Three Circles of Alemat,” PI, NSF/USAID, 2014–2017 The inaugural IIE Global Change-maker Award in celebration of the 70th Anniversary of Fulbright 2016 The Arab Women Association Golden Award 2015 Top idea in the IDEO challenge 2015 Featured in the Innovation for education book by Charles Leadbeater, WISE Qatar Foundation, 2012 book Finalist for the “women in academia network” for the Alumni Engagement innovation fund by the State alumni, 2011 Nominated by the Hashemite University for the “Women in Science” award offered by the Islamic Development Bank (2011) Complimentary membership to the Clinton Global Initiative 2010 Among her speaking engagements is the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship symposium at the University of Cambridge; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, McGill University, and at the British Council Belief in Dialogue conference.

In 2018 she published Five Scarves: Doing the Impossible - If We Can Reverse Cell Fate, Why Can’t We Redefine Success? on the subject of inequities in education and employment.

In 2019 she published We Love Reading - An Introduction.