Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz

HRH, Special Advisor to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the King Salman Center for Disability Research

Special Advisor to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques with the rank of minister since May 2021, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the King Salman Center for Disability Research since 1992, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the King Salman Nonprofit Foundation. He is the first Arab and Muslim astronaut, having flown as a payload specialist representing the Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Arabsat) on the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-51G in 1985. A pilot since 1976, he worked as a researcher in the Foreign Media Department of the Ministry of Media in 1983 and became director of the ministry's Media Department in 1984, before joining the Royal Saudi Air Force as a fighter pilot and retiring in 1996 with the rank of colonel. He holds a master's degree in social and political sciences from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University (1999). He served as Secretary-General of the Supreme Commission for Tourism with the rank of minister from 2000, Chairman of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage from 2008 to 2018, head of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Initiative for the Care of National Heritage from 2011 to 2018, and Chairman of the Board of the Saudi Space Commission from its establishment in December 2018 until May 2021. In the disability field he was elected Chairman of the Children with Disabilities Association in 1988 and chaired its executive committee from 1989 to 2010. He is the founder and chairman of the Saudi Aviation Club (since 2001), Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the King Salman Science Oasis (since 2011) and founder of the Prince Sultan bin Salman Chair for Mosque Architecture at Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University. His honours include the King Abdulaziz Sash (1985), NASA's Space Flight Medal, the GCC Gulf Personality of the Year Award for humanitarian work in disability (2016), the first global honour of the UN World Tourism Organization (2017) and honorary doctorates from several universities.