CMU-Q students place second in BrainHub Neurohackathon

A team of CMU-Q computer science students placed second in the Neurohackathon competition at Carnegie Mellon University’s BrainHub. Sabit Hassan, Daanish Ali Khan, Shaden Shaar, Fatma Tlili and Mounira Tlili analyzed a data set of synaptic changes in early Alzheimer’s disease and identified morphological features that may be predictive indicators of Alzheimer’s.

The annual competition challenges students from a variety of disciplines, including neuroscience, statistics, machine learning and computer science, to make novel interpretations of existing data sets. The contest falls within Carnegie Mellon’s BrainHub, an initiative that is developing computational and technological tools for studying the links between brain and behavior.

This is the second year that CMU-Q has participated in the Carnegie Mellon-wide event; last year’s team placed first. Participants include graduate and undergraduate students from the main campus in Pittsburgh, the Qatar campus, and CMU’s African campus in Rwanda. A total of 55 students on 13 teams entered this year’s Neurohackathon.