Student researchers present senior projects at College Honors 2021 

Record number of business administration presentations at webinar event 

Student researchers from each academic program at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), a Qatar Foundation partner university, presented their final projects at the College Honors 2021 webinar.  

 As part of their College Honors requirements, students must conduct research under the guidance of a faculty advisor, complete a senior honors thesis, and present the findings to a panel of faculty members. A total of 15 students in the Class of 2021 are vying for College Honors in biological sciences, business administration, computer science and information systems.  

Michael Trick, dean of CMU-Q, congratulated the students: “College Honors is a formidable task for any graduating student, and these 15 students tackled the challenge during a pandemic. We are very proud of their dedication, focus and tenacity.” 

In a campus record, five students from the Business Administration Program presented theses this year, three of whom researched topics in the area of entrepreneurship in Qatar. 

All 15 seniors will submit their work for Meeting of the Minds 2021, a research symposium for CMU-Q students. Last year, Meeting of the Minds went virtual, opening up CMU-Q student research to a wider audience.  

College Honors presentations 

Class of 2021 

Biological Sciences  

Fajer Mansoor Al-Marzooqi  

• Characterization of the transformation/transition of naïve fibroblasts to cancer association fibroblasts using 3D co-cultures 
• Faculty advisor: Nesrine Affara 

Reem Khaled Alsayed  

• Inhibiting PARP1 splicing in concert with inducing DNA damage as potential breast cancer therapy 
• Faculty advisor: Ihab Younis 

 Mariam Ahmed El-Esnawy  

• Splicing regulation of alternative splicing regulators as a novel therapeutic approach in breast cancer 
• Faculty advisor: Ihab Younis 

 Joana Khatib  

• A bottom-up analysis of colorectal cancer tumor-stroma interaction and the optimization of a testing model 
• Faculty advisor: Nesrine Affara 

 Weilin Li  

• Characterization of PDLIM7 expression and localization in breast cancer cells 
• Faculty Advisor: Mohamed Bouaouina 

Business Administration  

 AlAnoud Mohammed Al-Ghamdi  

• Success factors for small and medium enterprises in Qatar 
• Faculty advisor: George White 

 Aisha Yousef Al-Jabir  

• Female entrepreneurship: Challenges and recommendations 
• Faculty advisor: George White 

 Ali Mohamed Al-Maadid  

• Success factors of business incubators in Qatar: Investigating the factors that affect the success rate of tenant companies in business incubators from the perspective of entrepreneurs 
• Faculty advisor: George White 

 Joud Ghalayini  

• The effect of natural resource dependence on income distribution and equality in emerging economies 
• Faculty advisors: Agustin Indaco and Muhammad Fuad Farooqi 

 Auguste Piromalli  

• Investigating the market reaction to S.E.C.-ordered suspensions for stocks listed on NASDAQ 
• Faculty advisor: Serkan Akguc 

Computer Science  

Laila Ossama El-Beheiry  

• FemtoCloud offloading framework with machine-dependent optimizations 
• Faculty advisors: Khaled Harras and Giselle Reis 

Information Systems  

 Samir Abdaljalil  

• Financial text summarization 
• Faculty advisor: Houda Bouamor 

 Yara Nasser Al-Abdulghani  

• Exploring resilience in the digital age: A behavioral perspective with Qatar as a case study 
• Faculty advisor: Savanid (Nui) Vatanasakdakul 

 Shouq Hani Al-Khuzaei  

• Design for a change: Examining the effect of micro-interactions on student reading engagement 
• Faculty advisor: Susan Hagan 

 Imane Bendou  

• Automatic Arabic translation of English educational content online using neural machine translation: The case of Khan Academy 
• Faculty advisor: Houda Bouamor