Student cancer research takes top awards at CMU-Q symposium
QNRF and Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics present special awards at ‘Meeting of the Minds’
DOHA, QATAR – A research project that sought to identify novel biomarkers for better diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer won the ‘Best Project’ and ‘Best Poster’ awards at the 11th annual Meeting of the Minds undergraduate research symposium hosted by Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q).
The study was conducted by Ettaib El Marabti, a biological sciences student, under the mentorship of Ihab Younis, assistant teaching professor of biological sciences at CMU-Q.
“I chose the topic as it wasn’t something I was familiar with and I wanted to learn more about how this mechanism is exclusive to certain genes and diseases,” El Marabti said. “It’s a great feeling to be recognized for the research I conducted.”
Kemal Oflazer, associate dean of research, said: “Meeting of the Minds is a long-standing annual tradition at Carnegie Mellon University. Congratulations to our students who submitted their work as posters and presented them eagerly during the event.”
Computer science student Sannan Tariq received second prize in the ‘Best Project’ category for his work on computational offloading. Third prize went to Mohammad Osaama bin Shehzad for developing an application to enhance learning in Qatar high school biology classes.
Dr. Barak Yehya from the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics presented five awards for research that has particular relevance to Qatar. QNRF awarded a prize for ‘Best Project’ and ‘Best Poster.’
“We thank both the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics and QNRF for their continued support of this event,” said Oflazer.
Students presented projects to a panel of judges from Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Hamad Medical Corporation, Ministry of Development, Planning and Statistics, Northwestern University in Qatar, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, Qatar Computing Research Institute, Qatar Mobility Innovation Center, Qatar National Research Fund, Qatar Science and Technology Park and Weill-Cornell Medicine-Qatar.
Full list of award winners, Meeting of the Minds 2017
Meeting of the Minds Best Project
- “MAPK14 minor intron splicing as novel biomarker for breast cancer,” Ettaib El Marabti (Advisor: Ihab Younis)
- “An agile platform for distributed computation in smart IoT environments,” Sannan Tariq (Advisor: Khaled Harras)
- “Application based learning to reinforce academic concepts in Qatar biology curriculum,” Mohammad Osaama bin Shehzad (Advisors: Annette Vincent and Saquib Razak)
Meeting of the Minds Best Poster
- “MAPK14 minor intron splicing as novel biomarker for breast cancer,” Ettaib El Marabti (Advisor: Ihab Younis)
Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics Awards
- “Potential food poison analysis of phage DNA collected from Al Khor,” Raghid Bsat (Advisor: Valentin Ilyin)
- “Biofilm formation in water systems in Doha,” Khawla Al-Darwish (Advisor: Annette Vincent)
- “Application based learning to reinforce academic concepts in Qatar biology curriculum,” Mohammad Osaama bin Shehzad (Advisors: Annette Vincent and Saquib Razak)
- “The effect of culture on image appeal and social presence in Arab e-commerce websites,” Noor AlQaedi (Advisor: Divakaran Liginlal)
- “Arabic author profiling for cyber-security,” Wajdi Zaghouani, Anis Charfi (Post-graduate Poster)
QNRF Awards
QNRF Best Project:“The Hive: An on-edge middleware solution for context and resource sharing in the Internet of Things,” Aliaa Essameldin (Advisor: Khaled Harras)
QNRF Best Poster: “BCL2L11 as gene target of mir-92 and mir-10a: Gene expression, interaction evaluation and implication in type 2 diabetes and obesity,” Alya Al-Kurbi (Advisor: Dr. Mohamed Chikri, QBRI)
The judges for Meeting of the Minds 2017