A team from Qatar University has won first place in Qatar National Research Fund’s (QNRF) 9th Annual Undergraduate Research Experience Program (UREP) competition.
The top 25 percent of projects completed in 2016 under the UREP – a key capacity-building programme of QNRF, which is part of Qatar Foundation Research and Development (QF R&D) — were selected to participate in the competition, from which 13 projects were shortlisted.
The four top-scoring projects, all from Qatar University and covering a range of areas including biomedicine and health, engineering, and information and communication technology (ICT), were chosen to produce oral presentations, where each team gave a public presentation in front of a panel of judges. The remaining nine teams presented their work in the form of posters, which were displayed and judged on the day of the competition.
Launched in 2006, UREP is QNRF’s longest-running programme. To date, more than 3,200 students have benefited from taking part in UREP, which gives them hands-on research experience under the guidance of university faculty and research mentors.
Noor Al Merekhi, Programs Director, QNRF, expressed her pride in the teams, saying: “The winning projects are truly exceptional - they push the boundaries on all levels, and demonstrate the research talent emerging among Qatar’s youth.”
First place in the competition was awarded to an ICT-themed project from Qatar University. The project, entitled ‘Scalable Real-time Monitoring System for Medical and Brain Computer Interface Applications’, aimed to develop a scalable health system for effective, remote, and real-time patient monitoring.
AlKuzama AlHarami, who gave the presentation on behalf of the winning team, said she was delighted with the result: “On behalf of the entire team, I would like to thank Dr. Amr Mohamed and Dr. Tarek Elfouly, our mentors at Qatar University, as well as everyone at QNRF for their support.
“On a personal level, this competition has offered me a hands-on glimpse into the world of research."
