Eight biomedical sciences masters students from the Department of Health Sciences (DHS) at Qatar University College of Arts and Sciences (QU-CAS) have presented their Thesis I projects for the fall semester.

The students - Attiyah Ramadan Saif, Eman al-Azwani, Fadheela Dad Bakhsh, Lubna Zidan, Maria Khalid Smatti, Reham Awni al-Kahlout, Shaymaa Salaheddine Dib, and Yasmin Walid Abuaqel - each gave a 25-minute oral presentation to a panel of judges on the progress of their projects. This was followed by a five-minute question and answer with the audience comprising around 20 undergraduate and graduate students from the Biomedical Sciences Programme, biomedical sciences faculty, and research scientists from QU Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and Sidra.

The judging panel included DHS members and those from external institutions such as Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q), Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Supreme Council of Health (SCH), and Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI).

Dr Asma al-Thani, DHS head and BRC director, said: “This gives students the opportunity to gain feedback from their peers and interact with experts in the field. It is their moment to show the range of their research skills and their ability to communicate their scientific work to various audiences.”

Topics included “Effect of endoplasmic reticulum stress mediated by hyperglycemia in barrier function in Human Microvascular Retinal Endothelial Cells in vitro”, “Transcriptional changes of Mycoplasma Contamination in gene expression studies, Identifying the contribution of Toll Like Receptors in Pathogenesis of Diabetic Retinopathy in Human Microvascular Retial Endothelial Cells in vitro”, “Screening novel molecular targets of metformin in breast cancer by proteomic approach”, “Seroprevalence and Phylogenetic Genotyping of Epstein Barr Virus among Blood Donors in Qatar”, “Seroprevalence of Anti-MERS-CoV antibodies among high and low risk population groups in Qatar”, “In Depth Characterization of Mesenchymal Stem Cells derived microvesicles by quantitative Proteomics”, and “Investigating the validity and significance of variant cells by next generation sequencing”.

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