women-scientists-from-egypt

"My wish is that the nuclear treatment for cancer be as affordable and cheap as aspirin."

"This provided decision makers with an overview of ecosystems in the biosphere reserve, and how and where degradations were taking place or how areas were changing, converting to other uses. It was important to have a bird’s eye view. Decisions depended on this."

"At that time, the Omayed Biosphere Reserve had no detailed management plan. So, when I produced this work, the data was used to establish the very first management plan. Of course, now we are continuously monitoring the biosphere reserve."

"We are happy to continue with this model. I encourage young scientists working in this field to apply, to both the national and international awards! I have been there, it helps a lot. The grant goes to the field, into analyses, etc."

"One thing I would like to mention here is that the Egyptian MAB National Committee has now been doing the same as the MAB International Coordinating Council. We are now issuing a young scientist award at the national level. It includes a 5000 EGP grant."

"The beauty of this data is we can look for molecular signatures for better donor selection and build personalized risk calculators for recipients. We want to tailor treatment to the particular patient."

"We think that this research will probably introduce a paradigm shift in donor selection. This can help get us away from the idea of chronological age and towards building a set of molecular markers that can define the cellular age of a donor."

"Chronological age is kind of a washy marker. It doesn’t tell you the full story."

"Even being in medicine, you don’t know all the ins and outs, but I saw it from the other direction."

"Transplantation has definitely improved with time, but still a lot of patients die after this procedure. We still have an average five year survival after these procedures of 50 or 60 percent, so we still have a lot to do."

"There are also fascinating backseat use cases around content recommendations and monetization of advertising data, even. Understanding passenger reactions and emotional engagement with music and video content can help refine content recommendations, making these more relevant to the user and their experience. Where advertising is deployed, understanding viewer engagement with that content provides OEMs and advertisers with very valuable data. I think users will be interested in opting in to that, if there is an incentive for them. Imagine a scenario where you and your friends take a rideshare to a concert and engage with advertising in the back of a car. In return, since the system knows you are taking a ride to a concert, it offers you a discount coupon for a band t-shirt or such. And, to wrap this up, a fun use case often requested by OEMS, is trip highlights where the Emotion AI detects smiles and joy, so that an interior camera can take cool pictures just at the right moment there’s a lot of fun we can add to the overall experience considering the right applications of this technology."

"I am also very interested in the experience features that in cabin sensing will enable. The Emotion AI technology that we created at Affectiva, now part of Smart Eye, also unlocks massively interesting personalization. By understanding the emotional and cognitive states of people in a vehicle we can adapt the environment to their needs in the moment. For example, if someone is getting drowsy, the lighting dims, the heating turns up and soothing music plays quietly in the background, creating a comfortable and restorative environment."

"Occupancy detection, which determines how many people are in the cabin and where they are sitting, is another interesting area of functionality. This too can help improve existing safety functionality, as it helps determine proper seat position and seat belt usage and can provide important analysis for airbag deployment."

"I have always been very interested in the intersection of healthcare and automotive. So, I am glad to see that, for example through Euro NCAP, attention is being given to sudden sickness. What if interior sensing AI could detect driver impairment due to a medical event? For example, we already have early stage capabilities for detecting heart rate variability using computer vision, and I am eager to see these types of technologies advance so that they can actually be deployed in vehicles."

"Our focus should always be on advancing automotive technologies to save lives and I love how interior sensing enables several advanced safety features. One important functionality is child and child seat detection, which helps determine if a child is left behind in a vehicle unattended. I am hopeful that this can help avoid tragic deaths due to vehicular heatstroke. And, as anyone who has driven around with kids or for that matter, pets will know, they often cause distraction, so child and pet detection can provide important inputs to promote safer driving behavior."

"In cabin sensing is such a hot topic because it allows OEMs to not only meet regulatory and rating requirements that are on the horizon, but also sets them up to differentiate their brands in a very competitive market. Also, car manufacturers can expand on cameras, other sensors and machine learning-based algorithms that are already deployed for DMS. Building on that as a foundation, they can often, cost effectively, add advanced safety features and engaging mobility experiences to existing platforms."

"Over the past several years, we’ve seen Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) go from nice to have to must have technology in cars."

"In cabin sensing is the natural evolution of DMS and is seeing increased demand because of its many important applications in safety as well as entertainment, comfort, wellness and beyond. Instead of just focusing on the driver, interior sensing solutions have a full view of the entire cabin. With a camera and other sensors, these systems provide human-centric insight into what’s happening in a vehicle, by detecting the state of the cabin and that of the driver and passengers in it."

"Our findings provide further evidence for an effect of DRD4 where children with smaller number of repeat alleles of this DRD4 gene have higher possibility to develop ADHD In Egyptian children."

"I am the main supervisor from the National Research Centre (NRC)."

"On the Master thesis of my student Malak Doss who is working under my supervision at the NRC."

"It was reported that inattentive ADHD in Egypt constituted high percentage of the finally diagnosed cases."

"Detecting the genetic factors for children with ADHD in the Egyptian population becomes imperative."

"We hypothesize that genetic heterogeneity in the VNTR."

"Is an important factor in the pathophysiology of ADHD and dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4)."

"Is one of the most important candidate genes for ADHD."

"We concluded that taking in consideration the sequence of DRD4 VNTR is very important to estimate the contribution of this dopaminergic receptor to the pathophysiology of ADHD."

"Let's be honest: The best science students are going to learn anyhow. They don't need to be pushed. I prefer to teach students who hate physics. I tell them not to be intimidated. They can all do it once the fear is removed.""

"I go through the steps one by one, no matter how long it takes. It's like running a race with them, and you're out of breath sometimes, but it's worth it when we make it to the finish line"

"Our students would not accept it if we stood still; we would lose them. I learn students’ names and encourage them to participate. I ask for volunteers to go to the blackboard. The first time, girls especially will say, 'I have never been to the blackboard.' I say, ‘Come with me, don't worry; help me.'”"

"I enjoy working with undergraduates and find nothing more rewarding than seeing a student understand who was having a hard time"

"Experiments that have been conducted there (are) biomedicine – I have an experiment with a user from Pakistan and she worked on using infrared microspectroscopy to distinguish between benign and malignant breast cancer tissues. I had an experiment with another user from Cyprus - she is an archaeologist - doing experiments on ancient human remains dating back to 4 000 years old. Another experiment is with a Jordanian user – she’s analysing historical fragments from Petra. I also have a collaboration with an Egyptian user on characterisation of historical manuscripts and another experiment with an Iranian user also working on historical parchments from the Koran and the Torah."

"We are scientists but we are still humans and we cannot close our eyes or ears to what’s happening around us."

"Exactly. It’s obvious that a facility like a synchrotron light source takes millions of dollars and also huge expertise and manpower, and it’s also clear that no single country in the Middle East or any developing country is able to have its own synchrotron facility like we see in Europe or the US. SESAME is the only synchrotron facility where all these members are contributing to have it operational."

"We are also evolving the model of “science for peace”. For example, with Africa being the only continent in the world without a light synchrotron, we are exploiting the connection points between the Middle East and the continent"

"My main areas of focus are biomedicine and bioarcheology. In collaboration with researchers from Jordan, we have conducted studies that have proved the utility of infrared microspectroscopy in generating pathophysiological knowledge."

"This year (in) December (will be) our 15th users’ meeting. In the beginning, it was difficult to understand our needs as researchers from one region because of the differences between our countries. Later on, and one users’ meeting after another, it became clear that we have common needs and common requirements, so we are trying to explore as much as we can. So, for me and the beamline, I don’t want always to focus on biomedicine. It’s true that we have common diseases in the Middle East, common biomedical and environmental issues. But also the Middle East is very rich when it comes to archaeology and cultural heritage, and, people come together and when they need to they talk to each other and they find common ways to collaborate. So, for example, this researcher from Cyprus working on ancient human remains, these remains were collected from east Iran. We have to invest in these common links between our researchers. I think an establishment of a synchrotron facility in the Middle East is now becoming maybe the only way to bring people together.’"

"Basically, it is considered something like a super-microscope. The basic principle of the synchrotron is to accelerate electrons up to high energy, then we collect a part of the electromagnetic radiation (as) infrared and X-rays. You can perform different experiments or applications that almost are impossible to perform by conventional X-ray or infrared sources because the synchrotron radiation has unique properties – essentially its brightness and resolution. So we can see with the synchrotron what we can never see with any conventional source."

"We don’t think of our villages or our nationality. We don’t have labels in there. Inside SESAME we are SESAME staff. I have attended SESAME users’ meetings for 12 years. In the beginning I saw people clustering in groups. If you saw the last users’ meeting last year, people were really mingling together and they were chatting and sitting together to discuss scientific projects even if their governments are in a really, really bad diplomatic situation.’"

"I'm one of these people and there is another beamline scientist (who) was also in Italy and he also joined two years ago. Another beamline scientist was also in Switzerland and he came back to SESAME and it’s happening.’"

"The first one is about training – we go into that in two parallel ways, either we bring experts from other synchrotrons to train people at SESAME (or we) send SESAME staff to other synchrotrons to get special experience in a specific field. Also (we) arrange for training fellowships for any researcher from SESAME members to go abroad to a synchrotron to get trained and we recently opened a training fellowship for two months in any European synchrotron. The second point the brain drain issue. We (Middle Eastern scientists) are all going abroad to have our PhDs or post-docs or even research positions abroad and many, many of us don’t come back because we don’t have these facilities. So we keep just flowing out of the region and this is why we see SESAME as a key for a brain drain reverse because it’s bringing us back.’"

"SESAME is considered as a gate for all the female scientists in the Middle East and neighbouring regions, especially to those who are not able to travel abroad, facilitating their struggles and helping them in having an advanced scientific career."

"We receive a good number of proposals for experiments (from women) and also they apply for training or short fellowships but so far it’s difficult maybe for many women scientists in the region to apply for a position at SESAME."

"‘Yes. The facility declares the gender balance concept when they open the call for proposals or fellowships for training or users’ meetings or all the events related to SESAME. Women are strongly encouraged to apply."

"We are scientists but we are still humans and we cannot close our eyes or ears to what’s happening around us but somehow we just decided to put these things aside and try to make something positive out of all this negativity.’"

"Yes, because we always say that SESAME was modelled on CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) (which succeeds) despite the conflicts in the past between the European countries. We take it as a role model. The war in Europe is over, but for us it’s not, so we have lots of challenges to keep going this way. We have to keep in mind all the struggling in our region parallel to constructing a facility like this."

"We are starting with scientists but I think in our way we are doing something remarkable. I think we are somehow contributing to the decision-making in our region for our countries, just by keeping everything aside and focusing on one issue, that’s science. We do not fight when we deal with science. We only focus on physics, chemistry and biology and there is no space for other conflicts.’"

"The Beijing platform should no longer be viewed as a set of simple goals and aspirations, but must be used as a tool to push for the adoption of gender-sensitive policies."

"The objective now is not to renegotiate our dreams, but to emphasize the accountability of all actors through detailed discussions of goals, targets, achievements and failures. We are no longer seeking promises, but are demanding action."

"The majority of African women are still denied education and employment, and have limited opportunities in trade, industry and government."