HBKU’s QCRI Concludes 2024 Summer Internship Program

Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s (HBKU) Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) recently held the closing ceremony for its 2024 Summer Internship Program, where they celebrated 87 undergraduate participants and handed awards to the most promising projects and their teams.

Throughout the eight-week program, the students collaborated in teams to conduct research on 25 projects that addressed national priorities in the fields of Arabic language technologies, social computing, data analytics, and cybersecurity. The students hailed from local and international institutions including HBKU, Qatar University (QU), the University of Doha for Science and Technology (UDST), Oryx Universal College (OUC), Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), Texas A&M University at Qatar, Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), Princeton University, and more. 

At the end of the program, the teams presented their research projects to a jury panel composed of 15 experts from QCRI, QU, UDST, and NU-Q , who evaluated the quality of the methodology, execution, and creativity of their research work, the real-world relevance of their findings, the clarity of their poster designs and their communication skills. Steve Shema NdayamBaje, CMU-Q, received first place for his project “A Reinforcement Learning (RL) Model for AI-based  Decision Support in Oral Cancer,” conducted with the guidance of Dr. Mohamed Elshirif, Postdoctoral Researcher, QCRI. 

The jury awarded second place to two teams - Elaa Bouazza, SUP’COM, for “Met-P-SVGD: Scalable Variational Inference with convergence guarantees via Parametrized Stein Variational Gradient Descent with Metropolis Hastings,” and Mohamed Bayan Kmainasi, QU; Rakif Khan Pathan, UDST; Ali Shahroor, OUC; and Boushra Bendou, CMU-Q, for their project, “Native vs Non-Native Language Prompting: A Comparative Analysis.” Third place went to Malak Ibrahim, CMU-Q; Anas Madkoor, QU; Talha Javad, UDST; Myesha Hoque, QU; Fagr Amar Tahir, QU; Arwa Elaradi, QU; and Bryson Jandawa, Princeton University, for their project, “Mapping the Evolution of Scientific Legacy.”
Commenting on the success of the Program, Dr. Eman Fituri, Director of Educational Initiatives, said: “QCRI designs opportunities for Qatar’s promising young talents to engage with a diverse array of fields in the computer sciences and learn from our experienced researchers. The Summer Internship Program demonstrates our commitment to providing a knowledge hub for Qatar to retain, attract and develop top talent in computer science.”

QCRI at HBKU is a national research institute supporting Qatar in building its innovation and technology capacity by tackling large-scale computing challenges that address national priorities and positively touch upon people’s everyday lives. Dedicated to the needs of Qatar, the Arab region and the world, QCRI conducts cutting-edge, multidisciplinary applied computing research in four focus areas:  Arabic language technologies, social computing, data analytics and cyber security.