Young Egyptian Scientists Awarded for Innovative Projects at Intel Science and Engineering Fair

Intel, Misr ElKheir and the Egyptian Ministry of Education announce the five winning projects from the first two local competitions traveling to ISEF Global Competition
Three local awarding ceremonies are taking place for the first time in Egypt

Egypt - Cairo, 26th February 2014

Intel in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Education and Misr El-Kheir Foundation announced today five winning projects from Intel/Misr El-Kheir Science and Engineering Fairs (IMSEF) to compete at Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in the United States, with the support of Egypt Air, ISEF official carrier sponsor in Egypt.

For the first time this year, three competitions took place in Egypt. The Luxor competition which took place from the 17th to the 20th of February focused on Upper Egypt governorates and awarded 2 projects creating solutions to increase the social interaction of disabled people. The second competition in Cairo, which started from the 20th of February till the 25th, awarded 3 projects tackling environmental solutions to provide clean water and a new heating system for buildings, also health solutions like small cancer cells detection system. The third ceremony will be taking place in March 2014 in Alexandria.

"We are thrilled by this year's number of local fairs reflecting the increased awareness of the importance of science and math. As part of Intel's belief in innovation, we hold Intel International Science and Engineering Fair because we believe that science and math support economic growth and advance society through the foundation of innovation" said Nihal Abbas, Corporate affairs manager Intel Egypt. "This competition encourages Egyptian students every year to explore their passion for math and science while developing solutions for challenges faced in these fields and their community."

"Scientific research and innovation are one of the foundations of participation in building human civilization, increasing in the earth, and benefiting humanity. Promoting the culture of scientific research and fostering talents is one major concern for Misr al-Khair Foundation on the way of human development, which is our principal job. Misr al-Khair's cooperation with NGOs, the business sector and the Government is a leading and amazing model, and this fair is one example. The road ahead is clear but long and needs patience and effort", Dr. Ali Gomaa, Director of the Board of Trustees of Misr al-Khair Foundation, added.

As part of Egypt Air's corporate social responsibility, it is sponsoring this year's ISEF Egypt winners who are participating in the world's largest pre-college, science research competition taking place at Intel International Science & Engineering Fair "Intel ISEF" competition in Los Angeles, USA from the 11th-16th of May this year to showcase their projects at the world's largest high school science research competition where students, from more than 60 countries around the world, have the chance to explore, discover and innovate.

"As part of our commitment to support Egyptian talents, Egypt Air is proud to be the exclusive carrier sponsor to enable students' to travel and participate in Intel's global Science & Engineering competition. We hope that through the students' participation and exposure to different projects, they can enhance their creativity, research skills and self-assurance both in their studies and in their lives." mentioned Capt. Hisham El Nahas, Chairman and CEO of EGYPTAIR Airlines.

Listed below are the 5 winning projects from Luxor and Cairo local fairs with their corresponding projects:

Luxor Local Fair:

1^st place

Project Name: Use Eye Tracking as Assistant for Disabled

Project category: Computer Science (CS)

Student name: Abdu-Allah Asem Mohamed

Governorate: Asiut

Project: Design and graphical interfaces able to make a disabled person is able to social communicate through Social Networks. Disabled people who can only move their eyes and can't move anything else need help to communicate with the community and express what they want to say. This project is to create Eye tracking device to support Disabled People. This device contains glasses, modified WebCam, which can track the eye carefully through the movement of the cursor on the graphical interface, which contains a number of icons that expresses what they wants in order to make them can communicate with people

2^nd place

Project name: from your right

Project category: Computer Science (CS)

Student Name: Nouran Mohamed Mohsen & Enas MohamedSafwat Mohamed

Governorate: Asiut

Project:Developing a software and application to be multi-platform; hence, using them in other blind services. According to the "World Blind Union", there are 800,000 blind persons in Egypt, who do not exercise their voting rights as other citizens. We tackled this problem due to its social nature and political dimension. Seeking to establish the hoped-for democracy, we chose this problem to create an application and software that will be owned by the electoral management body. A blind voter would download it from their device and record their voice print and register. This app operates via the voice print for security. A blind voter on the election day would open the app from their home using their voice print. The candidate list would be read aloud, and the voter would choose their preferred candidate using their voice after ensuring that the person who opened the app is the same who voted. The voting report would be sent to the election management body

Cairo Local Fair:

1^st place:

Project name: Water Desalination Using Nano-Techniques

Project category: Environmental Sciences (EV)

Student Name: Mayar Mossad Allam, Demiana Aiad Megalaa & Marwa AbdEl-Raouf Soliman

Governorate: Cairo & Giza

Project: Facing the drought by providing new source of clean-potable water from desalinating the available Seawater in Egypt. Even the water is full of prime minerals which are essential for the human heath, and without any bacteria or viruses. In our attempt to provide new source of potable water, we thought about the usage of sea water as it's more than available in Egypt. We created new system for Seawater Desalination using the advanced technology of the Nano-Technology. As the result, our project is sustainable in solving water problems we recommend adding another stage to our system which is the Anti-scaling process in order to prevent any precipitation on the membranes but the used materials are not in Egypt and we also recommend generating electricity form the brine water which is the waste from the desalination

2nd Place:

Project name: Cancer/Testis XAGE-1b antigen epitope, 3D structure

Project category: Medicine and Health Sciences (ME)

Student Name: Mohammad Tarek Mansour

Governorate: Cairo

Project: More academic papers comparisons to detect the quality of my results. For example, Cancer/Testis XAGE-1b antigen epitope, 3D structure & function prediction analysis for non-small cells lung carcinoma Lung cancer is the most common deaths causing carcinoma all over the world. Small cell lung cancer is the most abundant type of Lung cancers causing about 85% of death cases related to lung cancers. XAGE-1b is a newly discovered antigen that is stained in about 65% of non-small cell lung cancer patient tissues which it's expression believed to have a big role in many type of cancers not only NSCLC. In this work, I studied this antigen predicting antigenic epitopes which has the best score to be used as a target for vaccine immunotherapy of many types of cancers specially NSCLC. XAGE-1b is not a well annotated protein so we don't have much information about related structure and function so I worked on predicting & defining its homological and functional characteristics. The results were shown to detect highly scored epitope residues expected to be essential for vaccine synthesis. The homological comparisons analysis shown a stereo chemical structure for the protein which lead to the functional prediction that indicated a highly expectations to be a growth factor with non-enzymatic role with a tiny metabolic participation and highly translation function and rRNA binding proteins functional family strong pertinence.

3rd place:

Project Name: Heating houses using a friction based heating system

Project category: Engineering: Electrical and Mechanical (EE)

Student Name: Shady hesham El-Shazly

Governorate: Cairo

Project:

There are many risks for the countries that import natural gas. These risks may be reduced only resorting to alternative household heating system. The purpose of this study is to develop an alternative method for heating households. Winds and the sun may provide an economical alternative for any country that has sufficient supplies of these energy sources. Heat can be produced from friction which can be generated from the wind and the sun.

I developed a system called the Wind Vane and Solar Panel System (WVSPS) to provide a new type of energy. The system uses thin oil (No. 10) which has good heat retention capacities, and it can be improved with new models. The friction-based heating system needs an energy source that will circulate the thin oil throughout the system. This energy is provided by the WVSPS, which makes the project environment-friendly. The WVSPS is used to generate environment-friendly power which will be used to supply a 10-hp electrical motor. This motor provides energy for circulating oil through the system. The surplus energy generated by the WVSPS may be feed to the power system of households. After the system is established, its efficiency will increase over time, with decreasing costs. It will help to reduce the heating and energy expenditures both for households and for the country. The WVSPS-generated power will be used to run the system in winter while it will be used for illumination and other purposes during the rest of the year. In order to reduce storage costs, the surplus energy would be transferred to the public grid. The surplus energy that would increase during the summer days will be used for cooling of houses and warehouses

-Ends-

About Intel:
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world's computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at newsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com.

Intel is a trademark of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

CONTACT:
Mayar Naguib
Tamer Hassan

Intel Corporation
Hill + Knowlton

+ 202-24-61-5449
+2 0111 7883335

Mayar.naguib@intel.com
Tamer.hassan@hillandknowlton.com