Novel memory chips to cure leukaemia

Dubai - L'Oréal-Unesco fellowship winners hope to lure women to science

Four women in four corners of a meeting room in a Dubai hotel are passionately explaining - and simplifying - the meanings of their areas of research to the media.
These four women - who were selected by a pan-Arabian jury of six scientists - will be awarded the L'Oréal-Unesco Middle East Fellowships For Women In Science at the Zayed University in Dubai today. The women have been granted a fellowship of EUR 20,000 each to enable them to pursue their careers in science.
Women in science is still an anomaly. They account for only 30 per cent of the world's researchers, according to the Unesco Institute of Statistics 2014. These four women hope to inspire a generation and the leadership of nations to encourage women to enter the fields of science.
Excerpts from conversations with the four scientists:
Nazek Al Atab, UAE
"The diameter of your hair is 70,000 nanometers," explains Al Atab.
Nazek, who has always liked Physics, is doing her PhD in Interdisciplinary Engineering at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi. Her research is on fabricating novel, non-volatile, low-power, charge-trapping memory devices with enhanced performance.
What that means is she's trying to figure out a way to extend the performance of memory chips across devices (enter the nanometer) - phone, TV, computer, camera etc.
Al Atab, who is 24 years old, has authored more than 20 papers in international journals and conference proceedings. She's from Lebanon. Her parents are very proud of her, yes. As is her husband - she got married earlier in the year, she says - and he lives in Saudi Arabia while she's pursuing her dream in Abu Dhabi.
"He encourages me," she says, smiling.

Maha Al Sabbagh, Bahrain
A lecturer in environmental management at the College of Graduate Studies, Arabian Gulf University, Bahrain, Al Sabbagh has done research on reducing CO2 emissions in transport in Bahrain. She drives to university because there is no Metro, she says.
Her work has been so stellar that the Centre for Environment and Development in the Arab Region and Europe has assigned her to carry out a study on the fuel economy of light duty vehicles in Bahrain. Findings from her project could be useful to other countries on handling data limitation.
Not a fan of social media, Al Sabbagh would rather spend that time connecting with people directly. She enjoys reading, and in the interest of the environment, donates paperbacks once she's read them.

Adhra Al Mawali, Oman
Al Mawali is figuring out a cure for Leukaemia. And this is only one among her several accomplishments. Seated behind a table, as are her fellow awardees, Al Mawali wastes no time in taking out a pen and paper to explain the function of stem cells.
She has discovered that the oncogenic events of FTT3-ITD occurs at a stage of stem cells that possess IL-3-alpha-receptro (CD13). What does this mean? A 20-minute crash course in molecular genetics and flow cytometry follows.
She's won numerous awards, including one for outstanding clinical research from the Australian Society for Medical research 2007.
In a non medical vein, she espouses the virtues of patience, quality time, and the importance of laying deadlines for yourself. "Family comes first," says the scientist mum of four, who works on her papers when the kids go to sleep. "The road is not full of roses. There are hiccups. But you have to concentrate on targets."

Maha Al Mozaini, Saudi Arabia
In Grade 3, Al Mozaini moved with her family from Saudi Arabia to the US. She's now back in Saudi Arabia. Her only obstacle, she says of those days, and which she overcame in a year, was the language barrier - learning English.
Today, she says, she loves a challenge. Her project for the fellowship programme is about "immunological and molecular pathways involved in the immune deficiency of HIV1/2 infected patients". If successful, Al Mozaini's research will lead to clinical efforts in designing interventional strategies to increase immune function.
When she graduated in 2000 from the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, there were only two other women with her in science pursuing their Ph. Ds. Today, she says, "there are equal men and women, if not more women in leading science programmes".
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com 

• UAE