The Islamic University of Gaza received four research awards in the competition for excellent scientific research launched by the Arab American University in 2023. This annual event aims to create scientific competition among researchers to upgrade and develop scientific research methods and encourage research creativity in different scientific fields.
The Arab American University has distinguished the winning research papers with three prestigious awards. These include the Arab American University Award for Excellence in Scientific Research, which recognizes the academic achievements of scholars at Palestinian universities. The other two are The Best Research in the Journal of the Arab American University Award and The Engineer Zuhair Hijjawi Award for Scientific Research. The latter is allocated for undergraduate and graduate research papers. A group of experienced evaluators assessed the winning scientific research, considering accredited criteria in the evaluation process.
The first award went to Prof. Eyad Al-Agha, Lecturer at the Faculty of Information Technology, for his research in the category of natural, engineering, and technological sciences. The title of his winning abstract is: Leveraging Knowledge-Based Features with Multilevel Attention Mechanisms for Short Arabic Text Classification.
Aya Shawa, Ghadeer Hayek, Malak Ghabayen, and Raghad Al-Khatib, students in the Faculty of Information Technology, received the Engineer Zuhair Hijjawi Award for undergraduate research projects. Their project: PalAST: A Cross-Platform Mobile Application for Automated Disk Diffusion Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing belongs to the IT category and aims to develop an application that uses machine learning techniques to test bacteria sensitivity to antibiotics.
As for the engineering category, Amr Shatat, Hamad Abu Rajeileh, Ibrahim Abu Khater, and Mohammed Al-Shaer took the Engineer Zuhair Hijjawi Award for undergraduate Scientific Research. Under the supervision of Dr. Moayad Almoubayed, they completed their project entitled: Designing and Implementation for Real-Time Reception Robot.
Also, Tahani Abu Shawish, Maryam Habibi, and Reem Farajallah, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Nizam Al-Ashqar, undergraduate students from the Faculty of Sciences, received the award of the category of environmental, water, and renewable energy sciences for their project: Biosorption of Methylene Blue Dye by the Eggshell Bio-waste.
Prof. Dr. Youssef Al-Jaish, the Dean of Scientific Research and Higher Education, acknowledged the efforts of the researchers, faculty members, and students at the university. He was impressed with the achievements of the Islamic University, particularly in winning scientific awards at different levels. This serves as a strong motivation for researchers and students to take part in local, regional, and global scientific contests.
