The event, which took place on campus, gave undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to present their research using posters, videos and visual aids to faculty, fellow students, family members and local
industry experts.

Carnegie Mellon Qatar computer science students Rukhsar Neyaz and Sabih bin Wasi took home both Best Poster and First Place for their research on “Twitter Sentiment Analysis”, a first in Meeting of the Minds history. They were mentored by Behrang Mohit, assistant professor of computer science at CMUQ.

Second place also went to Sabih bin Wasi, who completed the project “Using Technology to Help People Save Food Effortlessly” with faculty adviser Thierry Sans, assistant teaching professor of computer science.

Third place went to “SNV-check: A Quality Control Took for Familiar Exome Sequencing Data Based on the Sharing of Rare Genetic Mutations” by Noora al-Muftah, computational biology student, with faculty adviser Khalid A Fakhro from Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar.

Mark Stehlik, associate dean at CMUQ, said: “Research at Carnegie Mellon is collaborative and involves teams composed of faculty, post-doctoral fellows and students. Meeting of the Minds is an opportunity to extend this collaboration and offers students the chance to engage and network with experts from local institutions.”

“Our system, ‘Twitter Sentiment Analysis’, helps decipher the sentiment of a tweet using an algorithm. For any brand in the world, there is value to knowing how a brand is performing and how people feel about a
particular brand,” said bin Wasi.

According to the fifth Arab Social Media Report, the total number of active Twitter users in the Arab world reached 3.7mn as of March 2013, producing approximately 5.5mn tweets
per day.

“There is a definite need for systems such as ours here in Qatar. For example, with the recent opening of the Hamad International Airport, this is a critical time to measure how people feel about it. It is simple for the organisation to use, all you would have to do is insert the hashtag and the system would tell you how people feel about the
airport,” he added.

The initiative recognises students conducting research and supports students to take their research further by assisting them in presenting their findings at academic conferences.

“We presented our idea at SemEval 2014, an international competition on computational semantic evaluation that draws entries from researchers across the globe, and our project came third. We are now looking forward to showcasing our research at the SemEval workshop in late August,” said Neyaz.

A judging panel consisting of industry experts and faculty members from other universities reviewed the presentations and chose the best projects and posters.

Stephan Vogel, principal scientist at Qatar Computing Research Institute, said: “The quality of the work is exceptional for undergraduates; it shows that faculty at Carnegie Mellon Qatar are doing a good job in mentoring these young minds.”

To aid the scoring process, computer science students Aliaa Essameldin and Mounira Tlili developed an application enabling judges to easily rate the research posters according to the provided framework, including poster appearance, organisational flow, creativity of approach, project presentation, project significance and overall project.

On behalf of HE Dr Saleh Mohamed Salem al-Nabit, Minister of Development Planning and Statistics; Barak Yehya, expert, institutional development in the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics; distributed recognitions to projects that were closely aligned to Qatar’s National Development Strategy.

The winners were Fatima al-Saygh, adviser Jonathan Finkel; Aniish Sridhar, adviser John Gasper; Kenrick Fernandes, adviser Divakaran Liginlal; Aliya Hashim, adviser Divakaran Liginlal; and Dania Abed Rabbou (postgraduate), adviser
Mohamed Hammoud.