Last Monday I attended the the Masdar Institute and MIT national forum on innovation and entrepreneurship. We got the invitation a few days ahead of time and I noticed that students were invited to submit posters on "commercializeable research". As you might remember (loyal readers all) I am supervising a project by Yousef Al Shehhi on Emirati Male Youth Entrepreneurship.
Hmmmmm... it didn't really fit, but if I only did things according to strict rules I would still be on Vancouver Island working at BC Ferries.
So, with only a few days to get the poster ready we had to work fast. Yousef was volunteering at the Abu Dhabi book fair and didn't have access to all his notes... so he bbmed me what he wanted to be included and I had an older version of his notes and it got cobbled together!
I should mention that I was taught how to do academic posters by true masters... so while it is not perfect, we are proud of how it turned out.
So, we sent it in a few hours before the deadline - and the next day we learn it was accepted for presentation (but the presentation was the next day!) They said they loved his research :) Yousef arranged with his professors to miss his classes and he started to prepare. It was his first poster presentation - and while he had presented his work before, this was the first time in public.
Monday morning arrives and I get there early and I only see three posters! And the other two are obviously advanced Master's or PhD posters...
Yousef, as with all my students to date, do not display the nervousness I add when I first started presenting - it was like he had done this a million times before!
He had many visitors and he had to stay until the end as there were many people who wanted to speak with him. He has been invited to present his results at a few organisations in Abu Dhabi and he impressed the people at the Masdar Institute. Needless to say I am a very proud professor!
The next steps are catching up on Wamda posts (he has been very busy), getting the remaining data and then preparing the final report and presentation. In addition he will prepare a short workshop on entrepreneurship in Arabic to give to some of the students at ZU still concentrating on learning English. Perhaps he will present it in a high school... we will see.
So prepare for another post in the next few weeks :) Perhaps even a guest blog post (I hope you are reading this Yousef!)
Hmmmmm... it didn't really fit, but if I only did things according to strict rules I would still be on Vancouver Island working at BC Ferries.
So, with only a few days to get the poster ready we had to work fast. Yousef was volunteering at the Abu Dhabi book fair and didn't have access to all his notes... so he bbmed me what he wanted to be included and I had an older version of his notes and it got cobbled together!
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| Al Shehhi, Van Horne and Huang 2013 |
So, we sent it in a few hours before the deadline - and the next day we learn it was accepted for presentation (but the presentation was the next day!) They said they loved his research :) Yousef arranged with his professors to miss his classes and he started to prepare. It was his first poster presentation - and while he had presented his work before, this was the first time in public.
Monday morning arrives and I get there early and I only see three posters! And the other two are obviously advanced Master's or PhD posters...
 |
| Yousef Al Shehhi: Research Assistant at ZU |
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| Yousef explaining his project to students from the Masdar Institute |
The next steps are catching up on Wamda posts (he has been very busy), getting the remaining data and then preparing the final report and presentation. In addition he will prepare a short workshop on entrepreneurship in Arabic to give to some of the students at ZU still concentrating on learning English. Perhaps he will present it in a high school... we will see.
So prepare for another post in the next few weeks :) Perhaps even a guest blog post (I hope you are reading this Yousef!)
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