QU Health Cluster holds 1st Annual Retreat

Qatar University (QU) Health Cluster recently held its 1^st Annual Retreat that brought together students, faculty and experts to discuss their research on a wide range of health and medicine topics. 

These included poster sessions and oral presentations on diabetes, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases and immunology, cancer research and metabolism and genetics by students, faculty and experts from the Cluster, as well as QU Biomedical Research Center (BRC), Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCMC-Q), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) and Sidra Medical and Research Center. Titles included “Microparticles as bio-markers and vectors of cardiovascular disease”, “A platform for large-scale serological profiling of the Qatari population to link individual genome and immune phenotype variation in health and disease”, “Maternal Microbiota Regulate Glucocorticoids Levels and Placental Development in Mice”, “Onco-viruses& breast carcinogenesis”, “Translational Cancer Immunology Research Program at NCCCR-iTRI”, “Cancer Testis Antigen expression in Triple Negative Breast Cancer: candidate targets for cancer immunotherapy?”, “Modulation of T cell receptor mediated T cell activation by TGF-beta 1”, and more.

A keynote presentation “Progression of pre-diabetes to diabetes” was delivered by WCMC-Q professor of medicine and chair of HMC Department of Internal Medicine Prof Abdul-BadiAbou-Samra.

The Retreat also included a series of awards to encourage and recognize strong research. The winners of the awards were as follows: for the Best Undergraduate Students Posters: First Award went to students Afifah Sarah, Redwana Bari. First Honorable Mention Award was a tie between students DuaaAl-Sadeq& MarymanAl-Mohannadi and NuhaSwaidan& SumarShurbaji. Second Honorable Mention Award went to students Rehab Taradah, Eman Faisal & Sara Alhajri. For Best Graduate Students Posters, First Award went to student Fadella Dad Bakash, while First Honorable Mention was earned by EmanAlzawani and Second Honorable Mention by AtayaSeif.

Staff Poster awards went to Dr MeritxellEspina as the first award winner, Dr Nadia Albanna for second award, Dr PittariGianfranco as First Honorable Mention, and Dr Ahmed Malki for Second Honorable Mention. Staff Oral Presentation awards went to Dr Nico Marr as winner of the first award, Dr MahaAl-Asmakh for the second award, Dr Fatima Mraiche as First Honorable Mention, and Dr HadiYassine as Second Honorable Mention.

Reflecting on the event, QU VP for Medical Education and CMED dean Dr EgonToft said: “Boosting interprofessional education and interdisciplinary research are two of the main objectives of establishing a health cluster at Qatar University. The QU Health Retreat is one of the manifestations of these objectives. I hope it will grow into a high profile annual tradition, and I am very happy to see a good level of diversity and quality in the oral and poster presentation with strong involvement from the healthcare sector as well as from all the colleges of the QU Health Cluster.”

BRC director and College of Health Sciences (CHS) dean Dr AsmaaAl-Thani said: “I am delighted to see senior students and faculty members from the College of Health Sciences, as well as researchers from the Biomedical Research Center, present their work in a broad range of research topics related to Qatar’s health and medicine challenges. Such platforms for presenting research among health researchers not only pave the way for increased cross disciplinary collaboration, but also foster a dynamic research culture among faculty, and motivate students to continue to hone their research skills.”

College of Pharmacy (CPH) dean Dr Mohammad Diab said: “Events such as this allow QU and other institutions in Qatar to showcase the best we have to offer in terms of innovative and impactful research. CPH is proud of the involvement of our world-class researchers for taking time out of their busy teaching schedule to present their work. With our demonstrated history of successful research at the College, CPH is further looking forward to more opportunities to present, discuss and collaborate in future QU health endeavors.”