A team of students from the College of Information Technology, UAEU has won first place in the Brain-Computer Interface Designers Hackathon at the 2021 Conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society.

Today they were received by H. E. Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh, Chancellor of the United Arab Emirates University, and Adviser for Cultural Affairs at the UAE Ministry of Presidential Affairs.Students are: Khalil Ibrahim Al Balooshi, Ahmed Shemy, and Mohamed Abdel-Jabbar were supervised by Dr Abdelkader Nasreddine Belkacem.

His Excellency commended the students achievements saying, This is evidence of the UAEU s success in supporting research and education to advance science and practical application of intelligent technologies.  I am also pleased that the students have participated in an international event that allows them to network and build relationships with students and scholars in their field.  When students collaborate like this, they build bonds and innovative ideas. The UAEU places great value on international activities of our students and provides them with every support needed to take advantage of opportunities like this global conference and competition .

Dr Belkacem explained that Participation in the conference is a vital means to strengthen the College and University efforts to prepare graduates to be innovative, creative and future-ready. The student team developed a robotic communications system that reads a record of brain activity (electroencephalogram) and translates it into commands that allow the user to speak to others. This system assists people of determination who are paralyzed through stroke, spinal cord injuries, or broken neck, or who are deaf and mute.

Mr Al Balooshi, the team leader, expressed his delight at the prize. He said, The victory is the fruit of hard work!  The team worked together diligently for long hours. We had unlimited support from our academic staff, who opened our horizons to the possibilities of innovations that would refine our skills and the end-product. This enabled us to compete with confidence against a global field of students from many disciplines .

Describing the project, he said It is distinguished by the inclusion of a speech-to-text engine. This enables the user to read speech and activates an automated response system. That system relies on Neuro-Linguistic Processing technology and moves the robot's parts by sending commands to the brain .