HBKU’s QBRI concludes internship programme for high school students

HBKU’s QBRI concludes internship programme for high school students

Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), recently conducted its first School Internship Programme for grade 12 and 13 students from Doha British School (DBS) and the American School of Doha (ASD). The programme enabled aspiring scientists to learn more about the innovative work QBRI does and offered hands-on research experience.

The programme was part of the institute’s capacity-building initiatives to attract the next generation to the research field. Seven students joined the programme for two weeks and were able to gain valuable insights into topics such as stem cells, diabetes, and neurological disorders.

The initiative was supervised by researchers from two QBRI research centers - the Neurological Disorder Research Center and the Diabetes Research Center. Students were taught about stem cells, pancreatic β cell differentiation, biochemical assays, protein expression, protein purification, anatomy of the brain, cell culture, molecular genetics, and neuroinflammatory. In addition to hands-on research experiences at QBRI’s advanced laboratories, Dr. Nishant Vaikath, research associate, gave the students a session titled “Tools for Efficient Scientific Literature Search - Basics”.

Lina Hassna, programmes and partnerships senior manager at QBRI, said: “This programme is one of our key capacity-building initiatives for youth in Qatar. We aim