Projects

To empower science educators worldwide, the BA is working with a team of specialists, in partnership with University of Pittsburg, to launch the first science SuperCourse, comprising thousands of PowerPoint lectures made available for free to teachers and lecturers, who can use them as they see fit in their teaching of science. The SuperCourse has been effectively implemented in the area of Public Health and Epidemiology, with a network of 65,000 scientists in about 174 countries and providing more than 3,700 lectures in 31 languages. The BA maintains a mirror site of SuperCourse, however, the BA is currently working on expanding the scope of Supercourse beyond epidemiology and preventive health to cover science in four major fields; Health, Engineering, Agriculture and Environment, thus creating the new Science Supercourse. The new target now is to increase the number of free online lectures, to reach one million lectures in PowerPoint and video formats in a 3-year timeframe. The target of the new online system is to deploy interactive tools using web 2.0 for the purpose of engaging the community for higher benefit.

The mission of the UNL program, initiated within the United Nations and devised by the Universal Networking Digital Language (UNDL) Foundation, is to enable all people to generate information and have access to cultural knowledge in their native languages. It addresses the obstacle of linguistic diversity among nations and is considered a new technique towards bridging the linguistic gap among civilizations. UNL is an artificial language attempting to replicate the functions of natural language in human communication. UNL applications will include multilingual web pages, UNL encyclopedia, etc. Currently, 15 languages have been involved and a number of institutions have started to work on their respective native languages. The BA has signed an agreement with UNDL foundation to host the Ibrahim Shihata Arabic-UNL Center (ISAUC). It plays a major role in designing and implementing the Arabic component in the development of this language and will act as an active language center for Arabic.

The project involves the Magdi Yacoub Research Institute in London, the Imperial College of London (UK), University of Florence (Italy) in addition to a number of national institutes. The HCM project aims to promote early detection of HCM on the national level and establish a community-based national (open to all citizens) service relating to a very well-defined neglected group of patients suffering from this genetic disease which can cause sudden death in young adults.An advanced, fully-equipped Molecular Genetics Laboratory is currently operational at the BA Shallalat premises. So far, 50 index patients have been referred by cardiologists nationwide.A number of presentations and abstracts were presented in national and international conferences pointing out the clinical and molecular characterization of HCM in Egypt and early results of BA-HCM national study.