TAMUQ UREP student undergoes internship at CERN

Texas A&M at Qatar (Tamuq) mechanical engineering student Fahad al-Thani was awarded a place in a summer internship at CERN in the Detector Technology Programme for eight weeks.

Al-Thani who got funding from Qatar Foundation Research and Development (QF R&D), is the second Qatari student to travel to Switzerland for a CERN internship after Abdulla al-Suwaidi in 2015.

Al-Thani said the first six weeks of the internship consisted of attending lectures centred on the future accelerators technologies, several workshops and testing Gas Electron Multiplier detectors.

Al-Thani is an undergraduate researcher under the direction of Dr Othmane Bouhali, research associate professor and director of research computing at Tamuq who leads the university’s endeavours with CERN where he has contributed for the past 20 years.

Bouhali said: “Last year, our QNRF UREP project won the first place in Qatar for the work we have performed with the CERN collaboration.This new QNRF UREP project involves four new students who will get introduced to detector technology, simulation programmes and advanced experimental statistical analysis.”
The CERN summer programme is offered to students studying physics, computing or engineering, and allows them the unique opportunity to join the day-to-day work of research teams in Geneva, Switzerland.

CERN, founded in 1954, is the largest research centre in the world for nuclear and high energy physics research.
QF R&D recently signed an international co-operative agreement with CERN, and student training and internships are one of the outcomes of the agreement.

Texas A&M at Qatar dean Dr César O Malavé said: “We encourage our students to seek out real-world, hands-on experiences - especially international ones - to enhance the value of their degrees. These experiences help to better prepare students for the workplace after they graduate, and give students valuable skills they need to lead Qatar’s engineering future.”