The Journey So Far And What’s Next: Eslam Abo Alhawa

Eslam Abo Alhawa (Syria)
American University of Beirut, B.Sc. in Computer Science

On the AUB campus, Eslam carved a niche for herself as an active and curious student who loves discovering new things and participated in meaningful projects. Eslam was the Mastercard Foundation Scholars representative and represented Lebanon at the 2nd United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) Model Conference whose theme was “The Role of Technology in Advancing Sustainable Development”

For her final year project, Eslam worked on 2 projects. First, she designed and built an artificial intelligence model that can detect fake news. The increased use of social media has made it easy for people to circulate wrong information all around the world, especially about global issues such as COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, it has become difficult to find trusted and reliable resources.  Her second project was a mobile application that supports people who have vocational skills such as painting, or carpentry by connecting them with those who require such services. This application also enables people to post job vacancies so that users can apply for them. 

To fellow Mastercard Foundation Scholars, Eslam admonished them to explore beyond the classroom, meet as many people as possible and make as many mistakes as they can. She believes that making mistakes encourages us to create new ways of thinking and doing.

In the short term, Eslam plans to pursue graduate education in Business Analytics. She then sees herself in the future using modelling techniques and data science tools to develop insights that will help governments, businesses, and NGOs make better decisions.