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Bridging the global radiology gap

By Nahla El Gendy

According to the World Health organization, in many medical cases worldwide, clinical considerations are not enough to make a correct diagnosis. radiology, or diagnostic imaging, allows doctors to see inside the body, providing detailed information that is crucial for proper disease diagnosis. As the World Health Organization put it, "diagnostic imaging is a prerequisite for the correct and successful treatment of at least a quarter of all patients worldwide."

The problem? Two-thirds of the world's population lacks access to basic radiology services, whether in the form of X-rays, ultrasounds, CAt scans, magnetic resonance or other procedures -- what HealthManagement.org describes as the "global radiology gap that now poses a threat to public health."

"With technological advances in the last two decades, radiology is expanding rapidly worldwide while the number of radiologists has not increased at the same rate," said Amr Abodraiaa, CEO and co-founder of Rology, a startup of the AUC Venture Lab (V-Lab), Egypt's first university-based accelerator. Abodraiaa became aware of the problem several years ago when he worked on a hospital management system with a startup company in Egypt. "it always concerned me how there was a constant delay in issuing patient reports," he said. "Patients would sometimes have to wait for two or three weeks to receive their final diagnostic reports."

Using artificial intelligence, Rology works to bridge this gap through an on-demand, web-based teleradiology platform that instantly and remotely matches radiology images originating from hospitals with professional radiologists in different parts of the globe. Rology can be easily accessed by radiologists worldwide and doesn't require special hardware.

" Rology helps hospitals provide their patients with a fast and accurate report," said Abodraiaa. "this is crucial because a patient's diagnosis and treatment can only start after the physician receives the radiology report."

Rology operations follow three main steps: upload, match and report. the hospital uploads the patient's medical images onto the system. Based on the first auto analysis, Rology then matches the scan with the optimal radiologist, depending on availability and subspecialty. Afterward, the radiologist writes the final diagnostic report and sends it back to the hospital through a quality control process.

"The health care sector in Egypt is ripe for innovations," said Ayman Ismail 
'95, '97, Abdul Latif Jameel Chair in Entrepreneurship, associate professor at AUC's School of Business and V-Lab founding director. "there is a huge need for expanding access, improving quality of care and reducing costs for health care services in Egypt, especially with the growing population and rising incomes. startups like Rology are using innovative technologies and business models to expand access to radiology services. At the AUC Venture Lab, we are now adding health care as a focus sector and working with entrepreneurs like Amr to introduce new innovations to this vital sector."

Rology is already making an impact in Egypt. "We have helped hospitals and radiology centers in various Egyptian governorates to improve their operations by issuing almost 60,000 accurate and timely diagnostic reports since we started operating in October 2017," said Abodraiaa.

Rology currently works with 54 hospitals and private radiology centers across Egypt and has recently started operating in Saudi Arabia and Kenya, with plans to expand its services to new markets in Africa and the Middle East by 2020. "We have five main countries in our expansion plan for this year, including Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Congo," said Abodraiaa. "it's just the start."

 

To a student coming fresh from an American college to A.U.C., the change is not so tremendous as it might seem. Especially do the outward things; athletics on the field, assembly every morning, the extra-curricular activities of the Review, clubs and orchestra, make one feel at home.

But among the greatest differences which I find between A.U.C. and my college at home is the feeling of unusual co-operation between student and teacher. With a small number enrolled in the school, the classes are small enough for each student to feel himself an individual. In contrast to some lecture courses given to one hundred and seventy five students in my home college, to be in a class where each one of the six is doing independent, individual work, is stimulating.

After only three weeks of school, I'm more than ever convinced that if more students would make as a part of their education a transfer into the schools or educational systems of another country, there would be as a result, a marvelous decrease in some of the most stupid of race prejudice.

The advantages which every student in A.U.C. has, in coming in contact with students of other races and creeds, is to me, marvelous, For in my college, with a comparatively small enrollment of sixteen hundred, we are most of us from American homes of the same type.

Cairo in itself is proving to be so fascinating a place just in which to live, that I regret that there is not more time to see things and go various places. To a Westerner new to the near east, there is an ever present thrill in strolling into a darkened Coptic Church, exploring odd corners of the Mouski, seeing strange sight near the tombs of the Mamelukes, visiting in an Egyptian home, or perhaps just trying to get about town, and getting consistently lost, because the only two Arabic words to one's credit are "malesh" and "saida," which certainly are not helpful in getting home.

After only three weeks of school, I'm more than ever convinced that if more students would make as a part of their education a transfer into the schools or educational systems of another country, there would be as a result, a marvelous decrease in some of the most stupid of race prejudice. We Americans, who are here in Egypt, a foreign country to us, and the Egyptian students who are studying here under a system foreign to their own, are both gaining this sort of exchange education. It seems to me that there is unusual value in it. I can only add that the extreme courtesy and friendliness with which all of us co-eds have been treated is another thing which makes going to school in the A.U.C. a profit and a pleasure to me.

-- I.W.

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Recovering vision to the blind, restoring motor function to people with disabilities -- what's the science behind it all? Seif Eldawlatly, associate professor of computer science and engineering, is unlocking new possibilities for people with disabilities and others through his research in the futuristic field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).

Now, after 18 years of work in the field, Eldawlatly is helping AUC develop its expertise in BCIs and exploring opportunities to improve everyone's lives. "This field is relatively new, and not many people in Egypt or the region actually work in this research area," he says.

Associate Professor Seif Eldawlatly is introducing the cutting-edge field of brain-computer interfaces to AUC

Technological Trajectory

Eldawlatly's work has evolved alongside the technology. Visual prosthetics work by recreating signals through the brain via implanted electrodes. "Our eyes are almost like a camera taking a picture of what we see, but the actual vision and perception take place in the brain. We understand what we see through the process in our brains," he says. So when the eye malfunctions or stops working due to disease, Eldawlatly says it is possible to control the brain itself by artificially providing the input that was supposed to come from the eye.

A chip attached to wires acting as 30-some electrodes could be implanted in the brain, receiving inputs from an external camera attached to glasses. "That's what the field of visual prosthetics is: We try to use artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver electrical pulses to certain locations in the brain related to vision. If we send the right signals to these locations, people could see again, at least partially," he says.

In his research to supplant motor disabilities, Eldawlatly has mostly used electroencephalogram (EEG) recording headsets, a non-invasive technology that records brain activity through electrical signals picked up by small sensors attached to the scalp.

A subject in Eldawlatly's study wears an EEG headset, photo courtesy of Seif Eldawlatly

In one of Eldawlatly's experiments, people with disabilities were able to write words by selecting letters separated by flickering boxes of varying paces, each of which would elicit a different electrical pulse in the brain.

Once the EEG headset picked up the electrical signals using AI, the computer would produce the correct letter, allowing the person to write using only their brain. In an adjacent project, the EEG detected a spike when the desired character was displayed, providing an alternative system to the flickering boxes. Patients were able to move their wheelchairs using the same technology.

BCI can also be used to enhance daily life for those without disabilities or diseases. Eldawlatly shared the example of an AUC senior project he supervised that was conducted in collaboration with Siemens, enabling emergency braking in vehicles based on brain signals.

"When an emergency-braking situation happens, such as a car in front of us suddenly stopping, many people panic, for say 100 milliseconds, but their brain detects that they need to stop the car even if they don't press the brakes. They hesitate for a moment, and because

of that, an accident might happen," he explains. By detecting the brain pattern corresponding to emergency braking, the car can be stopped, avoiding the accident.

Additionally, Eldawlatly has been developing AI techniques to diagnose the neurodegenerative disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a fatal illness that is usually diagnosed in the later stages. With machine learning algorithms, Eldawlatly's team is working on identifying abnormal patterns in signals from the spinal cord. "If we can diagnose the disease early on, we can start administering drugs to slow its progress, elongating the life of the patient and preventing them from losing all function," he says.

Field of the Future

Much of Eldawlatly's work may sound aspirational and futuristic, far off from the world we live in now. But BCI is already being used around the world, and there are companies already performing chip implantations in the brains of paralyzed patients seeking mobility, or a simulation of mobility. And while Eldawlatly has not worked on invasive procedures outside of animal testing, he believes that the future lies in both invasive BCI, implemented through the surgical insertion of electrodes in the brain, and noninvasive BCI, through external apparatuses such as EEGs.

This is why he emphasizes the need for strict ethical guidelines around BCI practices. Regarding invasive techniques, Eldawlatly says, "All the work being done in this field of research has to follow strict ethical guidelines. Otherwise, if it falls into the wrong hands, the technology might cause issues. However, the good news is that patients have to undergo surgery first, so they have to agree to it."

"We deliver electrical pulses to certain locations in the brain related to vision. If we send the right signals to these locations, people can see again, at least partially."

He added that, whether surgically invasive or not, brain monitoring raises concerns of privacy, so ethics are always a priority. "In both cases, we're getting information about what the brain is trying to do, and the brain, not our face or fingerprint, is the true representation of our identity. So the data should not be used for anything that the subject does not approve," Eldawlatly says.

Though he works in data analysis and not in hardware development, Eldawlatly says that the technology can soon become accessible, with EEG headsets already available at varying price ranges. "Once the industry turns the research into a product, it becomes a reality. It becomes something that everyone is using," he says, comparing BCI to AI, which was not widely known until ChatGPT became publicly accessible -- even though researchers had been developing AI technology for the past century. "Now everyone is using AI, so the same thing might happen in brain-computer interfaces," he says.

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Campus Hangouts
 

Diversity has always been a cornerstone of AUC since its founding. Students of all backgrounds cherish the intercultural exchange and social interaction at the University, not just in the classroom, but in every part of campus.

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Library

The AUC Library started off as a small reading room in 1922. In the 1950s, upon the recommendation of then President Raymond F. McLain and with consent from the Weyerhaeuser family, Hill House no longer served as a student dormitory and was renovated to become a modern library. In 1982, the Greek Campus Library was completed. Today, the library is at the center of AUC's 260-acre campus in New Cairo and houses the largest English-language academic collection in Egypt.

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Miss AUC

The Miss AUC competition, which began in the early 1930s, was an annual campus tradition crowning the "all-round campus girl." At the beginning, the winner was chosen solely based on the amount of votes she collected, but by the 1970s, academic achievement and campus activities were considered too. The coronation ceremony, performed by the previous year's winner, was traditionally followed by a party in the Fountain Area, where the president had the first dance with Miss AUC.

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Classes
 

Initially, AUC was intended to be both a preparatory school and a University. The preparatory school opened in October 1920 with 142 students in two classes that were equivalent to the last two years of an American high school. The first diplomas issued were junior college-level certificates given to 20 students in 1923. AUC enrolled its first female student in 1928, the same year in which the first class graduated, with one Bachelor of Science and two Bachelor of Arts degrees awarded. The first master's degree was awarded in 1950. 
 

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Sports
 

Since its early years, AUC placed an emphasis on athletics and physical training as part of the curriculum to enhance student personalities by building sportsmanship and teamwork. This was uncommon in the Middle East at the time, since people did not correlate sports with a college or university. Despite criticism, students, all males in the early 1920s, were required to take two hours of athletics per week. As they became more skilled, they created a pyramid by standing on each other's shoulders -- an AUC landmark. Each athletic season ended with Sports Day, which began in 1921. 
 

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Students on Campus

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Classrooms

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Athletics

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Library

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The Platform

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Gym

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Group Study

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Food Outlets

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Swimming

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Class Photo

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International Day

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Commencement

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AUC Couples
 

"Mohamed Safwat and I met on campus as freshmen in the fall of 1994. He proposed to me one beautiful summer day at the Falaki building. We got engaged in 1998, a few months after our June 1998 commencement, and we got married in July 2000. We are blessed to be best friends, lovers and parents to two crazy kids and two even crazier cats."

-- Aliaa M. Abaza '98

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Memorabilia

"AUC used the Channel, a paper for circulation that included all important information for students. We did not have emails."

-- Mona Al-Abiad '89, '10

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Trips
 

"One of the most famous trips at the University was the Luxor and Aswan trip, which always took place between the two-semester recess. Taking the train for 12 hours and trying to visit all the attractions in Luxor and Aswan in five days. Always fun, and memories to hold forever."

-- Nabil Arar '86
 

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Sports
 

"Madame Azhar was a fighter with a huge heart. She always used to encourage us to train when we were at the changing rooms. ... May she rest in peace."

-- Merit Al-Sayed '01

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Lifelong learning

"I am a proud AUCian because the kind and quality of education we get prepares us for life like no other place. The life skills we learned have shaped our personalities."

-- Doha Shawki '95, '98

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Groups

"Thick and thin applies to friendship, not only to marriage. We studied together, stood by each other during heartaches, were together at graduation, attended each other's weddings, watched our kids grow and play with each other, stood by each other during difficult times, attended our children's weddings and will grow old together."

-- Hanan Shahin '87, '97 
 

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Alumni

"AUC makes us proud everywhere, all the time. Every penny was worth it. We pose as pearls of a necklace, scattered yet united by everything genuine."

-- Lamya Ramadan '87, '01 
 

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Performances

"Every performance, every song, every corner of Ewart Hall speak so many memories. So many precious moments with very special individuals whom I call friends for life. No matter how near or rather how far, you are all engraved in my heart. RIP Larry, our mentor and our music keeper. You will never be forgotten! Miss you all so much. Osiris Singers forever."
 

-- Mariam Farag '99 
 

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By Hadeel Soliman

The gazelle is a lean, strong, graceful and capable being -- a great representation of 22-year-old Egyptian squash player Hania El Hammamy.

Though appearing sweet and calm, El Hammamy is merciless on the court. After many triumphs in her career as a junior squash player, she went pro and her talent was quickly recognized on a global scale. She is now third worldwide in the Professional Squash Association Women's World Rankings, earning her iconic nickname, the gazelle, due to her wide and fast stride.

As if a switch had been flipped, El Hammamy's gentle exterior quickly faded as we began discussing her squash career. "I am very greedy. Number three isn't where I belong. I can do better," she said.

Though not pleased with her ranking, the gazelle still acknowledges her numerous achievements. She notably remembers a match she won at 17 years old, which lifted her spirits and reinforced her self-confidence. "I played against Nicol David, who had previously been number one for nine consecutive years, so no one dared to go near her," she recalled. "When I won that match, I was very happy. My young age made the victory that much sweeter."

While climbing the global rankings, El Hammamy also challenges gender norms faced by female athletes. "I'm very aggressive on the court, and sometimes people tell me that my attitude is too much for a woman," she said.

The comments don't affect her. At a press conference, El Hammamy handled such challenges and criticism from reporters with grace -- as would any confident athlete. When asked if she felt bad for playing against her friend in a match, she replied sternly: "In individual sports, if you think like that, you shouldn't even be competing. This is our work."

Determined, hungry for victory, confident and skillful -- El Hammamy possesses all these skills that we love to see in athletes. However, as a woman, El Hammamy is frustrated by the difference in treatment she gets from the media and fans alike. "A male player and I may be featured in the same magazine, but he will be the one placed on the front page even though I actually have higher rankings than he does," she said.

El Hammamy's message to all young athletes: "You'll never be at your peak forever. There will be ups and downs, but giving up is not an option."

Despite the challenges on and off the court, the Egyptian champion remains unfazed and confident because she only has her eyes on one thing: being number one.

Hadeel Soliman is a communication and media arts junior at AUC.

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Coming back to a place after years away can be a deeply emotional experience. For Waleed Alasad '91, who studied mechanical engineering at AUC and is now the CEO of NAPESCO Petroleum, visiting Ewart Memorial Hall in the spring of 2024 for a memorial event triggered strong feelings of nostalgia. After the service, he went home and wrote the following in honor of the space and the memories it holds.

Read the original Arabic version on Substack.

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Alasad at Ewart Memorial Hall, photo by Ahmad El-Nemr

I still remember the summer morning in July nearly four decades ago when I stepped into Ewart Memorial Hall to sit for the aptitude test required for admission to AUC. That grand hall -- with its vast space between the seats, the ceiling and the stage adorned with European Rococo ornaments -- bears an inscription in Latin that seemed to have been crafted by Egyptian calligraphers trained in Ottoman script, merging the two worlds. It read:

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, but more of reverence in us dwell."

Ewart Hall, whose construction was funded in the 1920s by a granddaughter of William Dana Ewart -- the American inventor of the chain belt -- became a small homeland for us Sudanese students while we were far from our country. Our connection to it was through the Sudanese Students Association at AUC, an active organization and close-knit family centered around identity. The hall often hosted rehearsals for our choral group, and its majestic walls echoed with our pentatonic scale as we sang and learned who "Azza" was, as "Azza" in our poetry and songs means Sudan:

"Azza, I have not forsaken the land of beauty,

Nor have I sought a substitute, none but perfection.

My heart never swayed to another.

Embrace me with your right hand, for I lie resting on your left."

The hall's Western murals would smile back at us, replying salaamat (greetings) after each line.

The 1980s were full of both sorrow and splendor. What more can be said of those times?

Ewart Hall couldn't close the chapter of the 1980s without adding the crown jewel of that era: the Akad El-Galad band.

In the hall, we organized a grand concert for the band, inviting Sudanese students from all the universities. The aisles were packed after the seats were filled, and Sheikh Rihan Street overflowed with people of dark skin from every direction, their hearts longing for the words of Mohamed Taha Al Gaddal, Amal Dunqul and Al-Madah Al-Makkawi. The concert began, and the hall erupted. The voices of the students overpowered the band, chanting.

The hall reciprocated our enthusiasm with its timeless word engraved above the stage: "Reverence."

Today, after all those decades have passed, after calendar pages have fluttered away, after the disappearance of newspaper vendors, after Koshary El-Tahrir turned into a franchise, after the crowds vanished from Tahrir Square and after the unruly growth of a McDonald's branch across from the green gate on Mohamed Mahmoud Street -- I return to enter Ewart Hall, this time to attend a memorial event for the dean of Sudanese journalists, Mahjoub Mohamed Salih.

I return to find Ewart Hall unchanged, welcoming us as always, with the same distinctive scent. I can almost hear its sigh of reproach for our long absence, for the absence of the echoes of our pentatonic songs from its walls all this time.

The doors of the Main Campus opened from both sides, and the guests filed in with commendable order, organized for a memorial worthy of that towering figure who departed just as our bodies, too, were forced to leave:

"Embrace me with your right hand, for I lie resting on your left."

It was truly a remarkable evening, filled with the essence of home, interspersed with profound words from Sudanese and foreign journalists, from the family of the late Mahjoub, and especially that tender speech from his granddaughter.

Ewart Hall gave us today the same echo we had known years ago as the audience sang for Sudan along with the band to the words of the late Abdul Kareem Al-Kabli:

We shall rejoice with our children and sing,

To our origin, our beginning.

Oh, the sweetness of the stage of our youth,

And our memories, our longing."

Ewart Memorial Hall, I dedicate this to you on behalf of all the Sudanese you sheltered in their exile. In my heart, after the music fades and the guests leave, I return to you in secret to offer the last refrain as a toast to you and to those beautiful years. I sing for you:

Oh, the sweetness of the stage of our youth,

And our memories, our longing.

 

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Training Social workers to respond to children in crisis

 

CARIE FORDEN
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

The Inspiration

How do we protect children from neglect and abuse? That's a critical question in Egypt and around the world. I'm collaborating with UNICEF and Egypt's Ministry of Social Solidarity to answer it. We're trying to enhance the skills and capabilities of professional social workers -- the people who often have the best chance of improving the lives of children in these situations.

The Process

The team at AUC includes Yasmine Saleh '91, associate professor of practice in the Department of Psychology, and many students who have worked as interns and research assistants. Here's what we do: We conduct assessments to determine the kinds of training that social workers need to be effective in serving children -- for example, training in gender-based violence, alternative care, positive parenting and psychosocial support for trauma. Then we develop training courses with lots of hands-on activities, produce the materials to support them and lead the courses. We conduct evaluations of the training sessions to help ensure they are effective and improving social work practice. We also train new trainers so the work can spread far beyond us.

Saleh (left) and Forden engaging with social workers

The IMPACT

We've trained more than 400 social workers in Cairo, Alexandria, Assiut, Sharqiya and North Sinai; developed 33 days of training curricula; and certified nine local trainers. If we can sustain this approach, the potential impact of the project is huge: Social workers across Egypt will be better able to protect and support children, youth and families, and the changes that UNICEF and the Ministry of Social Solidarity are trying to implement will be embedded into the national system of social work training and practice.

93% of children aged 1 to 14 have been exposed to violent disciplinary practices by their parents or caregivers, including psychological and physical violence.

UNICEF, citing the 2014 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey, published by the Ministry of Health

The Next Steps

In the next two years, we plan to train and certify an additional 500 social workers. The chances of success are high. A recent call for a training of trainers on gender-based violence drew more than 300 applicants. We're also supporting the ministry's efforts to move from placing children in orphanages to placing them in alternative parental care and helping them create a new system to certify child protection social workers.

The Future

AUC is the ideal place to do this work. Our community psychology program -- focusing on collaboration with community partners, creating positive social change and building professional practice skills -- is unique in the region. We're able to attract high-caliber students; they're true partners in this project. AUC's reputation for excellence means that our community partners welcome the chance to work with us, and trainees see our programs as prestigious. And the University is truly committed to community engagement. Work like ours is valued and sustained, which then helps us ensure that social workers and the children they serve are valued and sustained.

 

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By Yakin Ouederni

Communicating in Arabic Sign Language with the tap of a phone

Baher Moursy '18, Heba Sakr '18, Youssef Khairalla '18 and Tamara Nagui '17 have always been driven by a desire to give back to their communities whenever the opportunity arises. So when it came time for them to decide on a graduation project in 2017, it was difficult to settle on one of the many ideas they thought of, but they were sure of one thing: Whatever it was, it needed to go beyond being just a thesis project.

After months of brainstorming, they came up with Eshara, a mobile application that translates Arabic Sign Language (ASL) into written Arabic in real time. Eshara works on any device with a camera, using video recognition technology to detect the hand movements of someone speaking ASL and simultaneously provide a written translation.

"Imagine a world in which a student can raise his or her hand in a classroom and sign what he or she is trying to communicate, and everyone else in the classroom reading or hearing the translation instantly," Khairalla said.

The Eshara logo was designed by Yasmine Nagui '16

Due to rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the world that Khairalla speaks of can soon become a reality. Eshara relies on computer vision and machine learning, a subset of AI that uses systems to identify patterns and make decisions with little to no human intervention. Both fields are increasingly being used across a variety of areas such as health care monitoring, financial services and transportation. In Eshara's case, the group films people speaking ASL and then programs the software to recognize specific movements as words so that it may provide a written translation.

"Basically, we design and train several AI computing models to associate each ASL word gesture with its corresponding text," said Mohamed Moustafa, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the team's supervisor. "This work of action recognition is actually part of a bigger research topic known as human-computer interaction. Its applications are all futuristic."

Noting the great impact of machine learning on people's lives, Moustafa emphasized the importance of investing time into developing this field. "Self-driving vehicles are expected to be fully autonomous in a handful of years, bidirectional language translation is helping real-time conversations, and mature models are being developed to recommend your next online purchase," he said.

And it's exactly this type of impact that the team hopes to make with Eshara: creating programs that make people's lives easier by using AI to help underserved populations and inspire others to do the same. "We have the knowledge; we have the technology," Moursy said. "Why don't we use it for the good of society?"

"Be the Future" in Arabic Sign Language by (front row) Youssef Khairalla, Heba Sakr, Baher Moursy and (back) Amr AbdelGhani

Two years after presenting their idea to the thesis panel, the team members are still developing the app. Amr AbdelGhani '19 has since joined the team.

What the team members have now is the demo they created for the graduation project, which is capable of translating individual words and not full sentences. By the end of the year, they hope to accomplish two goals for the app: translating full sentences and being quick enough to produce words in real time. Development takes place in two stages: data collection then programming the machine.

Eshara app design

When the team members initially started conducting research, they were surprised to see that there was no project like theirs targeting ASL speakers in the Middle East. This made the data collection process much more difficult and time consuming. "It took us around a year to collect data for the demo," Moursy said.

One year for 16 words.

Data collection involves choosing words to include in the Eshara dictionary and then filming those words being spoken in ASL. To ensure Eshara's accuracy at all times of the day and in different locations, the team needed to film movements across a wide array of environments and with different people. With no ASL experience and no contacts with anyone who speaks it, the team members had to learn the movements and train their friends to shoot the videos.

"When filming the words, we needed a wide range of skin colors, hand sizes, backgrounds and lighting, and we had to film at different times of the day," Sakr said.

Their project stalled for one year when they lost funding, but AUC secured funding earlier in 2019, and the team got right back to work in July. Since then, they have expanded the dictionary to between 800 and 1,000 words. "Being part of the Eshara team resembles a great opportunity for me to help create something that can directly impact people's lives and has the potential to revolutionize communication with those who cannot hear," said AbdelGhani. "The current progress is unprecedented for Arabic Sign Language recognition, and I believe that we could potentially push this technology to achieve a breakthrough in scalable automatic ASL recognition. The passion and excitement of the team along with AUC's support make this project a fun and fulfilling journey."

Data Collection for Eshara

Turning AUC Tahrir Square into their workspace, the team members meet with ASL professionals and communities in Cairo that cannot hear or speak to film vocabulary. Khairalla, who is currently overseas, is helping with researching quicker and more efficient technologies for the app.

"Speed is our main concern," Moursy said. "The app needs to be able to translate full sentences in real time."

Sign language translating programs do exist for languages other than ASL, but what differentiates Eshara from all others is its accessibility. Most programs use censored gloves or 3D cameras to detect hand movements, while Eshara can be downloaded on mobile phones and works across different software.

"If someone who speaks Arabic Sign Language is sitting right next to me, there would be no way of communicating with him or her," Moursy said. "Eshara would allow me to just pull out my phone and carry out a conversation. We're not realizing that there's a whole demographic of people we aren't talking to."

What started out as a graduation project turned into an initiative to include an often neglected demographic in society. Even AUC Tahrir Square, which started off as a meeting place for data collection, became a space for a community of people working toward a common cause.

"The ASL professionals were really excited about the project and even want to continue helping us for free," Sakr said, emphasizing how this project will allow ASL speakers to enter the workforce more easily, making way for diverse skills and talents that were previously not tapped into. "We're helping to create a better future for them because they can finally be able to take part in regular, everyday life like everyone else."