Winners awarded at 3rd KANS scientific competition

The 3rd round of the KANS scientific competition held concurrently with the International Innovation and Technology Exhibition (INOTEX 2023) at Tehran’s Pardis Technology Park from May 9 to May 12, came to an end with the awarding ceremony of KANS winners.

The last day of the 3rd round of KANS, held by the Mustafa (pbuh) Science and Technology Foundation (MSTF), began with a speech from Said Hossein Rafeie, Head of the Secretariat of the KANS scientific competition. He explained the details of the competition to the audience.

Rafiei introduced the 6 fields of competition, the limitation of the competition, the sections of the competition, and the screening process.

He announced that 2 fields are newly added in this round of the competition: ‘Electronics & Robotics’ and ‘Agriculture & Food Industry’.

“Moreover, a special section is added for an outstanding researcher under 30 years of age: ‘Future Star’,” he continued.

“In this round of the competition, we received 881 videos received from 22 countries,” he said.

According to Rafei, “Each video was evaluated by at least 3 evaluators. Finally, 20 nominates were selected for the final round of the competition, out of which 6 winners were selected.”

Next, the winner in each field of the competition gave a speech about their achievement to the audience.

Following each KANS winner’s speech, a number of presenters pitched their products in 60 seconds regarded as “a special opportunity for presenting creative ideas”.

Some ideas, for example, included “green magnetic nano engine oil,” “air quality prediction using RL,” “microneedle-based wearable sensor for pre-disease diagnostics,” and “nasal drug development to prevent brain protein aggregation and fibrillation.”

The permanent element of Khadem Al-Mustafa(pbuh) was also revealed at Pardis Technology Park with the attendance of notable figures including Rouhollah Dehghani Firouzabadi, Vice-President for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy, concurrently with the closing ceremony of the 3rd KANS scientific competition.

The awarding ceremony started with a theatrical performance for the audience.

Head of the 3rd KANS Scientific Competition, Saeid Sohrabpour, delivered a speech during the closing ceremony, pointing to the mission of KANS undertaken by the MSTF.

The numerous received works were “responses to challenges raised by 60 scientific and industrial centers,” he noted.

“Ultimately, we seek to create a better life for human society,” he said during his speech.

CEO of the MSTF, Mahdi Saffarinia; Seyed Ali Omrani, Executive Director of the MSTF; ……… Hajebrahimi, a member of the board at MSTF; Hasan Zohour, a member of the Mustafa (pbuh) Prize scientific committee; and Saeid Sohrabpour awarded the winners at the ceremony.

The winner in the field of “ICT & AI” was Siti Fauziah Toha from Malaysia for “A Bio-Inspired AI-Based Obstacle Avoidance and Geospatial Route Prediction Assistive Travelling for Visually Impaired Community.”

Iman Saleh from Qatar was the winner of the “Agriculture & Food Industry” field for her scientific achievement “Effects of active phytochemicals of Prosopis juliflora as anti-spoiling agents of postharvest fruits.”

In the field of “Electronics & Robotics,” Azam Karami from Iran won for “Automatic Fault Detection in Power Transmission Lines.”

Another Malaysian winner of the 3rd round of KANS was Nur Faeza Abu Kassim. She was the winner of the “Energy, Water & Environment” field for her scientific achievement “BioGel Moz: Green Biopolymer Hydrogel Beads as Frontier Product for Combating Dengue.”

Sina Mozaffari-Jovin from Iran was the winner in the field of “Health & Med-Tech” for “GMP production and preclinical evaluation of the immunogenicity of the mRNA-lipid nanoparticle vaccine candidate Iribovax against SARS-CoV-2 in nonhuman primates in Iran.”

“The Future Star” was a young Azerbaijani PhD student, Nadir Atayev, who won for his achievement “Electronics, telecommunication and aerospace hardware problems with advanced research in optical communication subsystem of both ground and in-orbit nanosatellite.”

The winners received their awards, took group pictures, and left the stage to rapturous applause from the audience.

KANS scientific competition is held biannually for researchers and scientists under 45 years of age, with the aim of promoting and developing science and technology for young scientists of the Islamic world. The first round of this competition was held in 2018. The closing ceremony of the second round was held in May 2022. The call for the third round of the KANS Scientific Competition was released on October 29, 2022, requiring the applicants to upload their works in the form of a 3-5 minute video of their innovative and scientific solution to solve the significant problems of the Islamic world.

MNA/PR