It seems that Damietta, one of the most beautiful governorates in Egypt, is the land where many Egyptian geniuses were born. It hosted Dr. Ali Moustafa Moshrafa Pasah, the Egyptian theoretical physicist, the professor of applied mathematics in the Faculty of Science at Cairo University -serving as the first dean of the Faculty of Science. He contributed to the development of the quantum theory as well as the theory of relativity and corresponded with Albert Einstein.
The beautiful Damietta was also the land where the Egyptian female author and professor of literature Aisha Abd Al-Rahman was born; she published her work under the pen name Bint Al-Shati or “Daughter of the Riverbank”.
Finally, Damietta hosted the young Egyptian genius mind, Yasmine Abderrahman, who has recently gone viral on national and international media.
Yasmine is a young Egyptian female student from a small village in Damietta governorate; she is 17 years old. She attended the Maadi STEM School for girls. Recently the Egyptian genius was awarded the first place in the 2015 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for earth and environmental sciences project in the US, in appreciation for her project, which tackled “rice straw”. Yasmine invented a machine, which its manufacture costs 63EGP. Her project tackled the power of rice straw, which Egypt has been suffering from its pollution for many years. Yasmine’s project proposed the use of a biological therapy in order to help in water purification, electricity shortfall and air pollution. She employed a biological therapy in her project, to help water purification. She proposed getting rid of rice straw by burning it to increase bio-diesel fuel in order to increase electricity.
Yasmine was also honoured by NASA -which has named a main-belt asteroids after Yasmine’s name upon her efforts with her scientific research.
Speaking to Egyptian OnTV, Yasmine explained that she tried to submit her project first to the Scientific Research in Egypt, however, the Ministry did not pay much attention to her project. Even after being honoured, the companies that proposed to buy her project were non-Egyptians.
Yasmine stated:” We are lost here in Egypt and unless I had joined an international competition, my project wouldn’t have come into light. In the competition, most of the international projects were uncreative -compared to the appreciation they have received. However, the Egyptian ones were very creative and new but we never received any care in our country.” She said.
It is worth to note that NASA has also named two other main-belt asteroids after two Middle Eastern students. It named 28831 Abu-Alshaikh after Jordanian Salahaldeen Ibrahim Abu-Alshaikh, 19, who was awarded second place in the 2013 Intel ISEF for his mathematical sciences project.
