Improve Education Visual Transcript Video opens on a series of childhood photos of Abdullah and his family - [Abdullah Al-Hayali] From the day I was born to 2007, I was living in Iraq. It was a turbulent time. Footage: Stock video footage of Iraq war torn communities, damaged buildings. - [Abdullah] My school was hit from like bombings. Photos: Abdullah in school pictures, more family pictures. - [Abdullah] I've had loads of time where I had no education. My parents didn't see a future in that type of education. So, they wanted to move somewhere where the education would be consistent. They first think of education and then everything else. Abdullah on screen speaking to camera and sitting in front of window on U of G campus. - [Abdullah] Before coming to Canada, their main concern was which country would offer the best tertiary education to our children. Footage of Abdullah in graduate student office in Thornborough building, sitting down. - [Abdullah] When I asked my parents, the first advice they told me is keep doing well in school, and then the careers that you want, would come to you. Abdullah on screen speaking to camera - [Abdullah] I started working with a few professors and I found machine learning and I decided, oh, this is something I actually want to pursue. [Footage of Abdullah at a computer then back on screen] - [Abdullah] Luckily from all the universities that I applied to; I got my acceptances. And then I, it was just a matter of comparison. Footage of Abdullah sitting in graduate student office working on a laptop - [Abdullah] and Guelph was on top of the list, and then the more I researched into Guelph, the more it appealed to me. Associate Prof. Karen Gordon on screen -[Karen] When I first met Abdullah when he must've been in his very first week here. Footage of Karen and Abdullah walking the hallway of Thornborough -[Karen] During our orientation week in engineering, we do it’s called meetings for majors, where we have a few faculty come and speak to the incoming class of biological and biomedical engineering students. Footage of Karen and Abdullah walking out of building -[Karen] I did a little spiel on some of the research that I was doing at the time, he approached me afterwards, he was really interested and very first day, asked about volunteer opportunities in my lab. Footage of Karen and Abdullah sitting on bench looking at laptop -[Karen] You don't normally get quite that much enthusiasm from brand new first year students, but that is typical as I've learned over the years of Abdullah. Footage of Marwan turning pages in a book. - [Marwan Mohammed – Khalil]- I got acquainted with Mr. Abdullah through the social media website, Facebook. Abdullah on screen speaking to camera. Footage of Abdullah on his laptop. - [Abdullah] I was just scrolling by one day and then I found a post complaining about bad infrastructure in schools. - Marwan on screen speaking to camera. - [Marwan] dilapidated school buildings, the lack of sanitation or electrical services. Our appeals to the concerned authorities fall on deaf ears. If it gets demolished, we will suffer. Footage of Marwan walking on a city street in Iraq. -Text on screen – Without help, a school for 600 students would have closed. Footage of Iraqi streets. - [Marwan] Either the students leave their schools and receive no education at all. Footage of Iraqi streets. Abdullah on screen speaking to camera. [Abdullah]- Or sending the students out to different cities or overcrowding existing schools I helped with managing a campaign that would gather donations. And then with the amount of money that we raised was around $2,000 US. -Text on screen – Community raised funds paid to repair the school. It remains open to this day. Pictures of school repairs and school building -[Marwan] We call it a model school. It is graduating a new generation for society. Pilots, engineers, and architects, experts in whatever fields the country needs, our schools can produce that. Abdullah on screen. Footage of Gryphon statue, drone shot of library, Thornborough building, Abdullah working at a desk. -[Abdullah] I wanted to pay back because I know how fortunate education is fundamental to anything you do. The University of Guelph is very important to me, and I think it's shaped me personally because you learn new things and you build connections which led me to have great opportunities. The decision to stay on my master’s project was the flexibility and the amount of opportunities. I had offers from several universities, but no other university offered me as good of an opportunity as Guelph. Eran Ukwatta on screen. - [Eran] The first time I met Abdullah was at Design three. Footage of Eran and Abdullah sitting at a table in a backyard. - [Eran] I remember Abdullah very well because the way he asked questions with such enthusiastic voice. Abdullah on screen. Footage of Abdullah and Eran walking in a park and sitting talking on a bench. Footage of Abdullah and Karen in a lab. -[Abdullah] He laid out a few projects that he was working on. And I just mentioned prostate cancer, if he has any projects related to that, because that was why my grandfather died of. I felt an obligation to do something in that field to hopefully help the science advance. Eran on screen. Footage of Abdullah in lab. - [Eran] What impresses most about Abdullah is his initiative. I told him that I had a large group, so I was running out of funding. So, Abdullah initiated this industry collaborations. And in total, his initiatives helped me in bringing up about $80,000 worth of industry, plus my tax funding, to my research team. Images of prostate MRI scans -[Abdullah] He offered me a project where I would be detecting the quality of prostate MRI scans automatically within like 30 seconds or one hour out of a one hour to an hour and a half sequence of scans. Eran on screen. Footage of Abdullah in lab. - [Eran] In his work one of the problems is that some of those images that are acquired are of poor quality, so they will need to follow up again. So, then they will need to be rescanned. Abdullah on screen. -[Abdullah] And if it was to be caught in stage one, it would be curable and will be treatable. Footage of Abdullah on a computer. - [Eran] So Abdullah will develop AI technologies to predict the quality of the images before they acquired. Abdullah on screen. Footage of Abdullah walking on campus. -[Abdullah] And AI would help in detecting that cancer. And it will be universal throughout. My ultimate hope in completing this research project is to improve the state of cancer detection as a whole. (Piano music)