DOHA: The ‘Twitter Sentiment Analysis’ project was awarded the best undergraduate research project at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar’s (CMU-Q) eighth annual research symposium ‘Meeting of the Minds.’
The event on the campus gave undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to present their research using posters, videos and visual aids to faculty, fellow students, family members and local industry experts.
Computer science students Rukhsar Neyaz and Sabih Bin Wasi took home Best Poster and First Place for their research on ‘Twitter Sentiment Analysis,’ a first in Meeting of the Minds’ history. They were mentored by Behrang Mohit, Assistant Professor of Computer Science.
Second place also went to Bin Wasi, who completed the project ‘Using Technology to Help People Save Food Effortlessly’ with faculty adviser Thierry Sans, Assistant Teaching Professor of Computer Science.
Third place went to ‘SNV-check: A Quality Control for Familiar Exome Sequencing Data Based on the Sharing of Rare Genetic Mutations’ by Noora Al Muftah, computational biology student with faculty adviser Khalid A Fakhro from Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar.
The symposium exemplifies Carnegie Mellon’s vibrant and collaborative research philosophy and provides students with a platform to explore topics of interest in depth outside the classroom, paving the way for them to become experts of tomorrow.
Bin Wasi said: “Twitter Sentiment Analysis helps decipher the sentiment of a tweet using an algorithm. For any brand in the world, there is value to knowing how a brand is performing and how people feel about a particular brand.”
According to the fifth Arab Social Media Report, the total number of active Twitter users in the Arab world reached 3.7m as of March 2013, producing about 5.5m tweets per day.
He said, “There is a need for systems such as ours. For example, with the recent opening of Hamad International Airport, this is a critical time to measure how people feel about it. It is simple for the organisation to use, all you would have to do is insert the hashtag and the system would tell you how people feel about the airport.” A panel of industry experts and faculty members from other universities reviewed presentations and chose the best projects and posters.The Peninsula
