By Leah Coppella
If you were to glance at Mohamed Hozayen’s calendar, you would wonder how he had enough hours in the day to get it all done.
An athlete for the Raven’s rugby team during their undefeated season, Top Project Award Winner at Data Day 6.0 put on by the Statistical Society of Canada, volunteer notetaker for the Paul Menton Centre for Students with Disabilities and published researcher, Hozayen gets around.
He’s also been published four times, an extremely rare feat for an undergraduate student. He’s even instructed an Enrichment Mini-Courses Program in Biomedical Engineering and worked as a lifeguard and swimming instructor.
Hozayen is a Computer Systems Engineering student. But when he first stepped foot on campus, Hozayen had almost no knowledge of computers.
Mohamed Hozayen receives the Provost Scholar Award from Provost and Vice-President (Academic) Jerry Tomberlin in April 2019.
“I knew nothing about computers. The first two years, I didn’t even have a laptop,” he says.
Getting to the lab early every day in order to finish work, Hozayen managed to maintain his spot on the Dean’s Honour List while taking part in research through a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council award and the I-CUREUS program (Internship-Carleton University Research Experience for Undergraduate Students).
“I have a competitive edge from playing sports. So, I took that and put it into school,” he says.
For Hozayen, it’s unrealistic to sit down and study all day. Instead, he breaks up his day with sports, volunteering and down time.
“Being busy helped me to be efficient,” he says.
Academic Publication A Rarity for Undergraduate Students
Hozayen’s work ethic hasn’t gone unnoticed. In fact, he is a recipient of the Peter J. Ricketts Outstanding Provost Scholar Award after being nominated by multiple professors. The award represents stellar academic research and community involvement.
Hozayen says support from his professors helped him succeed.
“Dr. Adrian Chan is the first professor I did research with after first year, in his Biomedical Signal Quality Analysis Laboratory, and he had a significant impact on me as a person,” he says.
Their work together resulted in a publication in the 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications.
One of the other publications he co-authored, a journal paper in the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement journal, showed his research on real-time patient monitoring using pressure-sensitive mats with Prof. James Green.
Big Ambitions for the Future
After his second year, Hozayen conducted research with Green at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It’s here that Hozayen designed Patient Monitor Data Import (PMDI) software that imports and parses multiple data streams from patient monitors in order to help researchers with data acquisition and analysis.
Hozayen made the software open source, which means that he put the software online for free in order for others to benefit from the transformative system.
In his third year, he represented the university at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Oklahoma City to discuss his work on the monitor system. It was there that he received the Manimaran Kanagasabapathy Memorial Scholarship, an award that recognizes outstanding Computer Systems Engineering students.
And he’s not slowing down anytime soon.
Right now, he’s working full-time as a researcher at Carleton. Next year, he’ll start his master’s with Prof. Halim Yanikomeroglu and, eventually, he wants to create his own company.
For Hozayen, his proudest moment at Carleton came just last week. Hozayen opened his email to find that doctors in Germany and Scotland had been using his PMDI software and wanted to know more about it.
“When I went to work every day, I never thought this would happen . . . it felt great.”
Spring Convocation is taking place from Monday, June 10 until Friday, June 14. The ceremonies will be broadcast online via live streaming at Carleton.ca/convocation/live.
Thursday, June 6, 2019 in Convocation, Faculty of Engineering and Design
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