Researchers Discuss Empowering Scientists in the Arab World

By Daniel Gorelick

Dozens of researchers of Arab descent, meeting in a small hotel ballroom on the sidelines of the 30,000-strong annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, discussed ways in which to empower Arab scientists.

The smaller group convened November 17 under the auspices of the Society for Arab Neuroscientists, which aims to foster collaborations among Arab neuroscientists and promote neuroscience in the Arab world.

Discussion focused on the difficulties of running a laboratory in an Arab country and on ways to reduce "brain drain" from the Middle East, a term that describes the phenomenon of young scientists leaving their homes to train in North America, Europe or Asia and then remaining abroad. The failure to return home to establish a career drains intellectual capital from the country of origin.

To improve connections between Arab scientists in the United States and those in the Middle East, society director Yasmine El-Shamayleh wants to organize an exchange program that allows U.S. researchers to spend a summer teaching budding scientists in the Middle East.

Similar courses open to international scientists exist in the United States, such as those offered by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in New York, but El-Shamayleh's proposal specifically aims at the Arab world.

Other participants voiced concern regarding scientific opportunities in Arab countries. Several scientists said it would be difficult to establish labs there because of limited funding and supplies and the difficulty of interacting with colleagues abroad. El-Shamayleh's goals include learning skills and making professional connections that would enable her to establish a lab in the Middle East.

SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

On the other side of the debate about how to establish a scientific career in the Middle East is Dr. Rose-Mary Boustany, chair of the Abu-Haidar Neuroscience Institute at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. After rising through the academic ranks and becoming a tenured professor of pediatrics and neurobiology at Duke University, Boustany left the United States to run a laboratory in Lebanon.

She criticized previous models of collaboration between U.S. and Arab scientists, saying that they were little more than vehicles for American scientists and universities to make money and increase their prestige without substantive benefits to Arab scientists.

An Arab lab might send tissue samples to a lab in the United States, which then analyzes the samples, performs follow-up experiments and does most of the work that leads to publishing the results, Boustany told America.gov.

In her department at the American University in Beirut, she is trying to establish a program that works the other way around, where American scientists who have developed a mouse model of human disease would send the mouse to labs in the Middle East so Arab scientists can perform the substantive experiments.

Compared with running a lab in the United States, working in the Middle East "is doable," Boustany said. "It's just harder."

FOCUS ON YOUNG SCIENTISTS

Attendees at the Society for Arab Neuroscience event represented many parts of the Middle East, including the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. Most of the scientists work in the United States or Europe, but a few senior scientists, like Boustany, have returned to the Middle East.

Many of the younger scientists want to meet other scientists of Arab descent. Ahmed Moustafa, a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University in New Jersey, originally from Egypt, came to the United States for educational opportunities and hopes to increase collaboration between U.S. scientists and those in the Middle East.

Hala Darwish, a U.S. citizen originally from Lebanon, is finishing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She plans to return to Lebanon in January 2009 as a faculty member at the American University in Beirut, in part to be closer to her family.

But Darwish, echoing the sentiments of many peers who are or will be returning to the Middle East, considers her return to Lebanon temporary. She told America.gov that if the Lebanese economy collapses or violence increases, she is prepared to leave.

Darwish characterized her approach as pragmatic: She came to the United States in part because opportunities for scientific training are better than those in Lebanon. Even though she plans to return to Lebanon, if the local conditions make it difficult for her to run a lab, she will find better opportunities elsewhere.

After spending so many years in the United States studying and training to be a scientist, how does she feel about leaving?

"The United States is my second home," Darwish said. "I'm going back to my first home."

Source: U.S. Department of State

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