Newsletter - Winter 2008

Interested in helping organize the upcoming AAA Conference on Alternative  Energy to be held in Abu Dhabi?  We need your help to put together a succesful event. Volunteers are needed with logistics, speaker selection and fundraising.  Incentives are available for volunteers, potentially including free conference admission, hotel payment or airfare, depending on the level of contribution.  If you are interested in volunteering or learning more about how you could help, please email us at:  mitaaa_exec_comm [at] MAILMAN-ALUM.mit.edu

 

One of the core objectives of the current executive team is to strengthen the governance of the group.  On that basis, we reached out to several individuals to establish an inaugural Advisory Board of experienced leaders from academics and business, at MIT and outside, in the region and elsewhere.  The Advisory Board provides support, continuity and oversight to the executive team on a sustained basis.  We will be announcing the innaugural Advisory Board members in our next quarterly newsletter.

 

We have created a new website for the group, which is still a work in progress but includes enhanced interactive functionality and recovers information on the prior conferences.  Please take a look at it on: http:/www.mitarabalum.org

As you may have noticed, the AAA now has a new seal.  We commissioned the new graphic via one of our alumni, and will be using it for all communications.

 

In order to foster stronger relationships with existing students we oraganized an alumni/student dinner at VinnyTs in Boston, MA. The event saw wonderful attendance by Arab graduate and undergraduate from MIT, Harvard, and Wellesley. Several Boston based MIT alumni attended the dinner. 

 

On Nov 3rd, the MIT AAA and ASO jointly organized an alum dinner with Imad Jureidini ‘98, co-founder of Yamli.com. Yamli.com is a

Cambridge-based startup that aims to empower the Arabic language on the Internet. Imad shared wonderful stories and lessons learned from his journey as a Phd student in Nuclear Engineering, to starting several businesses and finally his story at Yamli. The lecture was followed with a product demo and a very lively Q&A.

 

The AAA invited companies operating in the MENA region to to participate in an on-campus career fair at MIT. Despite the current economic environment, two top-tier firms (IBM and Booz & Co.) chose to visit campus and present to students. The events drew a good crowd and were appreciated by both students and companies. We hope to repeat the event next year.