As a respite between a stressful two-year accelerated premedical school program completed this past spring and beginning medical school this fall, seven students from the Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha, Qatar (WCMC-Q) are spending eight weeks this summer conducting research at Cornell University. 

The students are receiving their first experience working in a research laboratory, because although WCMC-Q began teaching students in 2002, its research labs are not yet functional. 

"I learned in class about gels and techniques for amplifying DNA like PCR's [polymerase chain reactions], but I didn't actually experience them until coming to this lab," said Nancy Zaki, a WCMC-Q incoming medical student from Cairo whose summer project is to locate an antibody that stops cell reproduction in fruit flies and then to find the related genes and proteins. 

Six of the students were chosen for their summer research fellowships based on their grades; a seventh student made private arrangements to attend. In addition, four pre-med WCMC-Q students are attending regular summer classes in Ithaca. After completing premedical course work in Qatar, students can apply to the four-year medical program. 

"We are now coming to the stage where the program is maturing," said Antonie Blackler, the WCMC-Q program director for biology and a professor of developmental biology at Cornell who has just completed a three-year stint teaching at WCMC-Q. 

The steadily growing medical college, which is housed in a building the size of two football fields, enrolled 26 students in the Class of 2009, 42 students in the Class of 2010 and 60 in the Class of 2011. "With the institution there, including the premedical program, there is always an aspiration that courses be taught at the same level as on the Ithaca and New York City campuses," said Blackler. For example, Biology 101 to 104, labs and all, are identical to the courses taught in Ithaca. And Cornell psychology professor James Maas beams his popular Ithaca-based Psychology 101 course onto a large projection screen at the Doha location. 

Overall, the students say they find the level of education at WCMC-Q higher than the standards at most Middle East universities. 

"It's a much, much better education," said Aalia Al Barwani, an incoming medical student who is spending her summer in Ithaca mapping a mutation in a roundworm gene that controls body size. "It's not comparable. What I did in one year at Qatar University, I covered in a few weeks as a pre-med." Al Barwani also appreciates other opportunities at WCMC-Q, such as hearing Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Kofi Annan speak, she said. 

The students have traveled to Niagara Falls, Syracuse, Washington, D.C., and most recently New York City during the weekend of July 23, where they met some of their Manhattan WCMC classmates.

WCMC-Q student Fouad Otaki, a Syrian born in Chicago who is conducting population genetics research this summer, is also president of his student council. In Qatar, Otaki has worked to create student recreation spaces, address issues for students with mental disabilities and create a constitution and office space for the student council.

WCMC-Q incoming medical students Manisha Deb Roy, Heba Haddad, Ali Saad and Suehyb Al Khatib are also conducting research in Ithaca this summer.

The Qatar government supports WCMC-Q, while Cornell administers the program and supplies faculty and teaching assistants, many of whom hail from the Ithaca campus and Ithaca College.