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Top > Vol.9 - Heba El-Hadidi

Name: Heba El-Hadidi		Nationality: Egyptian

Affiliated research center/ school in Waseda	GITS, Graudate School of Global Information and Telecommunication Studies
Affiliated research institution at home country	Department of Mathematics and computer science, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, Damietta campus.
Period of stay at Waseda	From 04/2006 to 06/2008

Subject of research
Intelligent Agent System for navigation assistance and Information Retrieval.

Introduction

My home town-fishing from the Nile River

　I am from Damietta, a small city of northern Egypt where the Nile River meets the Mediterranean Sea. It is famous in Egypt as “Japan” of Egypt, as almost all Damietta people work hard in furniture industry. I started my study majoring in computer science at the faculty of Science, Mansoura University in 1991 and got my B.SC. (Honors) in 1995 and M.SC. , subject of neural networks and genetic algorithms, in 2001. As a developing country, Egypt has limited research facilities and scientific resources so I had difficulties to finish my thesis in my home university. Fortunately, I got an opportunity to study at Waseda University as a visiting researcher for two years in order to promote my thesis's quality. As I am from a small and rural city I chose to live in Honjo, where not too many English speakers but very friendly people, may be because of similarity between my home town and Honjo city.

　It is a good opportunity that Egypt and Japan have designated 2008 as a year of science and technology cooperation. The initiative will establish cooperative networks between Egyptian and Japanese scientists and their educational and technological institutions. The two countries will organize scientific conferences and workshops, and exchange staff on joint research projects. The two countries will also set up a Japanese science and technology university in Alexandria. The Egypt–Japan University will foster technological and scientific innovation in the African and Arab region by offering undergraduate and postgraduate science and technology degrees, including information and communications technologies, new materials courses and renewable energy technology. As part of that scientific cooperation, the Egypt-Japan International Symposium on Science and Technology 2008 will be held in Tokyo, June 8~10 at Waseda University.


My home city- Damietta

First journey out of Egypt
　I had been granted one of the two-year’s scholarships which the Egyptian Ministry of Research and Higher Education offers toward the completion of doctoral studies. After these two years I should return to serve in my home university as a lecturer for continuous three years, to transfer what I had learnt in Japan.
　After I got my Scholarship, the next step was to decide the country which I want to conduct my research in. My first choice was Japan, because it was like a dream for me to visit that far part of the world. May be because the Far East in general and the Land of the Rising Sun in particular is so far from Egypt. Or may be because it is like a mystery for me how Japan that country which almost completely destroyed after the World War II has became one of the most advanced countries during a few decades.
　Having just received my scholarship, I decided to come to Japan for the first time leaving my home in Egypt. It was April 2006 when we reached Japan, me and my family. The weather was so nice and it was “Sakura” time, very special time in Japan. These days we started to see snow as the first time in all our life, as the weather in Egypt is completely different from the weather in Japan. This period we stayed here in Japan was very helpful for me and my family as well for enriching not only my academic career but also our personal and cultural experience. We acquired a lot of information about the Japanese daily life, food, also school life as my kids, two boys, joined the elementary and nursery schools in Honjo. It was a surprise for me how my kids can rapidly and easily communicate with their teachers and classmates in Japanese schools.

My research -"Can searching for scientific articles using search engines be improved using intelligent agents Technology?"

　Agent-based information retrieval (IR) systems have gained great attentions due to the proliferation of readily available but overwhelming information on the Web. For searching proper information for web users, it is necessary to construct efficient IR agent systems helping web clients’ requests. In my research, multiagent IR system architecture is presented to facilitate the search process. A Scientific Article Search Agent system is proposed to reformulate the user's query and to efficiently return the required information. Our main target in this research is to answer the question addresses as how do using Intelligent Agents to automatically reformulate users' query affect the way researchers seek out and use information.

Research life at Waseda University

　In Waseda University, I am doing my research under the grandeur guidance of Prof. Mitsuji Matsumoto. Our lab is full of international students; it was a very good chance for me to communicate with other cultures. But on the other side that gave me a chance to just communicate in English. Before I join Waseda University as a visiting researcher, I had heard a lot about Waseda from my Egyptian colleagues study in Japan. As it is highly-ranked university here. Waseda is one of Japan’s most prestigious private, coeducational institutions of higher learning.
　Study in Waseda was very useful for me to enriching my research experience. Also I met many friends in Waseda helped me a lot because my Japanese language is very poor. Attending several scientific meetings organized in Waseda was also helpful for me.

With my labo members when I just arrived in Honjo　　　　　　　　With my laboratory members

Conference papers

・Heba EL-Hadidi, A. M. Riad, and Mitsuji Matsumoto, “A Multi-agent System to Enhance Information Retrieval Results”, IEICE 2007, 10-14 September 2007, BS-10-16 　