April 23, 2026

It was a really educational journey. I especially enjoyed the peer review exercise. I had never done that before, and I found it really interesting and interacting to work with others. I worked with Rim and Amira and Mariama and Wissal, who I thank very much. So that's about it. I learned a lot, so thank you. I learned how to be precise When doing research, how to use AI tools such as Claude, which I didn't know about. You talked to me about NotebookLM and many other tools. I used Grammarly, I think, to write parts of my article.

The feedback that you got, what was it like from your colleagues, the peer review?

It was really constructive. They gave me a lot of ideas how Hello everyone, my name is Anita Kim.

I'm a senior medical student and I'm glad to be today among you.

First, I'm a bit nervous.

Over the past 9 weeks, me and my colleague, Anira Hassalla, we worked on a Wikipedia project. Titled Chimeric Antigen Receptors: Receptor-Regulatory T-cell Therapy in Multiple Sclerosis.

Well, actually, at first I didn't know where to start.

Sorry for the uneven noise.

Well, so regarding the, um, I didn't have an idea about research. I first feared to read an article, and but in this project I resolved these things. Well, what I learned is I have to be precise when I'm doing my work. I have to I need, I have to be intentional.

Amazing.

So when you had peer review, I mean, a lot of us are nervous when we get that feedback from others.

It just hurts.

Like, don't you see how much I worked on this?

Why would you have to do this?

How did that go for you?

Actually, when we got the peer review from Our colleague Rita, it was really helpful because at first our article was a bit complicated and she said that we have to make it more clear and to be accessible for all the readers so they can get our point. And we worked on this. And we worked on this and we ended up having a good article.

What did you choose genetics to compare with multiple sclerosis?

Actually, this came from my interest in neurology and I collaborated with my friend Emira Nasrallah. She's really interested in immunology, so we tried to find a topic that combines these 2 fields, immunology and neurology, and we chose the chimeric antigen receptor Treg therapy in multiple sclerosis.

Beautiful, beautiful.

Thank you.

That was awesome.

That was awesome.

I don't, I don't like coming to the stage.

First of all, thank you again.

It was a pleasure working with Reem. Hello everybody, hope you're all doing great today.

So this is Emira Nasrullah.

Let me put the mic here.

All set.

So I'm Emira Nasrullah. I'm a second-year medical student at the English Faculty of Medicine. And oh, where do I start? Well, if you ask, if I'm being honest with you, when I first Joined the Wikipedia program. I didn't think it would shake me this much, really. I thought we were all just going to learn about how to edit in Wikipedia and this and that. But things changed very quickly, and they became very, very deep. It all started when me and Dream at the beginning, we we were about to work separately. While she loves immunology, she loves neurology, and she's so passionate about it. And while on my part, I really was drawn into immunology. So we asked ourselves, why shouldn't we work in the merge, or like in the middle of all of both of us? Why shouldn't we be in the middle of both of our topics? And here is where we discovered the chimeric antigen receptor therapy in multiple sclerosis. I know it's complex.

I know.

And we knew nothing about it. And this is how everything started, guys. At first, we weren't working on the topic, but we were getting drawn in the topic. We were lost in the topic. And let me just put you in the picture. Several days reading articles, thousands of sources, scanning through the sentences and the mechanisms that were very, very difficult, and we didn't get any of them. And oh my God, let me not tell you about the working with the references and the referencing. Truly, it was my nightmare, and I'm not laughing here. It was my nightmare, guys. So yes, but and on top of all of this, you had to make everything into like clear words and write it without the scientific words and without the mechanisms, all of this and that. But it was at this moment when it really hit me, and when I knew that research—it's not only about writing something and publishing it; it's about patience. And it's about humility, and it's about accepting over and over again, accepting that you don't know enough yet, that you don't have enough knowledge yet. And that was very humbling as an experience. And I think this is the most powerful lesson I took throughout all this project. It's how to say, I don't know, I don't know, and how to say it with ease, how to say it confidently and with no shame. I don't know because I just don't know. And I think, and I frankly believe that this is the first step of learning, and this is how all the learning becomes. And throughout all this process, luckily we weren't alone. We were with Dr. B, and I really believe that he gave us far beyond than guiding us academically. He taught us how to think. He taught us how to— he taught us, I don't know how to put it in words, but he taught us first of all, first of all, this is so important to say. He taught us how to commit, how to truly commit to the things we start. He taught us how to give the time, the deserved time to everything. He taught us how to believe in ourselves, and I just really love this. And he taught us one very important thing that I really wanted to talk about. He taught us to be honest with ourselves, to be honest with ourselves, and to be honest towards each other. Each meeting was highlighted with honesty, with transparency. It felt like a family, and these are noble qualities that we really miss nowadays. So huge thanks to you, Dr. B. It was, it was amazing. And as today we are clicking on the publish button together and we're celebrating not only our article, we're celebrating all of our articles, and I'm just so proud of us, and I'm so proud of the diversity of our topics. We are celebrating weeks of growth. We are celebrating Weeks of doubt, weeks of, what are we doing? Are we sure we got this right? Me and Reem, we had this a lot of times. Are we sure we do really understand the topic, or we have the illusion of understanding the topic? So today is not only the end of the Wikipedia project to me, and I hope it's for everybody else, it's the beginning of research collaborations. It's the beginning of research projects, of enthusiasm, of optimism together. To go further, to go further than our own limits, to push ourselves more and more and more. And one day, and I really hope, we will publish on those articles we look up to today. And when that day comes, I really— we will look back at this moment, we will look back at this very lovely memory, and we will smile because this is how it all started. It started here in the Wikipedia project.

Thank you.

I have a question.

Yes, Mr.

You did all of this, so how does one get started with research?

Just get lost.

Just get lost.

Just say yes. I remember I had also a professor in high school. He always told us a very important expression that stuck with me: always seize opportunities. Always say yes to the opportunity. So when I first read about the opportunity, I was like, yes, I'm signing up. I mean, I do have this as a personality trait, is I say yes to everything. I don't think about it. Maybe I do regret it later while I'm involved in it, but I just say yes to the opportunity. And because— and I say yes, and then I adapt my schedule, I adapt my studies and everything to it. So I'm me myself, I'm not an expert or anything, but we're just steps. We're climbing those stairs. And I hope we all get there, and of course we all will because we have that inside of us.

This journey was more than just a wiki program or writing an article or something like this, but it was more related to our personalities because at some point in one of our meetings, if you remember, I was like, are we really doing a project? Or are we in a psychology class? Because I swear, first we entered and we didn't speak. Like, we were all there with our cameras off and we stood waiting for Dr. Bencheqroun. And when he came in, he said, what are you doing? You should, you should do something.

You should get out of your comfort zone.

And after that, in the next session, you can't imagine how it was helpful to do that and to get to know each other. We learned so much about each other. About each other's personalities, about the articles. And I feel like we became each day and each meeting, we have like a family. And for me, it was the most important part from all of this. I mean, beside all the most important parts about like writing and doing the research, going through the references and everything, but having this relation and these connections with each other. was more and way important for me. As for our work, I think we did a really good job. I know that each one of us had multiple other projects, including research, including midterms, and so on. And just finding the time and being each time there, whenever we had a meeting, everyone was there. And I mean everyone. We were there with our cameras on, all of us participating, sharing our point of views, and giving our, our point of views to others and helping each other. As for the peer review, Dr. B mentioned that, did you feel offended by getting such feedback from your colleagues? Obviously not. And actually, when I got my feedback from Abdullah, because we worked together, He pointed to some things and some points that I didn't see, and I couldn't have seen it if he didn't say so. So it was very constructive and was very helpful, and it allowed me to work more on my article and to make— to have it in the best way possible. So I would say thank you for my colleagues that I would love to work with again, inshallah. And thank you once again for Dr. B, not only for the academic part but for the personality part. And believe me, if you are with Dr.

B, the personality will change.

For our topic, we had the topic of endocapillary proliferative glomerulonephritis, and to be honest, it wasn't really difficult in terms of allocating our time because we were studying nephrology simultaneously, so we had the interest of this topic. What I realized through this topic is that Wikipedia is really short on knowledge. I know I thought it was like a know-it-all website. However, in terms of medical knowledge, the knowledge is very scarce, and the intensity that comes with putting terms into your own words, like for histopathology section, and I also realized the difficulty of working with a group in terms of reaching a consensus on different things. Since we have different ideas. And also through Dr. B, we learned how when we commit to something, we really have to follow it through, and we have to be intentional, hold people accountable, and allocate our time wisely in order to accomplish things. I'll pass the mic.

Hello everyone, so I'm Bim, and yesterday I took the time to write down some key points I would like to highlight today. And Professor, I would like to talk about our first assignment, which was— I thought it will be the easiest, uh, meeting or assignment we had, but it was one of the difficult assignments through this journey. So it was finding or deciding on a topic and deciding on an outline. So we had to, uh, surf through different databases and find these subjects we choose was An empty page on Wikipedia, so we had to fill it out. So we choose many, we did the classification, the etiologies, the histopathology, and this only took us or required a lot of, a lot of time for us. And the first draft, Professor, it was very challenging because we had to put difficult information first. Like, we had to choose the articles and then we had to distill this information and make it— to simplify it for a general audience. As well, I don't know medical students that use Wikipedia for their topos, but when we were doing this during our internships, we were not taken seriously. So In my mind, Wikipedia was unreliable, which it's not. It's not because we were using scientific references and articles. For me, the most difficult part was simplifying info, and that I found that it is a pedagogical skill that we have to work on for our next career. As residents and future professors, inshallah.

So my name is Janet Mdali. I'm a 5th-year medical student, and I want to take a moment to thank you, Dr. B, for your patient guidance, and also my colleagues, Reem and Dina. You made the sandbox feel much less lonely, and I want to also say Congratulations to all my peers. As my colleagues say, I'm really proud because it was a journey. It wasn't easy, especially through Ramadan. It was really tough, but we made it. So you can be proud of you as I am proud of you. To be honest, coming to the Wiki Education Program, I viewed at first Wikipedia as a quick reference tool, convenient, but not a doctor should be or should rely on it heavily. And now I view Wikipedia as the most powerful platform, and I'm really glad that I contribute to it, even if it was a small role from my part, but it was meaningful to me, and I'm happy to be here today. And as she said, it's a step forward for future research. Insha'Allah.

What is the moment that you remember the most?

Um, she said it, it was the first class because it hit me. I wasn't thinking, um, you had this kind of mentality, but with you we can look up forward With a lot of other ambitions and goals. And for me, it was truly eye-opening because I wasn't that interested in research. But now, with the Wiki Education Program, it really helped me to develop one of my personality traits, which means being more curious about what I'm learning in my university and diving into it even more.

Even more.

Thank you.

I'm Wissa Al-Aourad. I'm a fifth-year medical student, and this is my colleague Shams Toha. So this was our first experience on Wikipedia—not only in Wikipedia, also on writing an article—and I would like to say that this experience helped me a lot to grow as a person, and I. I feel like I became more, um, more confident, and I became more able to look for information and to be patient through the process of looking for reliable websites and also reliable information. I think I also learned how to step out of my comfort zone and engaging in something Even if it looks a little bit challenging at first, but when you start, it becomes easy. Overall, I feel like this experience was not only about researching and publishing and writing, it was more about developing some essential soft skills that we all need in the future.

So this was my now that you wish you knew then. If you were to talk to your younger self?

I wish— I'm gonna tell myself that I'm more confident than what I thought. So as I said, it was about me as a person, not about the research, because I think I have time to develop my research abilities and I have time to develop this. Soft skills must be we need to learn it from now, from the beginning, not until you are in front of what you should do.

Like beautiful, more than your research.

So this is what I want to say.

Thank you.

So my name is Shamsa Hidawi. I worked alongside Wissan on English media article that is called Radiotherapy in thyroiditis. That is induced by radiotherapy. We first discovered it through rotations and we forgot about it until we heard Dr. B talk about it. But it was not what we initially chose to do because he was insistent on choosing a topic that means something to us. Like, we're very interested by toxicology and forensics and everything, but he was right in something— the topic was too big. Like, if I was If I tell someone to look up something on the internet, I'm not just gonna go and write toxicology. I'm gonna ask a specific question that I need to know. And it just made me think more about it and, you know, surpass this. So we chose that topic. But I think even though, like the other teams, we have different speeches, but I think we retain the same thing. And it's— we all know, like, we're all sure We confirm that it's a journey. It's not just a project and it's gone, but we went through a lot of things. For example, me and Luisa, we got in— it was, it was during the period of Ramadan, and where we studied only with our parents. So in the weekend we go to our family and we really want to cherish that time to spend with our families and stuff. But at that time, after Dhuhr, we have a meeting with us to meet, but it was not a waste. It was not a waste, thankfully. We learned a lot. I could pinpoint the hardest parts that I faced. For example, for me personally, the hardest part during this was to actually get started. As someone who struggles with procrastination and perfectionism, I was like, who am I? Like, who am I to publish an article on Wikipedia? Like, I know that the resources are available, but am I capable of doing this? By the end, like today, I found out that I am capable of doing this. If I'm mentored, it just, just makes you learn a lot of things about yourself.

That's it.

All of the topics, yours was the one out there, but the one that was so granular that it was actually very specific, and people would read it and say, yep, that's exactly— I understood it. Thank you so much. I'm glad somebody took the time. So congratulations. It was absolutely wonderful.

Thank you so much.

So Abdullah could not be here. Abdullah could not be here, and Abdullah was teach those that can't be coming.

I'm a fifth-year medical student, so I picked a topic that was very personal to me. I'm very interested in pursuing nephrology in the future. So I picked the topic of dialysis efficiency. This was difficult in a way that it's hard to take a subject medically and change it to simply present it to an audience that is not in the medical field. So it really had to be simplified down, and it was very difficult. I found that very challenging, but overall it was a very nice experience. Definitely stepped out of my comfort zone. I'm not a public speaker either, so—

Come on, guys!

Yeah, thank you.

But yeah, it was fun. I liked interacting with my peers. The peer review was fun. It opened my eyes to things that I didn't see. Like editing and what I had to change. That's it.

Were you upset when you received the peer review?

Not at all.

It was actually just seeing things from a different perspective. But no, no, it actually really helped me change my mind.

I'm curious, why did you sign up?

I signed up because I felt like it was a very good opportunity for me to, like I said, stepping out of my comfort zone. Writing is not something that was ever something that I was interested in, or research or everything, but seeing the process and seeing that it's a much more group-like work than I thought it would be individually, it was fun. So I don't regret it.

Any questions?

Yeah, amazing. So What I've learned working with you is just as an instructor, just because someone is self-reflective, perhaps not as loud as somebody else, does not mean that they're not hardworking, they're not inspired, they're out there, they want to push. They're some of the first that finish something. So that was a learning for me. I enjoyed working with you because I had to learn to slow my pace.

Yes.

In order to meet yours, but at the same time still make you get out of your comfort zone.

Yeah.

Do please stop by and celebrate what you have achieved, and I couldn't be happier.

I think for me it's mostly the overthinking before starting part. Once you actually put your foot out into the project and actually starting, that's the hardest part. But the overthinking before, and I don't think I can do this, this isn't for me, I don't think that I'm gonna be able to achieve as much as my peers, they're picking topics that are hard and I'm like, my topic is not as good. It's the overthinking before anything. So once I actually got started and I had my draft and I said, you know what, what, let me at least have a base and keep going from then on. It's only step by step. I don't think you should overthink it beforehand. The first step is always the hardest part. I have 2 answers. The first one, the most obvious one, is I had deadlines. So either way, I had to do my work whether I liked it or not. You followed your deadlines. Exactly, really, the deadline had to be completed. But honestly, no, not just the deadlines. You have to push beyond the doubt. You know that you have work, you have to finish your work, you have to get through it. You can't let the fear stop you from getting your work done. It's just, it's something that you get over. You push yourself mentally, physically to sit down and actually open your computer, and you just have to do the work mentally to just get started.

Like I said, that's just that.

All of those feelings, Were normal, and I think it was essential to feel those because it gave us a small charara, if you want to say, to go further and further. So feeling bad at some points is good and is essential, and especially as Mariama said that we had deadlines. So even if you are in a bad situation or you are doubtful, رتبكي أتمسح دموعك ورنو تخرج. That's what we did. And Hamdullah, it worked.

I see I made you cry. Holy moly! Thank you, thank you, and thank you. I appreciate you so much for making the time and space for this.

Thank you.