The University of Balamand (UOB), in collaboration with the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), is proud to announce that it has been awarded the First Prize Winner Certificate for Best Oral Presentation in Applied Sciences and Technology at the Doctoral Studies Days – Middle East Edition, held at USEK on May 21-23, 2025.

The event was organized by the College of Doctoral Studies, and held under the patronage of H.E. Prof. Tamara El Zein, Minister of Environment, with the contribution of H.E. Dr. Nizar Hani, Minister of Agriculture,

The winning presentation, entitled “Enhancing Cardiovascular Disease Prediction with an Interpretable Machine Learning Framework” showcased the development of an innovative, explainable AI-based approach for early and reliable heart disease detection.

The research was presented by Ph.D. student Mr. Saeed Al Gharib (UOB graduate), and conducted under the supervision of Dr. Samir Haddad, Dr. Jinan Charafeddine, and Prof. Fadi Dornaika.

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