LAU Computer Science Capstone Project Wins First Prize in Beirut’s Startup Weekend-2013
The Capstone project, “Shakkel”, of our Computer Science students, Amer El Homaissi and Mowafak Al Laham, supervised by Dr. Ramzi Haraty, was ranked FIRST at the Startup Weekend-Beirut, with a financial award and free incubator-hosting time. Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of entrepreneurs concerned with founding startups and launching successful ventures.
A total of 17 projects were submitted to Startup Weekend, on Nov. 22-24. Amer and Mowafak submitted their work “Shakkel”, which is a software system that categorizes Arabic words to figure out the function of each word in a sentence in order to diactritize it correctly. Shakkel is a system that categorizes Arabic words to figure out the function of each word in a sentence in order to diactritize it correctly. In other words, Shakkel understands the function of each word in a sentence and adds the correct vowel (7araka) to it. The project is intended to help people, schools of Arabic language and students to better learn the Arabic language using computers. It also targets news agencies to make their news more readable, especially for beginners of the Arabic language. Writers and publishing houses can also benefit from this system from a grammatical perspective to accelerate the release of books.
Congratulations to our students, Amer and Mouwafak, and Dr. Haraty for this remarkable achievement, which reminds us of LAU’s pioneering role in Computer Science education in the country.