uMentor Talk Show

Mastora is a secondary urban chemistry educator. She graduated from Rutgers Newark with a Bachelor's of Art Degree in Chemistry and concentration in urban education. Her experiences as a college student include studying abroad in Italy for a summer semester, co-founding Ahlul Bayt Student Association (RU-N) and gaining teaching experience by working as a TA for organic chemistry lab and world of chemistry lab.

Currently, she works at a vocational high school that specializes in STEM education. She is a first year high school teacher who hopes to make an impact on her students and looks forward to continue growing as an innovative educator.

Zuhair is a New York City-based architectural designer specializing in the science and technology sector. He started reciting at the age for 13 after being inspired and mentored by renowned Egyptian reciters. Zuhair often recites for delegations from the International community during the UN assembly as well as conferences and events throughout the world. In 2013 and 2018 he participated in the International Quran competitions in Tehran, Iran and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, respectively. He has also recited in the mausoleums of Imam Hussain (AS) and Imam as-Redha (AS) in the cities of Karbala and Mashhad.

In addition to Qur’an recitation, Zuhair takes part in Arabic calligraphy and graphic design. He completed his architecture thesis on the rebuilding of Jannatul Baqi. It is the first proposal of its kind which envisions a mausoleum design for the cemetery blending traditional Islamic architecture into a contemporary manner.

Zahraa is a budding health policy leader and community builder who currently works as a Policy Analyst at the Ontario Ministry of Health.

Over the past few years, Zahraa has researched, written, and developed policy recommendations and reports for Senior Federal and Provincial Government Officials, United Nations Officials, consulting agencies, research institutes, and leading national non-profits on the most pressing health issues of our time.

Zahraa has recently graduated from her Masters of Public Health at the University of Toronto, where she specialized in health promotion and public health policy.

Maheen is a wife, mom and first year medical student in Southern New Jersey. Prior to medical school she worked in the pharmaceutical industry designing and developing monoclonal antibody therapeutics. She then developed CAR-T cell therapies for blood borne cancers. Maheen has a Bachelor's degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master's degree in Biochemistry from Georgetown University. She was inspired to go to medical school after her mom passed away. However, her journey has been a winding one. Being a mother herself has changed her perspective on higher education and healthcare, and medicine in particular. Maheen strongly believes in encouraging women to pursue higher education and realizes the need for women to support each other in doing so. Maheen hopes to merge her personal experience and previous professional experience with her medical education and training to be an advocate for her patients.

M. Amin Karami is an Associate Professor at Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He is the director of Intelligent Dynamic Energy and Sensing Systems (IDEAS) lab. His area of expertise is energy harvesting and specially powering medical devices using body movements, nonlinear renewable wind and wave energy generators as well as smart material and meta-material systems. Dr. Karami has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Department of Aerospace Engineering at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his PhD in summer 2011 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Engineering Mechanics. He worked in the Center for Intelligent Material Systems and Structures (CIMSS). Dr. Karami has about 30 Journal publications and book chapters which have been cited over 1300 times. He has been invited to present his research at medical and engineering conferences including conferences in Hong Kong and China.

His research has been supported by grants from NSF, NIH, and industrial grants related to his patents.

Chef Sammy is a chef and baker whose passion is to make our world a little closer through our universal love of good food.

She is a gemologist by profession and has three beautiful girls. Her love for creating international food and having a better understanding of each other and our cultures encouraged her to give up her profession and pursue food blogging full time.

Living in a war zone during his childhood until he left Iraq, Ali Kadhum was saddened by the lack of smiles on peoples’ faces. Since he arrived in the United States, Ali has worked hard to create hope and a future for refugees and immigrants, who have lost a lot in life. He empowers individuals through counseling and organizing different activities to celebrate their diversity in their new home.

Ali received his Masters in Social Work from the University at Buffalo. He serves as the president of the Buffalo Immigrants and Refugee Empowerment Coalition, and organizes its annual World Refugee Day events. He is also a Supervisory Care Manager for BestSelf Behavioral Health, which provides mental health counseling services to the local community. He lives in Buffalo, New York with his family.

Hussain is a graduate physician assistant from Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York. Having been raised in Minnesota, he has developed a passion for nature and the outdoors, as well as medicine. He currently resides in Orlando, Florida where he works as a provider at Paramount Urgent Care. In his free time, Hussain enjoys organizing camping trips, biking, fishing, mountaineering and traveling.

Nazneen leads the Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) team at Salesforce Research, where her work focuses on making human interactions with AI systems more trustworthy. This is accomplished by making AI systems, such as deep learning models, transparent and interpretable. She completed her Ph.D. from University of Texas – Austin in Computer Science and has published papers at top conferences in Machine Learning and Natural Language processing.

She has given several invited talks about her work, including at he UNESCO session on fairness in AI and the Toronto Machine Learning Summit.

Dr. Adnaan Sheriff is a family medicine physician who currently practices in Buffalo, NY.  He graduated from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2014 and completed his residency training in Family Medicine at Sisters of Charity Hospital in Buffalo, NY in 2017 where he served as chief resident.  He currently is part of a private practice of 7 primary care providers and is passionate about incorporating technology into the practice in order to improve patient experience and impact health outcomes. 

Earlier this year he was recognized by the Buffalo News as being one of the "Emerging Leaders in Healthcare" in Western New York.