Student Abdullah Bukhamsin was able to win second place in the scientific research track in the National Olympiad for Scientific Creativity out of 518 male and female students who participated from different regions of the Kingdom. This victory was the result of specialized and accumulated knowledge that began in the third grade of primary school. 

Strange experience

Student Abdullah says that in the third grade of primary school, he took a test from the national project to identify gifted students, and it was a strange experience for him, as it consisted of unstructured questions. Despite that, he was able to pass the test and be nominated for one of the local talent programs. During the program, he learned many life skills, such as: decision-making skills, long-term planning, and communication and expression skills, which greatly changed his personality and made him more thirsty for knowledge and more inquisitive and curious.

A different experience!

This experience was repeated again with Abdullah when he reached the second year of secondary school, where he took the primary programs test, which consisted of specialized methodological questions in physics and mathematics, and a test in English and Arabic.

Of course, the student Abdullah Bukhamsin was able to pass the test and then join the international talent program at the Saudi Research and Science Institute, in the laboratories of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

  SRSI Program

In this program, Abdullah gained specialized knowledge and learned methods of scientific health research. At the end of the program, he was able to implement a specialized research project. Abdullah says: “The experience added a lot to me, and I learned from it that the basis of knowledge is research!”

I learned a lot, but the most important thing I learned is that research is the basis of knowledge.

The crowning moment!

Abdullah Bukhamsin says: “Every effort made has a positive outcome, either winning or gaining knowledge from the experience. Thank God, my efforts were crowned with both. I obtained second place in the scientific research track out of 518 male and female students who participated from different regions of the Kingdom.”

 Every effort has a positive outcome, either victory or knowledge gained from experience.

Abdullah Bukhamsin Project:

"A novel construction method for generating proteins for genetic modification of agricultural crops"

Abdullah says about his project: “I thought of a way to produce plants that can withstand harsh climatic conditions, so I started working on implementing my idea in desert agriculture laboratories to develop effects that can control plant growth by slowing down growth in environmental conditions and accelerating it whenever conditions allow for that, so that plants can adapt and grow in the desert.”

He pointed out that the process of producing these effects was long and tiring, because it mainly depends on a "library" containing single pieces of several amino acids specific to determining the location of the effects' integration, which forces the researcher to use restriction enzymes in two separate stages, so the idea of ​​the project came from this starting point, which requires the necessary time and effort.

Abdullah added that he took several steps to verify the validity of his idea, until he finally arrived, after many researches and methods, at introducing several influential factors into a specific bacterial strain that can introduce its genes into any plant cell. He pointed out that when he injected tobacco plant leaves with a more concentrated solution of these bacteria, the color of the leaves changed to blue, which proved the success of the binary “library” that he designed.

The experiment was not successful from the beginning:

Abdullah says, “I have never thought, worked and succeeded so easily. The result was preceded by many steps and failed attempts, but all those attempts were a challenge to him that motivated him to make more effort and work.” Abdullah Bukhamsin praised the “Mawhiba” Foundation, which paved the way for him to prove his idea and implement it on the ground.