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In his final year at CentraleSupélec, Abdellah Lamane and his parents can be proud. The child prodigy has been accepted for an ultra-selective doctorate in medical engineering, Health Sciences and Technologies, jointly offered by Harvard and MIT. In recent months, this career path has received a great deal of media coverage in France.
Indeed, the young man from Chanteloup-les-Vignes is one of the few French students to have entered this prestigious program. He is also the first Moroccan to be awarded such a doctorate. «It's a new exercise for me to be in the media on this occasion. But I'm aware of the duty we have to represent people who have followed the same life paths as we have, as a Frenchman who grew up in a very modest environment, but also as a Moroccan citizen. It's a duty that I take to heart and that I fulfill on a daily basis with great pleasure», declares Abdallah Lamane.
Born in the Paris region to a maintenance worker father who arrived in France in the 1980s, Abdallah Lamane's background is not typical of students destined for such academic success. Despite the under-representation of children from modest backgrounds in top-ranking courses of study, he is a living, inspiring example that such success is indeed possible, thanks to the support and benevolence of the family cocoon that kept a close eye on his schooling. Today, he is also involved in student associations and networking, to help guide his peers who may find their vocation in engineering.
A taste for hard work
From an early age, Abdallah Lamane distinguished himself as a brilliant student, in mathematics as in other subjects. Through his parents' upbringing, he precociously integrated a taste for effort and personal investment as the keystones of success. «Academic success was the mainstay of my entire upbringing. My parents taught me to make a strength of what was an inequality or a negative bias for me. They always made school an integral part of my upbringing, and I'm very indebted to them today», he says.
In Chanteloup-les-Vignes, other similar life stories inspired him. «Today, I have the chance to bear witness to motivate the younger generation and promote the values of hard work and success», he told Yabiladi. After high school, Abdallah opted for engineering-oriented studies, with preparatory classes for the top engineering schools. He was admitted to the Lycée Janson de Sailly in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, one of the most selective. It was a gratifying first step for both the young student and his parents.
«It was a great step in my career path because it was compensation of all the hard work of my high school years. I think it was also an upheaval that led, thanks to my efforts, to my admission to Supélec after the foundation preparatory courses».
In his final year at Supélec, Abdallah won a research grant and took off for the United States. His first six-month internship was at Stanford, followed by another of the same duration at Harvard, two equally prestigious institutions. It was then that he decided to pursue doctoral studies at an institution of excellence with an admissions rate of just 4%.
«My academic project was built up as I went along. As I was lucky enough to spend six months at Stanford University, I was able to get a good understanding of what research is all about, working in world-leading laboratories. I was also able to visualize the options available to me, once I had completed my studies at Supélec».
Advancing research to anticipate cancer detection
This is where Abdallah Lamane learns about thesis programs, including one of the oldest in biomedical engineering, and one of the most selective and well-known: Health, Science and Technology, a joint program offered by Harvard and MIT. «We're selective at an international level since knowledge has no borders or restrictions. What interests the program's supervisors is what the candidates have in terms of skills and talent», he said, congratulating himself on being part of the very privileged circle of those admitted to this academic universe. «I'm looking forward to flying the national flag», he enthuses.
The aim of this doctoral program is to use artificial intelligence and AI learning processes to analyze medical imaging and scans to detect cancerous tumors. Applications already exist for mammography and breast cancer screening. For Abdallah Lamane, the idea is to deepen knowledge in this technology, so as to make tumor detection earlier, as the manual model is time-consuming and has more margin for error.
«One of the aims of my thesis will be to focus on certain types of cancer to develop models that will help radiologists avoid missing tumors, speed up detection and give them more time to spend with the patient», explains the PhD student. One of Abdallah Lamane's other goals is to set up his own company, again in the field of oncology and artificial intelligence.
His vision is to move towards an algorithm developed during his research or based on work done during his PhD. Thinking big for his future, he remains confident about the Boston environment, which he considers to be «at the cutting edge of world technology» and a «fertile ground for building this project».
