First-year student wins Habbas Scholarship

Omar Mohamedaly, a first-year medical student, has won the $1,000 Amin and Nancy Habbas Scholarship, established to help high-achieving students of Arab origin enrolled at the UC Davis School of Medicine.

Criteria for the Habbas Scholarship include leadership potential, community and extracurricular involvement, financial need, and academic achievement.

Mohamedaly was born in South Carolina to Egyptian parents. When he was 4, his family moved to Cairo, Egypt. He lived there through the completion of his high school education, then returned to the United States to attend UC Berkeley, where he was on the Dean’s Honor List during all four of his undergraduate years. He also worked as a research assistant at UC Berkeley.

At the UC Davis School of Medicine, Mohamedaly is a Community Service Representative and a Graduate Student Assembly Representative for the Class of 2009. He is interested in conducting research as a medical student, possibly in the fields of genetics or neurology. Fluent in German, French and Arabic, Mohamedaly works as a volunteer at community clinics operated by UC Davis medical students and faculty in under-served areas of Sacramento.

The Amin and Nancy Habbas Scholarship, established in 1991, is intended to "help support high achieving, financially needy American students of Arab origin" that are enrolled in the School of Medicine.