Congratulations to our July Advisor of the Month, Mohammed Mousa. Mohammed is a final year medical student at Suez Canal University (Ismailia, Egypt). After his graduation from medical school, he’ll obtain the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) degree.

During his degree, he has contributed to published research on brain injury admittance and astigmatism treatments at Suez Canal University Hospital.

Mohammed took some time from his final year studies and hospital rounds to tells us how he moved from manual reference management to Mendeley, and why he enjoys working in research.

How did you get into your field and what is your research story?
Every year in our medical school we are subdivided into small groups, each group has to conduct a research project. I was a team leader for 3 successive years and, fortunately, all projects my team conducted were chosen as one of the best research projects in our school. We presented our work in 4 national conferences, participation in these conferences have helped me a lot in building a good network of colleagues from different places with different experiences who have the same interest in research. I think this helped me a lot in boosting my research skills. We also presented one of our research projects in The MacroTrend Conference on Health and Medicine: Paris 2013.

Where do you do your research/work the best? What kind of environment suits you? 
I like to work with friendly, enthusiastic, collaborative and creative colleagues. I think working in such environment will help us to have a good final outcome.

How long have you been on Mendeley and what were you using prior to Mendeley?
Prior to Mendeley, I was writing references manually. It was a very challenging and tough job. I tried to use Endnote for a while but 1 year ago, I started using Mendeley.

How does Mendeley influence your research?
Now I’m very dependent on Mendeley. It’s easy to use software and saved a lot of my time. Also, it gives me a flexibility in my work.

Why did you decide to become an Advisor and how are you involved with the program?
When I started using Mendeley, I found that I have saved a lot of time and effort. I wanted to share this experience with all my colleagues who are interested and work in the field of research to help them in their own work.

What academic/researcher/librarian would you like to work with or meet, dead or alive?
I’d like to meet Professor Mario Capecchi. He is a great researcher.

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
At this moment, I’m reading a book titled Principles and Practice of Clinical Research because I want to boost my research skills and knowledge.

What is the best part about working in research?
I think the one the best parts of medical research is finding answers to your own or others’ questions. Also, you can add to the existing knowledge or even discover a new thing that wasn’t known before and I hope I can work in something like in the future.

And the worst/most challenging part about working in research?
Lack of resources is the main obstacle in research. You may have a very good research idea, but you can’t conduct this research idea due to lack of resources and lack of support. Another challenging part in research practice is patience. I think research is teaching us patience.

What is the one thing you want people to know about Mendeley?
If you are working in the field of research, Mendeley should be one of your close friends. It can save your time and improve the efficiency of your work.