An 18-year-old high school Egyptian student was shortlisted as one of six regional competitors to join the final stage of the YouTube Science Lab competition, which challenged students to come up with science experiments that would benefit from being performed in a low-gravity setting.

Amr Mohamed, who is studying for his IGCSE certificate in Alexandria, Egypt, submitted a proposal to study how the zebra jumping spider, which jumps to capture their prey rather than trap them in spiderwebs, would hunt in a zero-gravity setting – where jumping is not really an option.

Mohamed wants to study how the spiders would evolve and adapt to this new setting in order to continue hunting effectively and not perish in space.

Mohamed is the only one shortlisted to the  final six in his age group (16-18) from the Europe/Middle-East/Africa region. The final stage will take place on 22 March and will see two winners, one from each age group, whose experiments will be performed 400 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, aboard the International Space Station. These experiments will then be live-streamed on YouTube and people anywhere will be able to watch them live.

The YouTube Science Lab competition is held in cooperation with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

According to The Daily News Egypt, Mohamed would like to pursue a science research career and has already submitted applications to MIT, Stanford and Columbia in the United States because “there are no real scientific research programs in Egypt,” he explained.