| Publish Date: Thursday,13 December, 2007, at 02:36 AM Doha Time |
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| HH Sheikha Mozah at the closing session of QFIRST 2007 PICTURE: Maher Attar |
The three-day event had brought together some 450 leading Arab expatriate scientists, local scientists and decision makers to discuss and refine the national research vision of Qatar.
The final report outlined the development of institutes and addressed biomedical, environmental and information technology research priority areas for Qatar.
In the biomedical group, the focus on mental health (neurosciences) and cancer research (oncology) initiatives were emphasised.
In the field of biomedical research the Arab Expatriate Scientists said they were prepared to offer 40-50 positions for Qatari students and faculty, including summer internships, faculty research places and PhD graduate and masters opportunities, to accelerate Qatar’s own graduate programme.
“For mental health and neurosciences, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or deficit disorders should be included as they have been known to occur in Qatar,” said the chairman of the closing session, Farouk el-Baz, director of the Centre for Remote Sensing, Boston University.
“Similarly, in the oncology area, Qatar can develop new knowledge and technology in cancer research by building capacity, training programmes and by interaction with professionals,” he said.
The outline for the environment research report suggested setting up a Qatar Institute for Environmental Research that integrates environmental sciences in the economy. The potential areas for research were identified as water and buildings.
“Water is going to be of very significant importance to countries and Qatar can increase and sustain its potable water capacity, while skyscrapers and high-rise buildings can be designed for environmental viability,” said el-Baz.
The computing and information systems scientists stressed the need for research in Arabic language technologies and the application of IT in the preservation of heritage. An institute is to be established to address these and other areas, to be called Al-Khwarizmi Institute. Al-Khuwarizmi is believed to be the father of algebra and algorithms.
The recommendations for converting Internet content into Arabic envisaged an “Arab renaissance”.
“Only 0.2% of the Internet has Arabic content, while it is one of the only five ‘approved’ languages that can be communicated in at UN,” said the recommendation.
“We’d like to see a day when our children read about Ibn Sina, Ibn Khaldoun and Razi and not just Newton and Einstein, when they log on to the Internet,” said el-Baz.
He appreciated Qatar’s donation of $5mn to the Library of Alexandria, which is currently scanning and indexing Arab manuscripts, and hailed steps taken by ictQATAR.
In her closing address, HH Sheikha Mozah reiterated HH the Emir’s vision to advance Qatar by promoting a scientific research system, with a political commitment.
“If we consider allocating funds to scientific research an important issue, shouldn’t we consider the preparation of serious programmes and provision of competent staff as more important,” she asked.
“This is why it’s important to go ahead with building a sustainable partnership with international scientific expertise, together with national conviction and needs,” she said.
Sheikha Mozah also reaffirmed her personal commitment to follow up and promote the recommendations of QFIRST 2007, while pludging to provide an appropriate environment that would drive research and excellence.
“I hope we can all work towards assuming our common responsibilities and any concerns should be reassured by the fact that there is 2.8% of the GDP reserved for the promotion of science and scientific research,” she said.
“But in that regard, we will have to collaborate, co-ordinate and even complement the different educational and scientific research systems and that will, I believe, enable the scientific research system to perform its main duty, which is to rally all budding national researchers in the right environment,” she added.
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