Qatar University (QU) announced Sunday the spinoff of its third faculty-led startup named, SpaceVision Digital Solutions, founded by Dr Khalid Naji, dean of the College of Engineering.
The founder and his team, have developed a novel, sophisticated, deep-knowledge digital twinning, imaging and AI solution combined with drone technologies, a statement said.
QU president, Dr Hassan al-Derham, said: “The contribution of economic development to Qatar is an essential element of our mission as a national university, side by side with education and research. These efforts have been materialised by initiating QU Holding Company, the Office of Strategic Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development (SIEED), and all associated support initiatives, enabling QU to produce a significant number of deep technology startups from its faculty and scientists within a short span of time.”
Dr Omar al-Ansari, vice-president for Academic Affairs at QU, noted: “Over the past years, the academic sector has been embracing innovation and entrepreneurship as one of the top strategic priorities in the QU Teaching and Learning strategy. We are glad to observe the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit emerging at an accelerated pace among QU students and faculty.”
Dr Naji, stated: “I am very proud to present SpaceVision as our new startup from the College of Engineering at QU. SpaceVision was formed to close a gap in many sectors related to industrial applications of Unmanned Air Vehicles in Qatar. SpaceVision’s focus is on the downstream data analytics and AI applications of such technology; therefore, we are processing our data locally for ultimate privacy and security and creating our own data analytics workflows, tools and techniques.”
Dr Mahmoud Abdulwahed, secretary of QU Holding Company Board of Directors, and director of the QU SIEED Office, said: "SpaceVision Digital Solutions, registered with QFC, is the third faculty-led spin-off and is among several others in the pipeline to emerge on a regular basis as a result of the QU Economic Development’s new strategic directions. We are very thankful for our national ecosystem partners QRDI, QDB and QFC, among several others, for their contributions and support of QU innovation and entrepreneurial endeavour.”
Dr Lotfi Belkhir, associate director, Entrepreneurial Transformation at SIEED Office, said: “We have adopted a comprehensive training approach, contextually designed, and refined for QU and Qatar, to the development of startups competencies among our faculty members, researchers, and students. The approach is based on what we call the Universal Innovation Framework, which is a staged systemic method for nurturing promising ideas into startups, a remarkably different approach than most incubators and accelerators."