DOHA: Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) has teamed up with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institute of Health (NIH) to co-sponsor a joint funding programme.
In partnership with CRDF Global, the 2014 US-Qatar-MENA Collaborative Research Grant Competition will support teams of leading scientists from Qatar, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the United States. Their research projects will focus on one or more endemic and emerging viral infectious diseases affecting the MENA region including MERS, hepatitis C and E, influenza and HIV/AIDS among others.
Commenting on the importance of the joint-funding programme, QNRF’s Executive Director, Dr Abdul Sattar Al Taie said, “Our goal with this new joint-funding programme is to foster new biomedical research collaborations between leading researchers from Qatar, other MENA countries, and the United States.
“We want to bring the best minds of the world together to solve critical issues of direct relevance to the MENA region which will also add to global knowledge about endemic and emerging viral infectious diseases.”
The announcement of the collaboration was made at a recent QNRF-sponsored workshop entitled ‘The Endemic and Emerging Viral Diseases of Priority in the Middle East and North Africa,’ held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Doha.
International medical and public health experts and researchers from renowned global and regional institutions gathered for the four-day workshop, and are among those eligible for funding under the new programme. They include scientists from The Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University in the United States, Toulouse University in France, and representatives from some of the MENA region’s leading institutions including Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar.
The Peninsula
