DOHA: Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development hosted the annual Qatar National Research Strategy Forum 2013 last week, in collaboration with The New York Academy of Sciences. During the forum six ‘grand’ challenges were identified as fundamental to advancing the Qatar National Research Strategy (QNRS).
The two-day conference, held at Qatar National Convention Centre, gathered stakeholders from across the QNRS’s key sectors including academia, government and research institutes who collaborated in a series of workshops that narrowed a dozen identified grand challenges down to six. Those chosen included the development and deployment of solar energy and production of high value hydrocarbon products, integrated mobility and road safety, integrated health management systems, desalination and water reuse, cyber security and human capacity.
Evaluating them based on their relevance to Qatar’s development priorities, the criteria included their applicability to natural resource preservation, urbanisation, healthcare and information communication technologies. Working to overcome these challenges will set a clear agenda to further the QNRS and achieve the Qatar National Vision 2030.
Faisal M Alsuwaidi, President of Research and Development at Qatar Foundation revealed next steps for overcoming the six major challenges.
The coming phase of the strategy will be executed across the nation’s institutes, universities, service providers, government, industries and funders and is expected to nurture and enhance innovative research.
“I am proud to announce that six grand challenges have been prioritised today. Through our efforts to refine our agenda for the Qatar National Research Strategy, these six will also capture many of the other challenges we are still facing. But by selecting six, we can focus the approach in our strategy implementation and give ourselves the chance to build capacity across a number of sectors nationwide,” explained Alsuwaidi.
“We will continue to pursue other challenges, but the six identified in this conference are what Qatar needs to take urgent action on and will have the most positive impact on Qatar in the near future. We also need to make sure we have both the capacity and the interest from stakeholders to undertake these challenges.”
The Peninsula
