São Paulo – Qatar dreams of seeing the Arab world once again at the cutting edge of scientific development, as it has been in the past, through initiatives such as international exchange. Last Thursday (9th), representatives of the country attended a roundtable with Brazil, Norway and Singapore at the Royal Society, in London, United Kingdom, to exchange experiences in the fields of science, technology and innovation in each of these nations. The information was supplied by the Qatar Foundation, which spearheads this movement in the Arab country.
The roundtable addressed the preliminary results of the case study on Qatar under the project “Atlas of Science and Innovation in the Islamic World,” a study that portrays the achievements in scientific progress across the member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The Qatar Foundation is the main sponsor of the Atlas project, which is also developing case studies on Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan.
The Qatari delegation at the event was headed by the chairperson of the Qatar Foundation, Mozah Bint Nasser, the wife of the country’s emir, Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani. Her presentation counted on the participation of young researchers and students in the Arab country, the United Kingdom and France.
Lucia Carvalho Pinto de Melo, the president of the Centre for Management and Strategic Studies (CGEE, in the Portuguese acronym), an institution linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology, was responsible for the Brazilian delegation; Arvid Hallen, the director general of the Research Council of Norway, and Low Teck Seng, the managing director of the Agency for Science Technology and Research of Singapore, headed the delegations of their countries.
“In Qatar, we mean to ensure our future by becoming a knowledge-based economy, a cradle of innovation, based in the Middle East, but global in scope and impact,” said Fathy Saoud, the president of the Qatar Foundation. “By joining strengths with the Royal Society, we are glad to bring some of the world’s foremost thinkers in the fields of science, technology and innovation,” he finished off, according to a statement issued by the organization.
Exhibition
The Royal Society is also promoting the exhibition “Arabic Roots,” backed by the Qatar Foundation, which explains the work of Arab scientists harking back to the Middle Age. It shows how their work shaped the scientific concepts of the Royal Society itself and of the broader European scientific community. The exhibition will travel to Doha, the capital of the Arab country, in December.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
