Qatar's science and innovation challenge
Published 3 June 2014
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0.1 Detail
Qatar leads Gulf partners in terms of S&I ambition…
With plans to raise its research spend to 2.8% of its national budget (US$1.7 billion approx.), Qatar is investing heavily to build a skills base for a future knowledge economy, but research and innovation efforts are severely hampered by a small population, and a lack of local capacity and administrative support. To overcome these weaknesses Qatar has focused on delivering larger step-change projects through international institutional partnerships and through the strategic use of a well funded international research fund. The current research model based on imported expat researchers supporting and developing indigenous capacity is likely to remain for the long term.
On the domestic front…
Domestic research is led principally by institutions of the Qatar Foundation (QF) and Qatar University. QF is developing Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU) which hosts branch campuses of eight leading international institutions including UCL (archaeology and museum studies), Texas A&M (engineering), Carnegie Mellon (ICT), and Weill Cornell (medical). There are no plans to add further campuses. HBKU is expanding postgraduate qualifications and research through international recruitment and is seeking the support of international partners. QF operates computing, energy and environment, biomedical and medical research institutes and has an innovation park supporting industry/university partnerships. The older segregated Qatar University (QU) competes with QF and is also looking to expand its postgraduate and research offer through external partnerships. QU has research centres for environment, gas processing, road safety and advanced materials.
And internationally….
Qatar already has a well structured international research collaboration programme. The Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) announced the results of their 7th National Priorities Research Programme (NPRP) on 14 May. The structure of this peer reviewed programme is seen as a model of best practice for the region. The programme allows research grants up to maximum US$900K over three years with up to 35% available for research outside Qatar. This year US$130 million was disbursed on 162 grants focusing on Qatar’s research priorities: energy & environment, ICT, health, social science & humanities, and were aligned with Qatar’s “grand challenges” for this year: energy security, water security and cyber security. While the overall success rate for applications was 20%, collaborations with UK partners have traditionally run at 40%. Grants awarded to UK/Qatari collaborations (involving 42 UK institutions) have risen from 21 in 2012 to 29 pending in 2013, a 38% increase. Nationally the UK ranks second behind the US which has the benefit of six research-active branch campuses in Qatar.
The UK is already engaged……
In addition to the NPRP, UK/Qatar collaborations run two exceptional NPRP grants worth up to US$5 Million over 5 years in weight management and astronomy and larger research projects including: the Shell/QP/Imperial College Carbonates and Carbon Storage Centre, The Imperial College / Hamad Medical Corporation Biobank, the Imperial College / QF Qatar Robotics Surgery
Centre, The Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation / QF Qatar Cardiovascular Research Centre and the Qatar Museums Authority / British Library Digitalisation of Gulf Records Project. UK institutions are well placed . Qatar is interested in UK research excellence brands.
But there are challenges…..
Although expenditure on their flagship NPRP programme has been maintained, under a new Emir QF budgets have been tightened and there is a growing wariness of new bilateral commitments.
Next steps
There is still work to be done at an institutional and grassroots level on joint research networking. QF is keen to focus on capacity building: summer schools, postdoc exchanges, early career researcher exchanges, joint student research projects, researcher skills training, research/industry engagement. The UK and QF have agreed to work towards tackling the gaps and weaknesses in existing collaboration. To allow this to happen the UK has proposed a £300K “fund of funds” (£100K from the BC’s Researcher Links Programme; £30K from BIS’s Global Partnership Fund; £70K from industry, and £100K from QF’s Conferences and Workshops Support Programme) to support bilateral research networking on joint research priorities. The UK consortium will also step up efforts to engage partners outside the QF family (Supreme Education Council, Qatar University and Hamad Medical Corporation).
Comment
This is an important area of a wider prosperity relationship which can be overlooked because of the longer term nature of its benefits. Qatar is quite rightly proud of what it has achieved and wants to be seen as an emerging research force. It seeks long term partnerships and commitment, but on its own terms and to its own timetables. This requires UK institutions to approach research collaboration with flexibility. We will continue to support strategic UK institutional engagement that builds upon grassroots research success.
0.2 Disclaimer
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