This is a high point. During the siege of Baghdad in 1258, the Mongols destroyed the institute and threw all the texts into the Tigris River. Scientific exploration in the Middle East waned and never returned to the heights of the Islamic Golden Age, as that era was known. Of all the Nobel Prizes awarded for science since 1901, only two have gone to recipients in this field.
Gulf rulers want to do better than that. Concerned by the growing need to diversify their economies away from fossil fuels, the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are turning to scientific research.
The UAE launched a policy for science, technology and innovation in February and, seven months later, opened the research-based National University of Dubai. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in Saudi Arabia has launched a new strategy for the kingdom’s science center King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) to focus on research in line with his “vision”, along the lines of Western universities. It is built on. 2030″ economic blueprint. The state has also signed a cooperation agreement with Britain. Qatar’s third national strategy, which covers six years to 2030, includes targets for patents, publications and R&D spending on scientific base and private Area.
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Currently, the UAE spends only 1.5% of its GDP on research and development, Qatar only 0.7% and Saudi Arabia 0.5% (see chart 1). That’s lower than the 2.7% average among OECD countries, but that’s partly because the region is not taking a “kitchen-sink” approach and spreading its funding across every imaginable project, said Sarah Al, chairwoman of the emirate. Amiri says. The Science Council and the UAE Minister of State for Public Education, nevertheless, the Research Development and Innovation Authority in Saudi Arabia, established in 2021, expects to invest 2.5% of the kingdom’s GDP in the sector in research, development and innovation. Innovation by 2040. Qatari officials plan to double their country’s current spending levels by the end of the decade, with about three-fifths coming from R&D, which is no longer just a “nice-to-have,” Hilal Lashuel says Sheikha Moza, a professor of neuroscience and adviser to the president of the Qatar Foundation, an organization that oversees that country’s universities and scientific research.
The Gulf’s new approach to building its science and technology skills has three distinctive features: a focus on domestic problems; Preference for applied research; and careful selection of international partnerships. Researchers in the field focus on practical topics such as food security, energy efficiency and health. For example, scientists at KAUST are using the fibrous structure of oyster mushrooms to create a membrane that can simultaneously absorb oil and repel water, useful in preventing oil spills. Researchers at Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates are focusing on graphene membranes to improve water desalination. At New York University in Abu Dhabi, scientists have developed nanoparticles that could improve the treatment of an aggressive form of breast cancer, the most frequently diagnosed cancer in the Gulf.
It is hoped that this research will boost the countries’ economy. “The first priority is to make an impact in the country,” says Dr Leshuel. He gives the example of rare diseases, where the Gulf has so far focused only on identifying the genes that contribute to causing them. . They have then been studied further by researchers elsewhere, but now, he says, Gulf scientists will look for ways to use those discoveries to develop drugs or companies in the region.
Commercial successes are not unheard of: Khalifa University’s Graphene Research Center has signed a deal with a Swiss manufacturer of pipes to work on high-performance pipelines for oil and gas. But there is still scope for much more. For example, in Saudi Arabia, alliances between universities and companies – including companies like oil giant Aramco and chemicals champion SABIC – account for only 2% of scholarly output, compared to the country’s average of 6%. In OECD.
However, knowing that there is still a gap between academia and businesses, governments are moving forward with initiatives such as the Qatar Research, Development and Innovation Council. “You need to teach the private sector the R&D mindset, and there is a lack of it,” says Abeer Al Hammadi, director of the Innovation Center at Qatar’s Hamad bin Khalifa University. In the UAE, the government helps companies assess how Making better use of technology where they can. To accelerate progress, a financing agreement of 5 billion dirhams ($1.4 billion) has been established with the Emirates Development Bank at Khalifa University, which leads the research and innovation center on graphene and 2D materials, which it says will advance the field. While US companies have long imported technology through licenses and franchises, building it from the ground up is a “huge change”.
Emirati, Qatari and Saudi officials also want to improve foreign cooperation. This means it is no longer seen as a pool of money readily available to Western universities. “We want equal participation and benefits,” says Ms Al Hammadi.
Here’s what Gulf officials have learned from past mistakes. Two decades ago, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates brought in Carnegie Mellon and New York University to set up campuses in Doha and Abu Dhabi. In 2015 the UAE announced a science and technology policy that included 100 national initiatives and had a budget of more than $82 billion. At one time, the UAE was home to one-fifth of all international university branches. Saudi Arabia partnered with more than two dozen universities, including one between Imperial College London and KAUST. Between 2008 and 2014, Saudi Arabia allocated more than $6 billion for its science policy.
Despite the investment, the Gulf’s economies did not change. For example, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology was established in 2007 with the hope that it would become a global leader in research on renewable energy and alternative energy with the help of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; A decade later its academic arm was removed and the remainder merged into the Petroleum Institute and became part of the newly formed Khalifa University of Science and Technology.
Such cooperation is more risky in modern times, complicated, in any case, by geopolitical wrangling. In February Texas A&M University suddenly announced it was closing its campus in Doha, which has been profitable and has been running for more than two decades. Students and researchers are now in a dilemma. One academic says the closure casts a “huge shadow” over such foreign partnerships, especially with the US.
Domestic universities are therefore now high on the agenda in the Gulf. A large proportion of the academics at these universities still come from abroad, so, to avoid risks to their economic-transformation efforts, leaders in the region increasingly seek to draw back more Arab scientists from top global universities.
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They are also diversifying their research partners. UAE universities are seeking collaboration with European centers such as CERN in Geneva, the world’s largest particle-physics laboratory. As measured by co-authored research, Saudi Arabia’s top ally in 2024 was China, ahead of the US; KAUST’s largest partner was the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Emirati officials say China has been a keen partner, particularly because of its desire to globalize its education system. An Emirati university professor says the Chinese are willing to bring more resources and talent to the table than Americans and that cooperation does not come with “invoices or bills attached.”
The Gulf’s approach to research may not necessarily lead to praise for fundamental scientific breakthroughs, even though the number of patents and research citations coming from the region is increasing (see charts 2 and 3). But the technological approach could solve its problems, says Khalid Machaka, a lead physiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Qatar Center. And a more dynamic approach to scientific discovery may be the Gulf’s greatest contribution to global science.
