Objective
These activities will help to connect researchers in Qatar to their colleagues in Qatar and abroad, as well as attract and inform scientists from abroad about research and opportunities in Qatar. They will further serve to expose undergraduates to the importance of social networks in the sciences, in technology development, and in the arts and humanities.
Description
The purpose of these grants is to improve the interaction of international research and researchers with Qatar. Several activities are subsumed in this category:
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Workshops for domestic and international researchers that would focus on specialized areas of scientific, technical, or other interest and generally involve less than 50 participants over a period of two to four days.
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Scientific, technical, and other conferences for domestic and international researchers generally involving over a hundred participants and generally occurring over a five-day period
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International “Short Courses” where outstanding domestic and international researchers would lecture on state-of-the-art developments in a specific area of scientific, technical, or other progress. Students would include professional researchers, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students. Such courses could provide professional development, be an initial step towards graduate programs, and serve to bring the academic, and public/private sectors into contact with one another. In general, a specialized session would last about 10 days.
For all three activities, QNRF sponsorship may leverage additional funding from abroad and from within Qatar (e.g., from offices responsible for tourism). A significant portion of the expenses associated with these events will be dedicated to providing stipends and travel expenses to internationally renowned scholars whose participation is essential. Cooperation with non-Qatar scientific funding organizations (e.g., NSF in the U.S. or NATO) could provide additional funding to cover travel expenses and conference/tuition fees of non-Qatar participants.
The level of effort associated with these activities can be adjusted from one year to the next, based on evidence that such events have the desired effect. Such funding also can accommodate resource variations easily since one year’s activities do not translate into another year’s commitments.
The long-run goal is to support a constant level of activity in all three areas. An initial program could consist of two workshops per year (with attendance of, say, 40 persons per workshop), one international conference every two years, and one 12 –day short course per year involving at least 150 faculty and students. This would provide a constant level of activity and may suffice to put Qatar on the map among others thinking of scheduling research-oriented workshops: e.g., if various international research communities included Qatar as they contemplated where to schedule their annual meetings.
In addition, the QNRF staff will play an active role in bringing together researchers, potential sponsors, and other beneficiaries of research. For example, the QNRF may sponsor a workshop on research questions related to new corrosion-resistant alloys for gas and oil production equipment, attracting scientists and engineers from Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon, Qatar Petroleum, and the international energy companies.
Responsiveness to Challenges
A number of challenges relate directly to this proposed funding activity, namely networking and bridge building. For workshops and conferences targeting the Qatar community, the activity also will provide the lever for QNRF to seek out ideas about national needs and opportunities, and then act on their preferences to shape the research scene.
Potential Benefits
These activities will help to build human capital, albeit indirectly. A carefully designed program of international workshops, conferences, and short courses would allow greater contact and more collaborative exchanges between those working in Qatar and those coming from the outside. It would aid the cause of education in general, and add insight and inspiration to the research that it touches in Qatar.
By enhancing the credibility of Qatar’s research activities, it would make Qatar more likely to be known as an international center of excellence for the research that it specializes in. Workshops within the Qatar community will foster collaboration among researchers and potential beneficiaries and stakeholders. Such activities also could provide for professional development of Qataris, be an initial step towards graduate programs, and serve to bring the academic, and public/private sectors into contact with one another.
Documentation of workshops, conferences, and short courses, and their resultant findings, through summary reports, could yield additional benefits both in publicizing the QNRF’s activities and facilitating future research.
