QF funds over 4,800 projects to transform Qatar into global innovation leader

Qatar Foundation (QF) has been at the forefront in Qatar’s efforts to transform the nation to a knowledge economy, triggering decisive change through research and innovation.According to its website, QF has been curating big ideas and creating platforms to spark the next great breakthroughs. "We are helping position the nation as a global research and innovation nerve centre with an ecosystem focused on developing ideas with impact. Across the fields of IT, energy, environment and healthcare, QF’s focus on Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) is bringing new technologies into the global marketplace, and identifying new challenges and opportunities,” QF says.As for the efforts in this direction, QF has been able to achieve a lot since it started which is evident in the numbers, it has provided.Accordingly, QF has funded over 4,800 projects between 2007 and 2018 and has invested over$1.4bn through Qatar National Research Fund.A total of 331 inventions have been created by QF research and development ecosystem and 42 Startups have been developed by Qatar Science & Technology Park since 2016. So far eight patents have been granted to QF inventions.With every initiative, QF remains focused on generating economic value, transferring knowledge, and establishing national and international RDI partnerships that align with Qatar’s needs and priorities."We are helping our homegrown researchers and innovators together with experts from around the world to address our biggest challenges. In our quest to make Qatar a leading hub for research and innovation, we have built several pioneering initiatives that are triggering transformative change across the nation, the region, and the world at large,” notes, QF.QF aims to make sure that its research projects span a wide range of industries and themes to create meaningful, multisectoral difference on the challenges the country face.One major aspect of its research programme is collaboration as it has tied up with organisations and institutions from around the world to facilitate the transfer of ideas, jointly address areas of interest, and multiply the reach and benefits of the research and innovation.With organisations as diverse as Tübitak in Turkey, to Boeing, Harvard University, and MIT in the United States, QF global partnerships span the spectrum of industry, academia, tech development and entrepreneurship, and public policy.QF initiatives also engages thought-leaders from around the world to gather ideas and spark conversations on some of the world’s most pressing challenges. From multidisciplinary research conferences to global summits and programmes on healthcare and education, QF is building diverse networks of citizens, activists, policymakers, and academics united by their goal of making change happen.QF has set up three specialised research institutes operating under the umbrella of Hamad Bin Khalifa University and all of them are focused on conducting pioneering research in areas of national priority for Qatar, supporting sustainable development and economic diversification goals, while having the potential to benefit the world. The three research institutes: Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, Qatar Computing Research Institute and Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute are focusing on some of the most pressing challenges that the country faces. "Our ecosystem isn’t about infrastructure. It is about ideas and enabling them to develop naturally to the point where they become commercialised products. We don’t force innovation to happen. But we make sure it can,” added, Hayfa al-Abdulla, innovation director at Qatar Science & Technology Park.