‘Qatar needs 7,000 researchers to achieve its goals’

By Joseph Varghese/Staff Reporter

To achieve the objectives of Qatar National Research Strategy (QNRS) by 2030, the country needs 7,000 scientists and researchers, said  Faisal M Alsuwaidi, president of Research and Development at Qatar Foundation yesterday.

At present there were only around 500 researchers in Qatar, he said.

Speaking on the sidelines of the QNRS Forum 2013, Alsuwaidi said that 12 major research objectives have been identified as priorities for the country as part of the strategy. He said: “We do not have the capacity to undertake all the  projects. We suffer from the lack of enough number of scientists. To achieve these goals we need to work hard. We will hire around 2,000 scientists.”

He added that more researchers will be brought to Qatar through the funding agencies in the country.

Alsuwaidi observed that it would take a lot of efforts to attract scientists to Qatar.  He said: “We need to adopt many efforts such as  changing the attitude, changing rules and many more  to attract scientists to relocate to Qatar. We also need to develop a different mindset to attract these scientists.”

He also said that a strategy is being developed to attract youngsters from the country to the field. “We have an aggressive campaign to groom the youngsters in Qatar to researchers. Qatar suffers from human resources. We need more efforts to put all these together to achieve our objectives by 2030,” he added.

Dr Thomas Zacharia,  executive vice-president of Research and Development at Qatar Foundation said that the challenges that were taken up were very  important ones and needed  more talents.

He explained: “One of the issues that we have to make sure  is that the talents that we get are world class. A commitment to excellence in research  is very important.”

He said that Qatar Science Leadership Programme was another important programme to raise great talents.

“These are early career scientists and engineers  who are as good as anybody else I have come across in any part of the world. We need to do more of such programmes  and make sure that research is a career, an attractive option for the young students of the country. We are working on it.”

Zacharia further said that research infrastructure development was another priority for the country. “We also should have good infrastructure that attracts the world class scientists. We are working on all these and that will take some time.”