Saturday 12 / July / 2025
Muscat: The names of the winners of the National Research Award and Upgrade programme will be announced on Wednesday 14 December 2022 at the Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre. The Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation will host the 9th cycle of the Annual Research Forum.
The forum will be under the patronage of Eng. Said bin Hamood Al Maawali, Minister of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, and in the presence of Prof. Dr. Rahma bint Ibrahim Al Mahrooqi, Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, officials, academics and research award winners.
Dr. Saif bin Abdullah Al Haddabi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MoHERI) for Research and Innovation, stated that the preparations for the forum are complete, and all committees have completed their preparatory work related to the organisation and establishment of the forum, which is to be held at the Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre.
The forum, which will also honour winners of the National Research Award for the ninth year in a row since its launch in 2014, aims to motivate researchers to conduct research of high quality and national importance to the Sultanate, in addition to presenting the results of these research for use at the national level.
Moreover, the inclusion of the best published research led by a young researcher (non-PhD holder) category is an encouragement for young people to engage in knowledge production and increase research capacity at the national level. The forum is also a platform for presenting the most important achievements of the Ministry in promoting and activating the national system for research and innovation.
“The Award has contributed to directing research to serve national priorities, raise the quality of research publication in international peer-reviewed journals and periodicals, and contribute to strengthening the Oman’s ranking in the Global Innovation Index by honouring the winners of the six fields of the National Research Award”, he said.
The National Research Award has witnessed great competition among researchers since its inception in 2014, as the number of competing research papers has so far reached 1439 research papers published in the two categories of the award, with 93research papers have won during 2014-2021”.
The Annual Research Forum will also include the announcement of the nine winning teams of the 6thedition of Upgrade program, a program that transforms the best graduation projects into startups. The winners will include 6 teams in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) track and 3 teams in the newly launched industrial track.
For this edition, 135 projects from various universities and colleges were submitted to the program. Furthermore, the program also included two new partners, Bank Muscat and the Public Establishment for Industrial Estates (Madayn), in addition to the existing partners, which include Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel), the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, the Authority for SME Development, Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, and Oman Technology Fund (Takween).
Dr. Saif Al Haddabi added that the Annual Research Forum will also include holding 3 accompanying sessions to discuss research support programs directed to the government sector, the industrial sector and the academic sector, the challenges they face and appropriate proposals for their development.
There will be also an exhibition in which 23 posters of the winning National Research Award papers and the winning student projects of Upgrade program will be displayed, as well as an overview of programs and projects of the Research and Innovation Sector.
He also indicated that the forum this year coincides with the hosting of the Sultanate of Oman of the Regional Meetings of the Global Research Councilfor the Middle East and North Africa, which will be held during 14-15 December.
