Qatar Daily News

Qatar General Electricity and Water Corp (Kahramaa) would provide scholarships to young Qatari nationals to pursue higher studies at universities abroad and also at home.
This is part of Kahramaa’s Qatarisation drive to provide technical and administrative jobs to the nationals.
Speaking at a meeting of directors, managers and students selected for the scholarship programme, acting managing director Essa Hilal al-Kuwari said the scholarship would encourage Qatari youth to take up engineering specilisation.

Kahramaa aims to create a new generation of distinguished young Qataris, rich in technical and practical experience to serve the Corp at various levels, said al-Kuwari.

The acting managing director recalled that Kahramaa has started picking and sponsoring meritorious Qatari general and technical secondary graduates to receive high level education at leading varsities in Qatar and outside.After successful completion of education, candidates will be directly posted as officers at various levels.
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ConocoPhillips says Qatar Science & Technology Park will attract world’s best
A leading energy-sector technology executive believes Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) will attract some of the best minds in the world.
Mr. Stephen Brand, Senior Vice President Technology for ConocoPhillips, which is one of 21 organizations with research and development centers at QSTP, says people will be attracted by the tremendous opportunities that will exist in QSTP.
“QSTP will bring together a significant amount of talent. It’s going to attract some of the best people who will put that talent and expertise to work alongside various companies, agencies and academia,” says Mr. Brand. Read the rest of this entry »

HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Deputy Premier and Energy and Industry Minister HE Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah and a galaxy of dignitaries were present at the ceremony held in the ceremonial court.
Flanked by students and alumni of Carnegie Mellon Qatar, HH Sheikha Mozah cut a ribbon on stage, with Carnegie Mellon President Jared L Cohon assisting, marking the opening of the state-of-the-art building.
Qatar Foundation President Mohamed Fathy Saoud, Vice-President of Education Abdullah bin Ali al-Thani, and Carnegie Mellon Qatar Dean Charles E Thorpe were also present on the dais.
Both HH the Emir, who was invited onto the stage by Dean Thorpe after the ribbon cutting, and HH Sheikha Mozah cracked jokes with the students and alumni while posing for a group photo.
Earlier, the ceremony began with Carnegie Mellon fine arts alumni bagpiper Patrick W Regan, clad in full regalia, leading a procession in the Scottish tradition of the university.
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The official opening of Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) will take place on 16 March 2009, marking a new dawn of scientific innovation in the Middle East.

QSTP will be inaugurated in the presence of His Highness The Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani and Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missned, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, in a glittering ceremony before 1,200 prestigious guests.

Among the international guests will be renowned figures in the energy, environment, health sciences and ICT industries, including: Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin; Jeff Immelt, Chief Executive of GE; Linda Cook, Executive Director Gas and Power for Shell; Stefen M. Cassiani, President of ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company; Symal Gupta, Chairman of Tata; Sir Martin Evans, Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Cardiff University; Professor Ian Leslie, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Cambridge University.

In another tangible step in Qatar’s journey towards a post-carbon economy, more than $800 million has been invested by Qatar Foundation and its 21 partner organisations in QSTP.
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MEMBERS of the Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing board held a reception at the Museum of Islamic Art, where officials promised that a “vibrant, dynamic and exciting list of books” will be published when the company starts operating in the Spring of 2010.

A $13.2mn agreement was signed between Qatar Foundation and Bloomsbury in October of last year, with the intention of stimulating literary excellence in the region by establishing a publishing house in Qatar.
Founder and chief executive of Bloomsbury, Nigel Newton, explained that there will be a number of initiatives involving the publishers, the first of which will the “World Book Day” on April 23. This will involve students from five schools to begin with, and is aimed at “getting children to enjoy reading for pleasure.”

He also mentioned that there will be creative writing courses on offer, to help develop more young writers in Qatar.
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Jassim Al-Naama, a Qatari student and President of the Qatar Career Fair (QCF) 2009 Volunteers body, says the most important reason for these students volunteering was to fulfil a national duty and to express their confidence in the pioneering vision of the QCF to further develop expertise, knowledge and talent among Qatari citizens.

He also said a great motivating factor was the role of QCF 2009 in finding solutions to the various challenges confronting fresh graduates by providing them with expert career guidance.

QCF 2009 has registered a record number of 165 volunteers, as compared to 75 volunteers at the previous career fair.

This positive response is attributable to the enhanced reputation of QCF among the Qatari youth, building on the outstanding success of the previous career fair.
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Nearly four years ago, the School of Foreign Service’s Qatar campus opened its doors within Education City. Now the campus is preparing to moving from a shared-building owned by the Qatar Foundation into a nearly 400,000-square-foot facility of its own.

The building, scheduled to open in fall 2010, will include classrooms, offices, a library and other facilities for more than 200 undergraduate and graduate students.

“The new facility will help us do better what we have already been doing for the past four years, which is to make Georgetown a living reality 6,000 miles from the Hilltop,” said School of Foreign Service-Qatar Dean James Reardon-Anderson. “We expect the building to feel and function like Georgetown, while having a look and location a bit removed from Healy Hall.

The Qatar Foundation has selected architect Antoine Predock to design the facility for Northwestern’s campus in Qatar.

Predock is based in Albuquerque, N.M., with studios in Taipei and Los Angeles. He has previously designed buildings including the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, the Tacoma Art Museum and the San Diego Padres ballpark.

Richard Roth, senior associate dean of journalism in Qatar, and three other NU-Q faculty members will soon accompany Predock on a trip around the U.S. to look at other journalism facilities, Roth said. They will first visit the NU campus in Evanston on February 10.

About two months after returning, Predock is scheduled to create three possible designs for the NU-Q building. The construction process will likely begin in spring 2009, and it will take three to four years until the building is complete and ready for use, Roth said.
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In a regional first, Qatar has embarked on a major initiative to establish a world-class biomedical research programme with the aim of 120 scientists, technicians and support staff in place within five years, details of which were presented at the Arab Health exhibition in Dubai today.

The initiative is being spearheaded by Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development and Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q), bringing together institutions with overlapping missions in education, research and healthcare.

It draws on the strengths of organisations in the Qatar healthcare sector such as Hamad Medical Corporation and Sidra Medical and Research Centre. It also aims to create a conduit for the commercialisation of discoveries through the Qatar Science and Technology Park.
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IBM on Monday announced that it has partnered with three universities to develop one of the first cloud-computing platforms in the Middle East.

Big Blue, along with Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar University, and Texas A&M University in Qatar, plans to use the Qatar Cloud Computing Center to handle advanced research for search, data mining, scientific modeling and simulation, computational biology, and financial modeling.

“This will help us realize our vision of developing, evaluating, and extending a cloud-computing infrastructure in Qatar, to target regional applications and projects to help advance research,” Majd F. Sakr, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, said in a statement.
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