KSA first in Muslim world in research

RIYADH: Prince Turki bin Saud bin Mohammed Al-Saud, president of King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), has said that the country’s national plan focused heavily on industrial scientific research.
This has resulted in a big leap in the sector, from 10 projects to 390 projects a year, which means a 40-fold increase in scientific research, making Saudi Arabia 35th globally and first in the Arab and Muslim world in the quality of research, he said. The international assessment also places the Kingdom ahead of both Turkey and Iran.
Prince Turki made this observation at the opening day of a workshop (knowledge 2) that tackled the second plan for innovation in science and technology programs organized at KACST headquarters in Riyadh on Thursday.
But for him, the jump is insufficient as there is still a gap between research and industry, a problem in both developing and developed countries.
He said the reason is lack of suitable investment and inability to translate these ideas into industrial projects. Accordingly, the plan focus during the current phase will be to invest in the industrial research to facilitate the transition to a knowledge-based economy.
“When you pay for research, it is actually an investment on a product which will be marketed in the future” he said.
The KACST chief said the mechanism of investment research in the industry underlines KACST commitment to support the sector in the early stages and, at the same time, to the two Ministries — Trade, Industry and Labor Ministry — in the completion of the subsequent stages in order to invest.
He stressed that the main objective of this stage is to support the creation of 400 products annually, instead of 400 research projects per year.
The supervisor of the program of joint centers of excellence at KACST, Anas Al-Faris, said the Kingdom has made a big leap in the field of technical sciences in the past years and currently tops the Arab countries in scientific publishing.
According to him, its published research reached16,000 in 2015, from 6000 in 2010, and advanced levels achieved in the quality of scientific publication and growth in all of the published research, up 373 percent, as well as an increase of 25 percent in the number of domestic patent.