By Shaimaa Al-Aees and Karim Salah
The Intel Science Competition Arab World 2015 commenced on Thursday, in Alexandria, gathering over 120 students, from across the Arab region, to share their scientific research and innovative practice in competition for scholarship awards and funding opportunities.
The competition’s jury is constituted by 100 young scientists from the Arab world and 50 judges.
Since 2012, the Intel Science Competition Arab World conference has participated in funding approximately 100 projects with financial sums totalling $1.3m, according to Zoomaal CEO Abdallah Absi, who gave the inaugural remarks at the conference.
In addition to documenting the conference’s past involvement with fledgling research-to-market initiatives, Absi announced a new initiative entitled “Arab innovation is back” that will rely on crowd-funding to generate venture capital from donations of as small as $5.
Explaining the initiative, Absi emphasised the plan’s ability to exist outside of a traditional investment infrastructure and thematised his initiative with an appeal to an everyday ritual: shisha.
“Instead of smoking Shisha all the week we can do it once a month and save the money for the innovators,” said Absi. “We target collecting $1m for innovation instead of asking the government or other people.”
Chairman of Sharaf Organisation for Sustainable Development (SHF) Essam Sharaf said the organisation will prepare all projects for entrance into the market, even those that do not win the competition.
Intel has organised the competition for the last five years in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and an assortment of institutions in Egypt, the UAE, Jordan and Qatar.
