Abu Dhabi: The UAE undergraduate students will get a chance to pit their creative and research skills in a team competition which was unveiled by the Abu Dhabi University on Monday.
The initiative, part of the Step up Shabab programme, will give the opportunity to three-member student teams to work on innovative topics and submit their work for the national level competition. The competition is open to all universities in the UAE.
“The competition, held under the patronage of Shaikha Latifa Bint Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ADU will select no more than hundred innovative projects to compete at the UAE national level and a maximum of three participants can make up each team,” said Dr Abdul Mohsin Mohammad, dean of college of research and graduate studies.
The competition will emphasise original research projects in six categories: Engineering, natural and health services, information technology, business administration, education, and arts and social sciences, he added.
Promising cash prizes and recognition certificates will be awarded to creative, innovative, and exceptional students.
“This competition is the first of its kind across the UAE. It is creative, absorbing and challenging and will allow students to experience first-hand the process of scholarly exploration, enhance their critical thinking, and build confidence in their research abilities,” said Dr Nabeel Ebrahim, chancellor of the Abu Dhabi University.
Dr Ebrahim also pointed out that this creative competition was at first initiated by two hard working students, Khoola Haroon and Fatima Abdul Kader in collaboration with the college of research and graduate studies at the university.
“Our students have really worked hard to settle such a competition and encourage other universities across the UAE to participate in it to expand the interest and potential of young people as well as Emiratis to become entrepreneurs by fostering mentalities in innovative education and research,” Ebrahim added.
All final participants will receive a valuable participation award and a certification of recognition, while the three best winning teams from the six categories will be awarded incentive prizes.
“We have been engaged in many national and international contests held by other universities. Yet we wanted our university to lead in the field of research. Therefore, we used all social network tools and over 25 volunteers to promote for this competition and we are extremely excited to see wonderful outputs with the full support of several faculty members,” Haroon and Abdul Kader, a 20-year-old senior business students, told Gulf News. “We are currently promoting a culture of research within the university and this year the total number of researches conducted by students and faculty members has increased four times than previous year,” Dr Sherine Farouk, director of undergraduate student research at ADU, told Gulf News.
“Best tools and facilities have been provided to ADU students. Grants are frequently offered to them in order to help in implementing their creative ideas in the real world besides several labs, which provide a scientific atmosphere for our students to create and innovate,” Farouk added.
