Research centres play vital role

The UAE is embarking on an ambitious plan to develop a local research and innovation capacity base through a range of initiatives. Since resources devoted to research are necessarily limited, the allocation mechanisms of research policy for the nation need to be understood and discussed.

In March 2008, Shaikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, signed a decree creating the National Research Foundation, with an initial annual budget of Dh100 million.

In the autumn of 2009, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology - a graduate level, research-oriented university focused on alternative energy, sustainability, and the environment - will admit its first batch of students.

The Harvard Medical School Dubai Centre Institute for Postgraduate Education and Research, launched in 2004, aims at fostering the professional development of physicians, nurses, research scientists, and health professionals in the Gulf region.

Housed in the Dh1.5 billion research and development park in Dubai, DuBiotech, the Foundation for Research and Innovation focuses on government-funded research and development in select fields such as medical genetics.

The list of projects is long and the committed resources substantial. Quite often such initiatives are justified in terms of potential social and economic outcomes rather than in reference to the "pure" pursuit of knowledge.

Most research is indeed intended to reach a goal, even if not necessarily defined, that goes beyond scholarship itself. This is not to say that some research has no other purpose than the advance of knowledge, but only that such work is an extremely small portion of the overall research portfolio of any nation. And even then, fundamental or basic research is justified by the expectation that it will contribute to solving a particular question, which eventually increases the stock of intellectual material available for applications.

At the core of all UAE initiatives is the vision of a research ecology that brings "something" to the people, either through solutions to practical problems or through economic opportunities. While the connections between research and outcomes may be viewed as inherently opportunistic, obstacles to accurate predictions should not prevent attempts to improve decision-making.

The current conditions in the UAE - and across the Gulf Cooperation Council - are such that the immediate challenge is about establishing the infrastructures of research. To be blunt, the actual research activities taking place in the region are still limited and the time is now about kick-starting projects.

If, and when, success appears, however, some choices will have to be made - not everything will have unlimited access to funding. These choices will require continual feedbacks among a large variety of stake holders and actors, including researchers in universities and in the private sector, funding agencies, business people, policy makers, and the civil society.

Ongoing communication between the knowledge producers and users is the key to effective innovation systems: the overwhelming evidence from successful university-industry relations is that the priorities of basic science have long been aligned with the needs of industry.

Such alignment is not a result of chance, but of the existence of networks that facilitate interactions among the multiple actors involved in technological innovation.

The history of science and technology policy is about strategic investments in specific areas, such as IT, transport systems, material science and nano- and bio-technologies.

The UAE should therefore prepare the ground not only in terms of research infrastructures and funding, which is what is being pro-actively done. It should also build the culture of conversations on research policy. Exactly as budgetary choices are made among conflicting demands, the focus of scholarly activities should be debated.

Inclusive participation and discussions are one of the key mechanisms for a healthy relationship between supply of and demand for research.

- Olivier Renard is an adviser at the Secretariat General of the Research Council of the Sultanate of Oman. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Research Council or any other individual staff of the Secretariat.