Industrial research institute – Lebanese University Campus in Hadath

The Lebanon SoftShore cluster has arranged a meeting at the Industrial Research Institute between 5 major ICT companies and 7 Researcher Professors from AUB and Balamand Universities. The meeting aimed at reaching a joint cooperation between the two parties in order to be able to satisfy their needs as effectively and efficiently as possible. Dr. Bassam Frenn, General Director of IRI, started the meeting by asserting that IRI’s doors are open for such activities and that it should be seen as the bridge through which companies and universities can reach places they can’t do alone. Later, Mr. Talal Hijazi, the manager of the cluster presented an overview of the Software Cluster (SoftSHore) and the activities of the past with a summary of achievements to date. He also shared with attendees the future plans of activities that the cluster hopes to execute.

Dr. Fuad Mrad, ELCIM consultant and AUB professor, presented an executive summary of a study that was sponsored by ELCIM during summer 2008 entitled: ICT R&D Capacity in Lebanon. This presentation highlighted the strong R&D potential that already exists in Lebanese universities with concrete outcomes that are very relevant to the software development sector*. He invited the participants to share their views on the strategy that can deploy and harness the university professors’ efforts in ICT R&D towards the development of this sector and the Lebanese economic growth.
Later an open discussion between companies and academics took place were companies expressed their research and Development needs, and universities confirmed their abilities in satisfying them.

Moreover, the representatives of the Software industry were asked to present top priority needs for research based on their areas of interests assuming their willingness to work together with academia on addressing these needs and commit time and probably resources including funding when justified.
The following research needs priorities were proposed:

1. Arabic search engine: Requested by Mr. Jamal Anouti CEO of IDS
2. Cashing techniques in the DOT NET: Requested by Mr. Jamal Anouti CEO of IDS
3. Open source platform for ER: Requested by Mr. Jamal Anouti CEO of IDS
4. Open source solutions: Requested by Mr. Georges Antaki CEO of NETIKS
5. Financial sector software integration tools: Requested by Mr. Georges Antaki CEO of NETIKS
6. Health Care software interfacing to machines: Requested by Ms. Stephanie Papadopolous Managing Representative of DC Soft.
7. Modeling WIMAX using dynamic simulation techniques: Requested by Mr. Labib Shalak CEO of MOBINETS
8. Artificial Intelligence applications in Optimization of Communications Network traffic: Requested by Mr. Labib Shalak CEO of MOBINETS
9. Parallel Computing and Multi-threading: Requested by Mr. Labib Shalak CEO of MOBINETS
10. Methodologies of Testing and Design in Software development: Requested by Mr. Habib Maaz CEO of UNILOG
11. Database modeling: Requested by Mr. Habib Maaz CEO of UNILOG
It was agreed to share these topics with the departments that the faculty members represented and contact directly the requesters to meet and propose mode of collaboration. It was felt that the requester might assess the collaboration offers from various universities and chooses the partner in research that makes more sense to him/her.

In addition to this, it was requested that a knowledge database of all available skills, experts, published papers, projects, graduate theses, and other interests be started in order for the industrialists to be able to query such an archive to identify potential research support from local universities. The cluster will be hosting this as part of its web site soon.

Finally, The attendees agreed to meet another time towards end of January 2009 after starting a few of the above listed research projects and invite more participants and organizations from both sides.

For the full study findings and related table of available ICT R&D resources/outcomes please follow this link or visit the … Section.