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The Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) Innovation Center is a pioneering initiative that was launched in 2018 to foster entrepreneurship and creativity.
The center aligns perfectly with HBKU’s role as an innovation-based entrepreneurial university leading in education and research to solve critical challenges facing Qatar and the world.
With a mandate to ‘strengthen the sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, both within and outside HBKU’, the center is already making an impact and delivers novel, demonstrable, and workable solutions to national and global challenges.
Since its conception, the center has focused on design, development, and implementation of mechanisms that are required to accelerate innovative entrepreneurship and intellectual knowledge as well as technology transfer between university, industry, and government.
It particularly encourages proposals incorporating innovative solutions related to HBKU’s key thematic research areas: progressive education, sustainability, AI, precision medicine and social progress.
Connecting and Sharing
The center provides a nexus for connecting people and sharing ideas, resources, and expertise. It also provides opportunities for value-added and sustainable cross-functional collaborations under multiversity engagement.
It provides multifaceted educational and training opportunities for students, staff, and faculty through seminars, workshops, boot camps, and more. Acting as a catalyst for the development of innovative ideas towards commercialization, the center supports the Education City and Doha community in a myriad of ways, including the provision of targeted funds, as a collaborative network between QF entities and Qatar-based industry and businesses.
The center has been offering a variety of innovation funds for faculty, scientists, researchers, and students since it was launched. Four cycles have been successfully completed and for the recent fifth cycle submissions, a new type of funding was introduced.
The HBKU Kickstarter Fund will provide financial assistance to HBKU entrepreneurs within the first year of their business start-up. Another unique funding created for the first time and offered under Cycle 5 is the Social Innovation Fund, for which applicants were asked to focus on social challenges within Qatar and the region and were invited to offer meaningful and unique solutions.
Enabling Successful Projects
Supporting local, collaborative academia and industry-driven innovation proposals by HBKU faculty and scientists, as well as local students, HBKU Innovation Center funds aim to increase capacity, responsiveness, and private enterprise prospects.
Successful projects in the Industrial Innovation Fund 2021 category saw funding awarded for projects involving producing green hydrogen from solar energy to power an electric vehicle charging station and an integrated battery-hydrogen storage unit for the first time in Qatar; engineering a versatile biosensor platform for highly sensitive, rapid, and cost-effective virus detection in patient or environmental samples; and a data-driven solution that tracks aspiring football players’ development and offers individually tailored opportunities and career pathways.
In the Student Innovation Fund category, a proactive artificial intelligence and augmented reality-based eye-tracking system that will train cardiology professionals to better interpret electrocardiograms and a system to harness geothermal capacity and employ it as a self-sufficient cooling system received funding.
Cycle 5 winners were recently announced, with 11 projects selected for funding, highlighting the growing success of the Innovation Center.
Making an Impact
The Innovation Fund winners foster intellectual knowledge-based collaboration, create meaningfully unique solutions to real-life challenges, and test their ideas before they start-up their businesses. As a result, many collaborations have been created naturally, scientifically and intellectual right protection outcomes have been reached.
Overall, five Innovation Center cycles have been announced, attracting over 100 participants across QF and HBKU. More than 25 proposals have been funded, and more than 10 innovation and entrepreneurship events have been completed.
At least five national and international collaborations have been initiated. The cross-functional collaborations have been created within and outside the HBKU. Multiversity engagement has been internalized and has been supported through different activities through continuously working to diversify and accelerate the number of collaborations with other QF entities for enrichment in the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. The student integration in the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem has been reached, and internal student collaborations have been created through innovation funds. Many working prototypes, applications, and scientific outcomes including scientific papers and intellectual property right protections have been reached.
The center has been increasing the number and the diversity of activities under QF’s multiversity vision engagement. Its activities include holding the first Systematic Innovation and Leadership Workshop, the Innovation Day Event, Project Writing Workshop, and Entrepreneurship 101 workshops. The majority of events are organized in collaboration with internal and external entities.
For further information about the HBKU Innovation Center, visit innovation.hbku.edu.qa