Research Matters

Welcome to the sixth edition of QNRF’s newsletter, ‘Research Matters’. For over the past three months, we have been working from home as per the instructions of the Government of Qatar to control the spread of COVID-19. However, it is still business as usual at QNRF, and though separated by distance, our staff has been working together diligently under our guiding mission of enabling research excellence in Qatar and improving the standard of life, education, and health for its citizens and residents.

According to the World Health Organization, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes has risen dramatically across the globe in the past three decades. Statistics show that Middle Eastern and North African populations are more at risk of developing the disease due to various factors such as genetic risk, increased obesity rates, rapid urbanization, and lack of exercise.

Two research papers resulting from a QNRF-funded project, “Middleware Architecture for Cloud-Based Services Using Software Defined Networking (SDN) (NPRP6-901-2-370),” have received best research paper awards. The paper entitled “Optimal virtual network function placement in multi-cloud service function chaining architecture” was published in Computer Communications, Vol. 102, in April 2017 and received the journal’s 2020 Best Research Paper Award. In the short time since its publication, the paper has already received around 99 citations according to Google Scholar. 

Research suggests that students may find it hard to complete their studies in a second language Therefore, students with low proficiency in the target language at higher education institutions struggle with understanding the expectations of the faculty and working on assignments related to technical and academic writing. This trend is specially observed in students at international branch campuses.