Executive Director’s Message | April 2021

Driving research that matters

Over the past few years, Qatar has made remarkable progress in improving its food security and building local food production systems. On the research side, several initiatives have been launched to deal with different themes related to food security ranging from aquaculture to innovative technologies to improve the health of animals.

Food Security is close to us at QNRF and we realize how much it matters for Qatar and its people. We are constantly evolving and adapting to the direction Qatar is taking on a national level to develop a sustainable and resilient food security infrastructure. One such initiative we took is our Food Security Call, which we offer in collaboration with the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME).

Earlier this month, we announced the results for the second cycle of the food security call, under which six outstanding projects have been awarded generous grants. In this month’s Research Matters, we feature an insightful interview with a food security expert from MME to help shed light on the work underway for strengthening food security in Qatar. Moreover, we also feature a success story of one of our Graduate Student Research Award (GSRA) scholars whose study explores the development of an improved and efficient filtration membrane for wastewater treatment.

Another area that has recently attracted a lot of attention on the global level and presents a lot of opportunities in the rapidly growing FinTech and Blockchain-based technologies. This month, we feature our recently held Research Outcome Seminar to showcase  R&D, achievements, challenges, and opportunities for Qatar in this sector.

Finally, I invite our interested readers to browse through QNRF’s website to learn more about our diverse portfolio of research-funding and capacity building programs and apply to our programs that are currently accepting proposals. We have received great interest from Qatar’s research community and therefore have decided to extend the deadlines for some of our programs. Therefore, I encourage you to stay tuned to our website and social media accounts for the latest updates.

In closing, I hope that the holy month of Ramadan showers its blessings upon you and your loved ones and instills the values of compassion and kindness in all of us. On behalf of all of us at QNRF, I wish all our readers a very happy Eid al-Fitr in advance!