Young Arab innovators compete on television Tuesday, 27 July 2010 01:36

Young Arab innovators are competing in the newly-launched TV contest Stars of Science which started broadcast across the Arab region from May 29.

Stars of Science is an initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), which has an overarching mission to promote human development in Qatar and the Middle East.

This previously unseen pan-Arab programme stars 16 Arab students from 11 countries. The students emerged from a rigorous selection process which screened more than 5,600 applications from all over the world.

“The aim is to showcase the whole process of innovation — from inspiration, to the elaboration of a concept, its development and finally, its application,” said Abdulla Al Thani, vice-president of Qatar Foundation. “Science and technology gets an entertaining twist through the very popular reality TV show format, making the topic accessible to all. We hope Stars of Science will promote the innovative spirit of young people in the Arab world,” he added.

The candidates have the opportunity to develop their own project of innovation in a state-of-the-art workshop, built especially for the show, at the recently- inaugurated Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) in Doha.

Through an impressive reality-TV set up, the cameras follow them as they go through the different stages of the innovation process and encounter numerous thrilling challenges.

Their work and progress is monitored and evaluated by a jury of 3 world-class experts:

• Dr Sadeg M Faris (Libya), an engineer holding over 600 patents.

• William Sawaya (Lebanon), a renowned designer.

• Dr Mona Zaki (Egypt), a marketing consultant and a prominent businesswoman.

The programme is being broadcast over 4 weeks, from May 29 to July 26.

It consists of five prime-time episodes (90 minutes), on Fridays, and 20 daily shows (45 minutes), from Sunday to Thursday. It is being presented by Khalid Al Jumaily, a young, friendly, and dynamic host from Qatar.

Qatar Foundation, with the help of the Arab States Broadcasting Union and Qatar Television, has achieved, for this initiative, a previously unseen pan-Arab partnership with 15 public and private channels to date, which will broadcast the programme.

After a kick-off episode on May 29, covering the final selection of the candidates, held in Doha, Tunis, Cairo and Beirut, each of the prime-time episodes revolve around a specific challenge.

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