Discover more from Middle East AI News
New HP Innovation Garage in Dubai; Huawei & SC2 sign smart cities deal
Good morning!
Here’s your weekly roundup of Middle East AI News!
Lots of news to share this week, including the launch of an HP Innovation Garage in Dubai, Dubai Future Labs and a joint ITU - RTA Centre of Digital Innovation (I-CoDI). Scroll down for this and more news from around the region.
Stay safe and have a great weekend!
/Carrington
Startup News
'HP Innovation Garage' launches at DTEC — www.zawya.com
#UAE #startups - HP in collaboration with Intel has announced the launch of its first ‘HP Innovation Garage’ at Dubai Technology Entrepreneur Campus (DTEC), the largest technology startup campus in the MENA region, based at Dubai’s Silicon Oasis. (Zawya)
Dubai Startup Hub Market Access programme’s second cohort attracts 44 start-ups — www.wam.ae
#UAE #startups - Dubai Startup Hub, an initiative of Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has announced the successful conclusion of the Market Access programme’s second cohort, which included a number of AI startups. (Emirates New Agency)
Winners of UAE NewSpace Innovation Programme announced — gulfnews.com
#UAE #startups - The UAE Space Agency, in collaboration with Krypto Labs, announced on Monday the four winning teams that will participate in the UAE NewSpace Innovation Programme. Winners include Smart Navigation Systems, which created an AI system to enhance satellite imagery. (Gulf News)
Iran to develop AI startups — ifpnews.com
#Iran #startups - Iran’s Vice Presidency for Science and Technology says it is working to increase the number of start-ups in the field of artificial intelligence to nearly 200 in the near future and encourage investors to spend in this sector. (IFP News)
Qatar looks to future fintechs to transform financial services sector — menafn.com
#Qatar #fintech - Qatar Fintech Hub (QFTH), co-founded by Qatar Development Bank (QDB), is open to include fintechs specialising in Islamic finance, regulatory framework and SMEs, in addition to payments ventures, under the first wave of its Fintech Incubator and Accelerator programmes (IAP), according to its top official. (Gulf Times)
R&D
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid tours Dubai Future Labs — www.thenational.ae
#UAE #R&D - Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum celebrated Emirati enterprise and innovation as he toured Dubai Future Laboratories this week. The ambitious plans for the centre – with a focus on aviation, energy, blockchain and entrepreneurship – were unveiled by Sheikh Mohammed last October. (The National)
MBZUAI enters a hyperloop research partnership — gulfnews.com
#UAE #education - Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has entered a memorandum of understanding with Virgin Hyperloop to initiate a collaborative approach on research and innovation in the field of AI. (Gulf News)
ITU announces Swiss innovation centre with TRA — www.capacitymedia.com
#UAE #telecom - A new International Centre of Digital Innovation, known as I-CoDI, is to open in Geneva, Switzerland, following a partnership between the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the United Arab Emirates. (Capacity Media)
Smart Cities
Huawei and SC2 strike agreement to collaborate on Saudi smart cities — www.smartcitiesworld.net
#Saudi #smartcities - Huawei and Smart Cities Solutions Company (SC2), a leading operator/service provider, have signed an agreement to provide Saudi Arabia with smartcity solutions to enhance the liveability and efficiency of cities under the Kingdom's smart city initiative. (Smart Cities World)
Education
Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi launches BSc. in maths, specialisation in data science for AI — gulfnews.com
#UAE #education - Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi announces the launch of a new bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, Specialisation in Data Science for Artificial Intelligence for the upcoming academic year 2020-2021. (Gulf News)
GCC's higher education sector: Chalking out the future of tomorrow — gulfbusiness.com
#GCC #UAE #education - As industrial revolution and digital advancements scale the demand for technical and cross-functional skills, how has the regional higher education space responded? (Gulf Business)
84 students graduate second intake of UAE government's AI programme — wam.ae
#UAE #education - 84 students graduated from the second batch of the UAE government's Artificial Intelligence Programme. The training programme is part of the UAE Programme for Artificial Intelligence, which aims to train government staff and reinforce their skills to adopt AI in their work. (Emirates News Agency)
Construction
Drones 'imperative' to elevate the Saudi construction sector — meconstructionnews.com
#Saudi #drones - Saudi Arabia’s construction sector will see a faster recovery if it utilises drones under the ‘new normal’ set-up, argues Rabih Bou Rashid of Falcon Eye Drones (FEDS). (ME Construction News)
Coronavirus
Abu Dhabi health department uses ML to predict spread of COVID-19 — wam.ae
#UAE #coronavirus - The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH) and United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) have developed a new machine learning model to analyse the predicted spread of COVID-19. (Emirates News Agency)
Emergency Services
Sharjah Police Rescue will use robots on rescue missions in the near future — gulfnews.com
#UAE #search&rescue - Sharjah Police’s Rescue Department has been using drones to improve safety since 2019, including a drone to locate and rescue people in Sharjah waters. Robots are expected to be deployed by the department in the near future. (Gulf News)
Horse Racing
Algorithms developed to identify whale sounds used to identify Arabian horses — phys.org
#Egypt #horses - Researchers in Egypt have built a system for the identification of Arabian horses using algorithms developed for identifying whales. The system used machine learning to analyse muzzle imprints from the horses and can identify a horse quickly using this system to an accuracy of more than 97%, (Phys.org)