How the Gulf’s rulers want to harness the power of science

Bayt al-Hikma, UAEUAEKAUSTRDUAEGDPOECDUAEgdpRDKAUSTUAESABICOECD R&DUAEDUAEUAEUAEKAUSTAMUAECERNKAUSTor the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, emerged in the ninth century—even before the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, widely considered the first academy of sciences. The Banu Musa brothers, sons of an astronomer in Baghdad, created the first machine with a stored program there and scientific textbooks from the institute were translated and made their way to Europe.That marked a high point. Amid the siege of Baghdad in 1258, the Mongols destroyed the institute and threw all the texts into the Tigris river. Scientific discovery in the Middle East waned and has never returned to the heights of the Islamic Golden Age, as the era was known. Of all the Nobel prizes for the sciences handed out since 1901, only two have gone to recipients from the region.The Gulf’s rulers want to do better than that. Beset with the rising urgency to diversify their economies away from fossil fuels, the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates () are turning to scientific research.The launched a policy for science, technology and innovation in February and, seven months later, opened the research-led National University of Dubai. In Saudi Arabia Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince, has launched a revamped strategy for the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (), the kingdom’s science hub, which is modelled on Western universities, to focus on research aligned with his “Vision 2030” economic blueprint. The kingdom has also struck a co-operation agreement with Britain. Qatar’s third national strategy, which covers the six years to 2030, contains targets for patents, publications and & spending by scientific foundations and the private sector.Currently, the spends just 1.5% of its on research and development, Qatar just 0.7% and Saudi Arabia 0.5% (see chart 1). This is short of the 2.7% average among countries in the , but that is partly because the region is not taking a “kitchen-sink” approach and spreading its funding across every imaginable project, says Sarah Al Amiri, the chair of the Emirates Science Council and the ’s minister of state for public education. Nevertheless, the Research Development and Innovation Authority in Saudi Arabia, set up in 2021, hopes to invest 2.5% of the kingdom’s in research, development and innovation by 2040. Qatari officials are planning to double their country’s current spending levels by the end of this decade, with about three-fifths coming from businesses. & is no longer just a “nice-to-have,” says Hilal Lashuel, a neuroscience professor and an adviser to Sheikha Moza, the chairwoman of the Qatar Foundation, a body that oversees that country’s universities and scientific research.The Gulf’s new approach to building its science and technology prowess has three distinct characteristics: a focus on domestic problems; a preference for applied research; and a careful choice of international partnerships. Researchers in the region focus on practical topics such as food security, energy efficiency and health. Scientists at , for example, are using the fibrous structure of oyster mushrooms to create a membrane that can simultaneously absorb oil and repel water, useful in mopping up oil spills. Researchers at the ’s Khalifa University are focusing on graphene membranes to improve water desalination. At New York University in Abu Dhabi, scientists have developed nanoparticles that could improve treatment of an aggressive form of breast cancer, the most frequently diagnosed cancer in the Gulf.This research, it is hoped, will boost the countries’ economies. “The first priority is to have an impact in the country,” says Dr Lashuel. He gives the example of rare diseases, where the Gulf has, until now, focused solely on identifying genes that contribute to causing them. Those have then been studied further by researchers elsewhere but now, he says, Gulf scientists will look for ways to use those discoveries to develop drugs or companies in the region.Commercial successes are not unheard of: the Khalifa University’s graphene research centre has tied up with a Swiss maker of pipes to work on high-performance pipelines for oil and gas. But there is scope for plenty more. In Saudi Arabia, for example, tie-ups between universities and companies—including such firms as Aramco, the oil giant, and , a chemicals champion—account for only 2% of scholarly output, compared with the average of 6% for countries in the .Aware that there are still gaps between academia and businesses, though, governments are stepping in with initiatives like the Qatar Research, Development and Innovation Council. “You need to teach the private sector the mentality, and that is lacking,” says Abeer Al Hammadi, the director of the innovation centre at Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University. In the , the government is helping companies to assess where they could better use technology. To accelerate progress, a financing agreement worth 5bn dirhams ($1.4bn) has been set up with the Emirates Development Bank. Hassan Arafat of Khalifa University, who leads the Research and Innovation Centre for Graphene and 2 Materials, says that companies in the region have long imported technology through licences and franchises. Building it from the ground up is a “huge change”, he says.Emirati, Qatari and Saudi officials also want to improve foreign collaborations. That means no longer being seen as just a pool of readily available funds for Western universities. “We want equal participation and benefits,” says Ms Al Hammadi.Here the Gulf authorities have learned from past mistakes. Two decades ago Qatar and the brought in the likes of Carnegie Mellon and New York University to set up campuses in Doha and Abu Dhabi. In 2015 the announced a science and technology policy that covered 100 national initiatives and had a budget of more than $82bn. At one point, the was home to a fifth of all international university branches. Saudi Arabia formed partnerships with over two dozen universities, including one between Imperial College London and . Between 2008 and 2014 Saudi Arabia allocated more than $6bn to its science policy.Despite the investment, the Gulf’s economies were not transformed. The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, for example, was created in 2007 with hopes that it would become a global leader in research on renewables and alternative energy, with help from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a decade later its academic arm was dropped and the remainder was merged with the Petroleum Institute and became part of the newly formed Khalifa University of Science and Technology.Collaborations such as these are more dicey in the modern day, in any case, complicated by geopolitical wrangling. In February Texas & University abruptly announced it was shutting down its campus in Doha, which has been profitable and running for over two decades. Students and researchers are now in limbo. The closure has left a “big shadow” over such foreign partnerships, especially with America, one academic says.Home-grown universities are therefore now much higher on the Gulf’s agenda. A large proportion of academics in these universities still come from overseas so, to hedge the risks to their economic-transformation efforts, the region’s leaders increasingly want to bring back more Arab scientists from top global universities.They are also diversifying their research partners. The ’s universities are seeking collaborations with European centres like in Geneva, the world’s biggest particle-physics laboratory. Saudi Arabia’s top collaborator in 2024, as measured by co-authored research, was China, ahead of America; ’s biggest partner was the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Emirati officials say China has been a keen partner, especially because of its desire to globalise its education system. The Chinese are willing to bring more resources and talent to the table than the Americans are and collaborations do not come with “an invoice or bill attached”, says one professor at an Emirati university.The Gulf’s approach to research may not necessarily bring the kudos of fundamental scientific breakthroughs, even though the number of patents and research citations coming out of the region is rising (see charts 2 and 3). But the technocratic approach could solve its own problems, says Khaled Machaca, a leading physiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Qatar centre. And a more dynamic approach to scientific discovery could be the Gulf’s biggest contribution to global science.