مجلس التعليم »

07-11-2019

Oman Observer

Focusing its attention on Oman’s young innovators, the role of artificial intelligence and robotics in Omani industry will be amongst the exciting topics showcased by the Industrial Innovation Centre (IIC) at Oman Science Festival this week.

In addition to providing information on the Centre’s dynamic portfolio of innovation programmes in these hugely impactful and fast-growing industries, the IIC’s Festival team will be conducting interactive introductory workshops for students on innovation, its role in industry and trends in technology.

The Centre is also presenting a special set of interactive youth robot workshops in conjunction with Al Raed Ventures, a future-focused company from the IIC Start-ups Innovation Programme specialised in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics services for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

IIC CEO Dr Abdullah al Mahrouqi congratulated the Ministry of Education on the outstanding success of the Festival, adding: “Science, technology and, of course, innovation are key drivers of social and economic development and helping the public understand and appreciate their importance and value to our everyday lives as well as their impact for the future are tremendously important.

For our young people in particular, events such as this are not only educational, they play a key role not just in introducing them to exciting career paths but also in inspiring them to create, build and invent, to innovate and become the makers of things, of the products that will be in demand in the marketplace of the future.” Speaking at the event, Nooh al Omairi, IIC Industrial Innovation Specialist said: “I’m delighted to say that from the opening of the festival, the IIC Team has been inundated with visitors eager to learn about industrial innovation.

It has been especially gratifying to see how keen the community is to learn about AI and robotics and the interest there is from students in entrepreneurship in these industries. It is very rewarding to have this platform to introduce the IIC Industrial Innovation Ecosystem and share information on how to turn innovations into successful commercial projects. I have to say, a highlight for me is presenting successful Omani innovations to aspiring entrepreneurs and seeing how this motivates them.”

The highly practical IIC student innovation workshops at the Oman Science Festival cover topics including: technological innovation, innovation management and trends as well as the difference between innovation and invention and the factors that cause innovation to fail. They also look at case studies of innovative start-ups and explore industrial innovation in various sectors.