Empower Generations Consortium at QU Excelled to Finalists for Times Higher Education Award

Doha, September 28 (QNA) - The Empower Generation Consortium (EGC) at Qatar University (QU) has been informed that they excelled to the finalist for the THE Asia in lieu of the category "The students recruitment campaign of Asia". The excellence proposal was submitted among hundreds of entries for the year 2020. The other projects competing the EGC on the finalist are strong Asian projects including; the Independent University in Bangladesh, National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), National University of Singapore, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), and Tokyo University of Science. "The consortium operates three educational projects: Science Education and Human Health Activities (SEHHA), Qatar Scientists in BioDiversity (QSBD) and Genomics and Precision Medicine (GPM). Each project has competency scheme from 1 to 4. We operate the consortium on the basis of genuine engagement of high school students with faculty and researchers, providing accessible role models and hands on training" team member of the EGC at Qatar University Rasha Abu-El-Ruz said. On this occasion, Professor of Virology and the founder of EGC Dr. Asmaa Al Thani stated: "The consortiums vision is to enhance the national human capacities in different healthcare specialties. The consortium is a model for high impact collaborative projects that exhibit the active role of Qatar University in evaluating the markets occupational demands and developing solutions for capacity shortage, we eventually aim to achieving a national base of human resources in healthcare and life sciences." Dr. Al Thani added; "the project has a tremendous increase in the health sciences enrollments at Qatar University from 9% in 2013 to 57% in 2019. The most recent data indicate that around 47.4% of the College of Health Sciences and 59.7% of the QU-Health students have been enrolled in this project during their schooling experience." This demonstrates the role of EGC as a powerful platform of attracting students to study health majors, an area that is needed for Qatar and its health sector. The project was nominated by the Professor in Pharmaceutics and the Acting Director of Research Planning and Development at the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, at Qatar University, Dr. Abdelbary Elhissi who said: "THE Award recognizes outstanding academic initiatives and capacity building in higher education. The nominated EGC has shown great potential to compete on the award as a new vision of higher education excellence. The initiative of Qatar University for recruiting students reflects its commitments towards the society and its leading role in transforming higher education and establishing knowledge economy in Qatar". Special Projects Manager at THE (Times Higher Education) David Suter, mentioned that EGC at Qatar University has been nominated to the finalists among hundreds of excellent entries this year, we ended up with eight projects in each category. Reiterating that the Empowering Generations has been sponsored formerly by Sidra Medicine and currently by Qatar Biobank and Qatar Genome. The consortium's history is full with achievements, it won several awards including; the "Oscar of Education on the Middle-East", the Worlds Gold for the Discipline of "Life Sciences" and the World's Silver for the "Best University-Employer Partnership in 2019 at QS- Reimagine Education conference in London-UK. Reimagine celebrates and reward the most successful educational and innovative projects that enhance the learning outcomes and employability annually through the conference. (QNA)