MUSCAT: The Research Council (TRC) announced on Tuesday the best three projects that will represent the Sultanate in the international Falling Walls Lab in Berlin on November 9 this year. The award of the best project, which will be participating in the Falling Walls Lab Finale in Berlin on November 8 and attend the Falling Walls Conference on November 9 went to Said al Farsi for his project titled ‘Breaking the Wall of Plastic’. Said’s project aimed at mixing the roots of mushrooms with the agricultural residues, such as sawdust and straw under certain conditions to produce a decayable product, rather than using plastic.
The second best contesting project was the project of Hasina al Rajaibi. The idea of her project, titled ‘Breaking the Wall of Natural Anti-fog’, was based on producing a natural, sustainable product that can keep the transparent surface with anti-fog property for more than 72 hours.
Zeyad al Ghrabi’s project titled ‘Breaking the Wall of Recognise of dates’ received the award of the third best project in this year’s competition. Zeyad’s project came up with a programme that compiles dates through a software that recognises its type and maturity using two tools; Date Recognition Programme and Automatic Date Picking Machine- D3 Printing.
The 20 finalists presented their research projects and business models, varying across different disciplines, in a duration of three minutes each in front of a high-calibre jury, consisting of experts from different academic, business and research fields, in an attempt to win the jury over with their innovative ideas.
Sayyid Dr Fahad bin Aljulanda al Said, Assistant Secretary-General for Innovation Development at TRC, said, “The Falling Walls Lab-Oman falls within the objectives of The Research Council towards the spread and promotion of the culture of innovation, scientific research and development, as well as the transformation of ideas into products. It is also part of the implementation of the National Innovation Strategy, which has become part of Oman Vision 2040.”
“Over the past four years, the competition received wide response from those interested. This year, the Sultanate was ranked the second in terms of the applications received, which reached 135 applications, just after India that had the highest number of applicants with 144 applications,” Sayyid Dr Fahad said.
According to Dr Abdullah al Abri, Executive Director of Ejaad, The Falling Walls is an opportunity to create new industries for the youngsters, entrepreneurs and the wider scientific community in Oman and across the region.
“Lots of Omanis continue to get high ranks at international competitions around the world, it is just how Oman can leverage on those international collaborations and drive the innovation-based forward,” he said.
“Innovation comes in so many forms and sizes, and no one size can fit all, but we know that we can invent anything that fits our culture and fits our environment,” Dr Abdullah added.
The final stage opening ceremony of the Falling Walls Lab Oman-2019 was held under the auspices of Dr Abdullah al Sarmi, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Higher Education, and attended by Dr Hilal al Hinai, Secretary-General of TRC, and Thomas Friedrich Schneider, Ambassador of Germany to Oman.
The Falling Walls Lab competition, which is organised by TRC for the fourth consecutive year, in collaboration with Falling Walls Foundation in Germany, aims at boosting innovative ideas and business models among researchers and entrepreneurs across different fields. The competition also provides a platform for up-and-coming researchers to meet up with some of the best accomplished scholars, thus offering a wonderful opportunity for emerging researchers and entrepreneurs from varying disciplines to expand their horizon and spike their interest in the research field even further through the Falling Walls Lab competition.
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