ITIDA has signed funding contracts for the eleven research projects which won in the 13th round of the Information Technology Academic Collaboration (ITAC) initiative. This year, the initiative witnessed the largest number of winning projects since its launching.
The initiative aims to develop the ICT industry in Egypt by providing necessary funds for research projects resulting from the fruitful cooperation between universities and research centers, and information and communications systems companies.
ITAC also supports the graduation projects for engineering and computer science students. In this regard, ITIDA funded 44 projects during the academic year 2012- 2013 out of 223 teams submitting their proposals.
“Mobser” project owners who are engineering students at Munufia university were honored. The project, winning several prizes and occupying the first place in many contests, was funded by ITIDA.
Mobser is a guiding tool to help visual impaired with a belt provided with an Bluetooth headset to direct his moves in a safe, quick and easy manner. It also helps him recognize things he faces daily without help.
Mobser also alert visual impaired using vibration, in addition to mentioning the names of predefined objects, for example: chair to avoid, door for entry, through the Bluetooth headset. The system is able to identify other common objects according to the application and the user’s entourage.
Mobser team presented Egypt in global competitions including Idea to Prototype (I2P) competition in São Paulo in Brazil, last November. This is where the team occupied the first place in ICT championship, in addition to other prizes on local, regional and international levels.
ITIDA also signed a funding contract for a Product Development (PDP) Project. The awarded project was presented by Silicon Vision company in cooperation with the American University in Cairo, under the name “integrated electronic design for wireless applications with ZigBee protocol based on IEEE 802.15 standard” to design and market an integrated electronic circuit.
The project aims to fix the circuit in electronic applications and products like automating houses, medical equipment, cars and others.
Moreover, SmatTech presented a "Energy Harvesting" technology project, in cooperation with the American University in Cairo among the advanced research projects (ARP) category. It aims to save energy required for wireless sensing tools inside tires. This is to develop a new category of tire- pressure monitoring system (TPMS) in real time to extract energy from tire rotation and vibration, thus working automatically without the need for an energy resource or changing batteries.
At the same category, the committee accepted DecoR project presented by “Etkan” company for smart solutions in cooperation with Alexandria University. It is an experimental application focusing on interaction between information and communications technologies and the architectural and interior design in assistance of computer relying on augmented reality technology in service of the society, the market and workers in the field of real estate and furnishing.
The committee also agreed on “Wireless Starts” company proposal in cooperation with the Egyptian- Japanese university for science and technology to develop a sophisticated system dealing with traffic problem in Egypt and presenting innovative solutions.
“Social media analysis” comes among projects launched by ITIDA under the PRP research projects category provided. The project elaborated by Cairo University is a proposal of analysis for data of social media sites in Arabic to extract valuable information and evaluate public opinion towards some issues.
ITIDA determined proposals into two divisions: the first includes 9 strategic research categories which focus on the Egyptian society in the current stage including network security, electronic design, ICT applications in security, transportation, health, agriculture, energy, education and helping people with disabilities.
The second division includes 6 research categories representing the latest technologies and research trends in the global market of ICT. This includes mobile applications and cloud computing, content and social media analysis, internet of things, interactive cloud and gaming.
ITAC funded many joint research projects with companies, universities and research centers since launched in 2006 till 2013 where the total number of projects of the Product Development Project (PDP) program funded by the initiative is 19, and 36 for Advanced Research Program (ARP) and 11 for Preparatory Research Program (PRP) with a total of 66 project out of 450 proposals submitted by more than 140 company and 33 university and research center.
The program currently evaluates proposals of the fourteenth round where submission is already closed since last October. It is worth mentioning that the submission for the 15th round is on April 2014.
The initiative encourages cooperation between ICT industry men, universities and research centers through finding a connection between scientific research and IT industry on a side, and the market needs on the other side. This results in a value- added to IT companies, universities, researchers and IT community in Egypt.
