The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) has announced the winners of round 15 of the Information Technology Academia Collaboration (ITAC) program. Six out of 38 participating projects signed ITAC contracts.

ITAC program finances research projects from the cooperation between researches at universities and research centers and ICT companies. Such cooperation strengthens bonds between scientific research and IT industry on the one side and market needs on the other side.

The program is divided into three research fields, the first of which focuses on research related to e-design and ICT applications on  security, transportation, health, agriculture, energy, education and helping people with disabilities.

The second comprises six research areas including cloud computing, content analysis applications, social networks and business. The last one encompasses defined research areas as according to government entities requirements.

The early detection of cow mastitis is the first winning project, which targets early detection of diseases as  they directly impact the quality of produced milk.

The second project comes in line with the belief that people with disabilities are part of the society and their integration is quite important to boost the society towards prosperity.

The project helps people with disabilities to use computers through brain signals which are translated into orders to control devices especially computers.

Among the winning medical projects comes the remote 3D x-ray diagnosis using cloud computing to serve rural areas, helping to diagnose medical scans quickly and accurately.

Another project tackles the solar energy domain; the idea is to create a device to measure the effectiveness of solar panels using electric circuits, microprocessors and integrated systems.

Since its inception in 2006 and until round 15, ITAC provided funds for 80 joint research projects with companies and research centers.