The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) has signed funding contracts to finance seven joint research projects, with a total subsidy of up to 4,000,700 Egyptian pounds, during Round 19 of the Information Technology Academia Collaboration (ITAC) Program.
12 research proposals, out of 31 research projects submitted in this round, have won.
ITAC funded 122 joint research projects out of 672 research proposals since its launch in 2006 and till its round 19 in which ITIDA signed contracts for funding the first batch of the winning projects. The program is currently assessing the proposals of round 20 which its registration has been closed in March.
The program targets developing the Egyptian ICT industry through funding research projects, the result of collaboration among researchers in universities, research centers and ICT companies, seeking to link between scientific research and the IT industry on the one hand and the needs of the market on the other hand.
Among the projects winning this round’s support was the project of developing and implementing a platform to support the development of Internet of Things (IoT) software, based on Bluetooth energy-saving technology. It is a platform to support the development of IoT software, aiming to facilitate the development of new software and hardware that serve researchers and companies relying on Bluetooth energy-saving technology.
Another project for developing application code analysis tools has also won. It addresses applications and software used in manufacturing cars, aircrafts and medical devices, measuring its compliance with international safety standards. The project targets an algorithm that can analyze codes, discovering events that could lead to catastrophic problems that may occur inside modern smart cars through using certain smart techniques.
Finally, the project of designing a series multiple -systems terminal that operates at 12 Gbps with low power consumption has also won in this round. The project market value lies in the absence of a business entity in Egypt that owns the intellectual property of a series terminal, compatible with a number of systems, which the research team seeks to design.
This is in addition to funding other four projects, including the project of designing and developing a smart system of surveillance cameras in crowded places such as airports, metro stations, trains and markets, and also the project of recognizing the intended meanings of opinions expressed in the Arab tweets. This is in addition to the project of extracting genomic implications to diagnose and classify epidemics and diseases with microbial or viral nature, seeking to understand how they work and their impacts on the cells.
Finally, ITIDA financed, as well, a project for examining printed circuit boards via using smart analysis of thermal imaging.
ITAC program focuses on three major research pivots; the first section is dedicated to strategic research areas, comprising nine areas, notably research on network security, electronic designing, and ICT applications in the areas of security, transportation, health, agriculture, energy, education and assisting people with disabilities.
The second section includes seven research areas representing the latest technologies and research interests and trends in the ICT global market. The section covers mobile applications, cloud computing, applications of analyzing data in general and big data in particular, things networks, interactive computing, games applications and smart machines. While the third section includes specific research points as requested by government entities, ministries or governorates.
Electronics and integrated systems research projects, about 38 research projects, topped the winning research projects list since the launch of the program, followed by ICT health applications, about 13 research projects, and then comes computing and mobile phone applications, about 12 proposals, and finally applications of analyzing data and big data which were about 10 research proposals.
