Established by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the Applied Innovation Center (AIC) uses emerging information and communication technologies (ICT) such as AI, high-performance computing (HPC), blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, robotics, 5G, among others to develop and pilot innovative solutions to pressing national challenges.
The Center also works to develop skilled professionals and local expertise by engaging young people in IT applied research projects in line with development and sustainability essentials. It has a large team of about 65 ICT experts.
AIC acts as a link between scientific research and application, serving both citizens and the government. The Center partners with top national and foreign universities and academic and research institutions to carry out high-tech projects to solve societal problems, covering several domains, including healthcare, agriculture, natural language processing (NLP), resource management, urban planning, and others.
In healthcare, AIC and Alexandria University collaborated on a project for serving people with diabetes. An accurate system was devised for detecting early signs of diabetic retinopathy without a doctor’s help. Capitalizing on digital tools and AI technologies, the system captures and analyzes fundus photographs for the early detection and treatment of diabetic retinopathy, helping prevent vision loss and blindness.
The pilot version of the project achieved highly accurate results within, and even exceeding globally-achieved accuracy rates. Building on that success, the AIC team works to apply the system nationwide.
AIC also teamed up with the Agricultural Research Center to build an AI-powered system for agricultural land management, water efficiency, and crop health monitoring through low-resolution satellite imagery.
In the NLP domain, the Center developed cutting-edge engines for machine translation, text-to-speech, and speech recognition for colloquial Egyptian and its different dialects. The project involves developing AI-powered solutions for recognizing and translating colloquial Egyptian into European and Asian languages and vice versa, at high accuracy.
The developed machine translation applications can be used to translate media shows, books and articles. The applications can also be used to convert speech in colloquial Egyptian into text, as well as for a variety of other purposes, such as documenting meeting minutes.
Additionally, AIC has successfully developed text-to-speech applications that can be used in commercial ads, news shows, and digital media and entertainment production.
To provide the ultimate computing ability required for developing solutions, the Center has been equipped with a supercomputer that can run sophisticated scientific computations and process enormous amounts of data. AIC also plans to further expand its computing capacity this year to serve its projects.
AIC is strongly committed to exploiting advanced ICT tools to develop innovative applications and solutions in a way that accelerates the transition to a digital society and helps keep up with technological advancements. The Center also plays an important role in digital upskilling and developing young people’s skills through engaging young people in applied research projects.
In light of its remarkable achievements, AIC has been selected to represent Egypt in the CivTech Alliance, a global network of innovation programmes. With teams across 17 countries, through a unique ecosystem that brings together the best of government innovation, academic insight and entrepreneurial endeavor, CivTech Alliance strives to deliver systemic global impact - exponential solutions for exponential problems.
