Dr. Oskar Ziemelis, GRC Director of Cooperation and Sanya Kapasi, Administration Manager represented the GRC Foundation at the Smart Cities Innovation Summer School, which took place as part of the INCONET-GCC2 project in Volos, Greece on 7-10 September 2015. The summer school, entitled: “Collective Awareness Platforms for Smart Cities Development” was hosted by the University of Thessaly and brought together 25 researchers and experts interested in Smart Cities from the GCC and the EU. The overall goal of the INCONET-GCC2 project is to support the GCC-EU policy dialogue in Science, Technology and Innovation, and to strengthen GCC-EU cooperation among research and innovation actors, especially in the context of the Horizon 2020 program.
As part of the researcher mobility task in the INCONET-GCC2 project, the GRC Foundation organized a call for joint GCC-EU projects in the area of Smart Cities to stimulate researcher mobility between the GCC and the EU. Eight researchers from the GCC countries proposed joint projects and received researcher mobility grants from the project to participate in the Smart Cities Innovation Summer School. Following the summer school, joint research proposals will be tracked and supported through researcher–mobility-specific advice with the goal of extending and enhancing GCC-EU researcher mobility.
Dr. Christian Koch participated in a two-day track II coordination meeting on Syria focused on regional interests in Brussels, Belgium. The event was sponsored by the European Institute of Peace, Search for Common Ground and the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF).
Dr. Christian Koch, Director of the GRC Foundation, held the following meeting in Brussels:
• Amb. Amal Al-Hamad, Ambassador of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Brussels
• Dario Christiani of the Institute for European Studies, Vrije University, Brussels
• Merete Bilde and Benoit Chapas, European External Action Service (EEAS)
• Amb. Martin Fleischer, Vice-President for Regional Security, Kawa Hassan, Director, Middle East and North Africa Program, and Wael Abdul-Shafi, Program Coordinator, East-West Institute, Brussels.
Dr. Abdulaziz Sager, Chairman of the Gulf Research Center spoke at briefing event of UBS Bank in Zurich, Switzerland on June 9, 2015 on the topic of "Energy, Fracking, IS, Iran: Business Challenges and Opportunities in the Middle East." In his presentation, Dr. Sager focused on the geostrategic and economic developments in the region and how those development impact the overall business environment.Business
Dr. Mohamed Abdel Raouf, Research Fellow - GRC Environment Research Program, participated in the conference entitled “Green Jobs in the Middle East and North Africa” held in Tunis, Tunisia on 4 June 2015 organized by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Dr. Raouf delivered a presentation titled “What are Green Jobs? Prospects of Green Jobs in the MENA Region.”
Dr. Christian Koch participated in the 20th Arab-German Business Forum organized by the Arab-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry and held in Berlin, Germany. The event brought together more than 500 representatives from the Germany and Middle East Business Community. The Sultanate Oman was the country of focus.
Dr. Koch also held meeting with Dr. Edmund Ratka, Desk Officer in the Middle East and North Africa Department of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Berlin to discuss the GRC/Adenauer Foundation event on Yemen to be held in July 2017.
