After nearly two years in development, a partnership between ASU and the United Arab Emirates will create opportunities for innovation, an ASU economic affairs official said.
ASU’s proposed plan will initially focus on the development of an innovation center modeled after ASU SkySong, said R. F. Shangraw, vice president for Research and Economic Affairs.
ASU has been in contact primarily with Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, of the UAE Ministry of the Economy, and Dubai Mayor Hussain Nasser Lootah to create a partnership based on technology innovation, urban planning and education, Shangraw said.
ASU attracted the UAE on a more personal level because Al Mansouri and Lootah are both ASU graduates.
“It’s about people who came here from UAE to get their degrees from ASU and they’re now back, they’re now senior officials and they’re now talking to us about ways that ASU can come over and help them address some of their issues,” Shangraw said.
Abu Dhabi and Dubai are the cities targeted by the partnership because of their similarities to Phoenix as growing cities in desert environments facing sustainability issues, Shangraw said.
“What they’re interested in doing is finding ways that they can collaborate with us in areas that we have some strong expertise in,” he said.
The proposed partnership focuses on three projects to be implemented in the UAE: an innovation center similar to ASU’s SkySong, a Decision Theater modeled after ASU’s decision-making research facility and the development of an educational platform exchange, Shangraw said, adding that the one aspect that has been approved is the innovation center.
“They’re going to move forward with this, and we have an initial agreement on the size and shape of this arrangement in terms of the innovation center,” he said.
The SkySong replica will focus on developing forms of alternative energy, the environment, education and information technology in the UAE, Shangraw said.
The UAE’s National Innovation Center is scheduled to be available by the end of 2010, Saeed Al Mansouri said, according to an article in The Khaleej Times.
Patricia Gober, co-director for ASU’s Decision Center for a Desert City, was one of five ASU faculty members who traveled to the UAE in October to meet with Al Mansouri and Lootah.
“Dubai and Abu Dhabi are growing extraordinarily quickly and to be able to marry their needs with our expertise was very attractive to both Al Mansouri and Lootah,” she said.
While the Decision Theater aspect of the proposal has not been approved, Gober said it looks positive and the special relationship between ASU and the UAE has added potential.
“It’s interesting that they sort of come back to the mothership, in a way, to look for ideas for how to move forward and come back to us for opportunities as well,” she said. “They lived in apartments on east side of campus, and so they remember being in those apartment complexes as students 20 years ago and now they’re in charge of the government.”
Gober said it is gratifying as an urban planning and sustainability professor to know that her students have the possibility of creating global progress.
“Some of those students, 20 years from now, are going to be out there changing the world, but you don’t really know who they are when you look out at that class,” she said.
Reach the reporter at slsnyder@asu.edu.
