King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) announced its intension to establish 3 Technological Innovative Centers affiliated to it in 3 leading Saudi universities that are King Abdulaziz University (KAU), King Saud University (KSU) and King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM). These universities won the opening tournament of KACST’s Program for Technological Innovation Centers after a competition to which 90 proposals from various Saudi universities were submitted.
After signing the related agreement on 26th current Jumada Al-Akhirah, KACST will start establishing the winning technological innovation centers with a cost up to 30 million riyal annually for five years with 10 million riyal for each center. Partners from the industrial sector will be encouraged to finance activities of all technological innovation centers with no limits to the financing volume.
KACST had received more than 90 letters of intent from the Saudi universities to participate in the Program of Technological Innovation Centers. These letters were revised by an independent committee then reviewed by an international committee. Winning universities have been chosen according to number of criteria that guarantee the capabilities of these centers to contribute to the effective research cooperation between the industrial sector and the academic one, facing challenges that may arise besides their role in education and training that meet industry’s needs in the kingdom.
King Saud University (KSU) won with its proposal for Photonics and Radio Technology Center   that concentrates on advanced and renewable technologies that secure demanded advanced products that give new resources to generate wealth and work opportunities for the society members. The proposal also provides high-frequency electronic services, advanced networks and remote-sensing that would yield highly beneficial applications for environmental remote-sensing and petroleum and chemical industries besides a number of other important applications.
 King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals.won the innovation center for Carbon Capture & Sequestration in fields of environment and energy that will constitute an effective contribution on the regional level that is considered one of the hardest challenges that face the industrial sector.
The third winning proposal was that of King Abdulaziz University for innovative center for Specialized Personal Medicine in fields of biotechnology and medical technology. The center will perform advanced and specialized researches in the field of personal medicine as it will also target securing detailed medical treatments according to the real needs of each patient by himself or herself. This proposed center will secure a unique opportunity of its type to conduct multi-specialized researches to detect genetic changes in the Saudi society that will consequently lead to saving spending on the health sector through eliminating cases of wrong diagnosis, side effects, buying expensive medicines and unjustified hospital-beds occupation.
Through this program, KACST aspires to achieve four main objectives: accomplishing the kingdom’s social and economic goals; developing research cooperation and technology transfer between industry sector and universities in the kingdom; boosting   university research and education in sciences and engineering in the kingdom besides applying best practices and features of successful programs of countries similar to the kingdom regarding structure, incentives and requirements.
It is worth mentioning that the program of technological innovation centers was launched in 2009 as one of the Science, Technology and Innovation National Plan programs with the aim of creating a chain of cooperative research centers between universities and the private industrial sector at leading universities in the kingdom. The vision of this program is to incite cooperative research between the academic sector and industry, financing researches that are closely related to industry at universities, fostering research and academic excellence in fields of priority, facilitating aspects of effective partnership that end by developing and commercializing technology and inciting adopting the best practices in managing research and development.