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Ailyn Agonia
DOHA
THE new Dean of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q) Dr Michael Trick is keen on launching short courses on entrepreneurship to engage the wider community of Qatar.
Talking to the local media on Wednesday, Trick stressed the importance of entrepreneurship in view of the current situation in the region.
He mentioned plans to strengthen collaboration between CMU-Q and various local institutions including the different branch campuses within Education City in this regard.
"The blockade has led to identification of opportunities to further diversify the economy and become less reliant on other countries, and entrepreneurship is one of those opportunities. Entrepreneurship is a big part of our business programme here. We have MoUs with more than 27 organisations and many of them are interested in entrepreneurship programmes", he said.
He added that they plan to have more collaboration with other campuses in Education City foremost with Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in terms of improving the graduate programmes offerings of CMU-Q and further collaboration with other branch campuses on joint courses, cross-registrations and joint programmes.
The new dean and chief academic officer of CMU-Qatar who assumed leadership of Carnegie Mellon University's Doha campus recently is a researcher and educator in the field of operations research, with a specialisation in computational methods in optimisation. He is a two-time recipient of the George Leland Bach Award for best teacher in CMU's Tepper School of Business MBA programme.
In terms of furthering CMU-Q's strength in the field of research, Trick underscored the importance of reinforcing linkages with researchers in Carnegie Mellon main campus in Pittsburg and highlighted initiatives on computer science information system, such as in cybersecurity as well as pushing for researches that would contribute to the creation of vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystem in Qatar.
"As the economy of Qatar matures and moves away from mono-economy, we want to make sure that we are doing our part in creating a vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystem with tremendous opportunities in computer science and biology", he further pointed out.
According to Trick, the things learnt in business and entrepreneurship at CMU-Q can be applied across all the campuses here, whether it is Texas A&M Qatar, which creates engineers, or the Northwestern University Qatar which produces journalists.
Trick said he would focus on creating distinct student experience among Doha students by bringing the excitement of the main campus in Pittsburg to the branch campus in Qatar.
He said he would encourage more Pittsburg students to come to Doha and continue bring CMU-Q into the limelight through groundbreaking initiatives such as the Dean's Lecture Series.
Trick is the author of more than 50 professional publications and is the editor of six volumes of refereed articles. He has consulted extensively with the United States Postal Service on supply chain design, with Major League Baseball and a number of college basketball conferences on scheduling issues, and with telecommunications organisations on bandwidth allocation.
His years of experience in the field of sports, make him more excited about the upcoming hosting of Qatar of FIFA World Cup 2022 and expressed interest in contributing to the games.
"Scheduling the World Cup is a fascinating topic. I'll be particularly looking at how it is scheduled and what they come up with in order to use the various stadiums. It will be an interesting world here in 2022 as Qatar prepares for the world to come in," Trick said.
