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QATAR University (QU) has announced the official launch of a new Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research Unit (BPRU) under QU Health. QU Health started operating in January, 2017, for integration of health research at the university, with the aim to create a dynamic environment that embraces qualified experts in health care professional education and practice.
QU Health also includes College of Medicine, College of Pharmacy, College of Health Sciences, and the recently established College of Dental Medicine.
The BPRU brings together researchers from several colleges forming multidisciplinary research teams that share resources and infrastructure. In this dynamic and ever changing environment of global research landscape, universities are forming theme-based interdisciplinary structures, where researchers sharing common vision and interests collaborate across organisational and work at different science disciplines’ boundaries. A research strategy strongly promoting interdisciplinary research for optimising use of resources, maximising research/education output, and creating a framework that builds on academic success is essential.
In terms of educational strategy, one of the scopes of the BPRU is to put emphasis on the establishment of interdisciplinary disease-based graduate programmes around the various thematic research areas according to Qatar National priorities.
Moreover, the interdisciplinary disease-approached research with a “problem and solution-based approach” adopted by this unit will aim to address Qatar’s grand health challenges with the ultimate goal to support the country’s efforts to advance health care.
At present, BPRU hosts and supports more than 40 principal investigators and personnel from four different QU Health Colleges. The unit strives and embrace consolidating health research sector at QU through building critical mass of researchers from other QU Colleges and Centers with overlapping research scope. The research thematic areas of BPRU have been strategically selected based on the research strengths and capacities that QU currently possesses. BPRU aims to focus on research addressing the grand challenges that Qatar’s health sector is currently facing. BPRU research focuses on the following mains themes of biomedical & pharmaceutical research: cancer, diabetes and metabolic disorders, cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases and reproductive medicine. Another important research area is drug discovery and development, which will be an integrated component of all the aforementioned thematic areas.
“We at BPRU are actively pursuing national and international research ties aiming to secure more funding opportunities and eyeing meaningful quality research, said Dr Michail Nomikos, head of Research and Graduate studies of the College of Medicine and the acting head of the BPRU.
“It took almost a year of preparations until the official establishment of this unit. Thanks to the hard work of the QU Health Implementation Committee and Dr Feras Alali (Director of Research and Graduate Studies at QU Health), as well as the continuous support from the deans of the four QU Health colleges, the vice president for Medical and Health Sciences and the president of Qatar University, thje unit has now become functional”, Dr Alali added.
“We are excited to witness the rapid expansion and the structural solidification of biomedical research at QU Health under this new unit. I totally believe this unit would be a huge asset and step forward in securing QU among the key players in health research in Qatar and the globe”, Alali said.
Dr Asmaa Althani, associate vice president for Strategic Planning remarked, “The newly established unit will support the graduate programmes in QU Health, considering the future direction of this new identity to accommodate both health cluster PhD arms (biomedical & pharmaceuticals sciences, as well as population medicine)”.
The Vice President for Medical and Health Sciences Dr Egon Toft said, “with this initiative we aim at driving the basic medical sciences research to a higher level in the country and be a strong collaborative pillar to do this in collaboration with the other institutions doing basic medical research in Qatar”.
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19/10/2020
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