Applied research is an effective way to meet the Kingdom’s need to develop a strong research activity that focuses on achieving important national, social, and economic goals. This program aims to support specific research in areas that serve the Kingdom’s goal of enhancing and diversifying national income sources.

The program’s goals include the following:

• Building national capacities in specific strategic areas leading to the creation of national and long-term industries in the overall context of sustainability.
• Developing competitive research focusing on major health and social issues.
• Promoting the development of long-standing and long-term relations between universities and industry
• Achieving the Kingdom’s vision of building a knowledge-based society and economy.
• Supporting universities in developing a strategy for their scientific research, and to play a major role in the National Transformation Program 2020.

Researchers in universities and national research centers can benefit from this program. The targeted KPIs by 2020 include: registering 900 patents, publishing 1200 scientific papers in the approved main areas of the program, namely: water, energy, oil and gas and minerals, petrochemicals and materials, health and medicine, space and aeronautics, agriculture and food-industries, building and construction, information and communication technologies, environment, defense and security, and transportation and logistics.

Under this program, STU-UQU submitted 32 research proposals in 2017 and 15 proposals in 2018.