Arab state pours oil profits into science

摘要

How would you spend the profits from an oil well? That question was on the mind of about 200 Arab scientists who gathered in Doha, Qatar, late last month. The country's head of state, Emir Hammad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, has devoted a chunk of Qatar's fossil-fuel profits to research, and the region's expatriate scientists were brought together to advise how best to invest it. Get it right, said attendees, and the money could help create an internationally respected science base for the Arab world. "If it succeeds, it will change the whole region," says Hilal Lashuel, a Yemeni neuro-scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Lausanne. "Arabs will compete for the first time."