On their way to university last year, a couple of students in Amman were running late.
Ala' Ibrahim Abu-Lail was in a car, and a friend was at the wheel. The driver was speeding and the car flipped. Ms Abu-Lail survived without any serious injuries but her friend was left a quadriplegic.
The friend has since returned home to Kuwait, while Ms Abu-Lail, a student at Jordan University of Science and Technology, has devised a voice-controlled wheelchair. She spent US$800 (Dh2,938) on a prototype of the chair, which she discussed publicly for the first time at the first Arab Innovation Network (AIN) conference in Abu Dhabi this month.
"In Jordan we do not have this kind of gathering from where we can learn [about other students' work]," says Ms Abu-Lail, 23.
To encourage networking among young innovators like Ms Abu-Lail, and push private companies to support research in the Arab world, a group of students and recent alumni of Cambridge University from the region organised their first conference in the capital. The group, the Arab Innovation Network Society of the University of Cambridge, says it was a platform for university students from the Middle East to showcase science projects and compete for prizes.
Their association is open to Arab university students, regardless of whether they went to Cambridge.
"Innovation can happen within networks, which has to be flexible and supportive and have a clear sense of purpose," Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, UAE Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, said at the conference.
"Hope you will touch upon the challenges facing us and young entrepreneurs, including quality of education, few resources devoted to research, and limited research supported by the private sector."
In 2008, the public and private sectors in the Arab countries cut spending on research as a percentage of their GDP, according to the United Nations Development Programme's Arab Knowledge Report released this year.
In Kuwait it was 0.09 per cent while it was 0.23 per cent in Egypt. By contrast, it was 3.46 per cent in Finland, 2.52 per cent in Singapore and 4.86 per cent in Israel.
While groups like AIN help innovators with networking, maintaining the enthusiasm of the wider innovation community in the Arab world can be tough, says Mohamed Khater, the director of the programme for management, policy and innovation in Middle East at Cambridge University.
Other challenges include "finding the resources to continue organising events regularly and maintaining AIN's daily activities, and mobilising other stakeholders like governments, businesses, universities, and financial vehicles while maintaining a neutral standpoint as a volunteer organisation."
That said, some of the IT and internet-based projects at the conference caught his fancy as an investor, too. But these need some tweaking to be marketable, he says.
At the conference, 24 students showcased their projects on health, environment, communication and entrepreneurship. These included a prenatal app that would help pregnant mothers to receive medical information, a digital walking stick for blind people - both from Emirati students - and, from a Palestinian student, a way to use geographic information systems for sustainable agriculture and waste water reuse.
"Most ideas are too premature to be commercialised," says Mariam Al Qubaisi, a co-ordinator of the conference and a co-founder of the alumni group. "So, we need to invest in brains; these people need mentorship." The network aims to put the competition winners in touch with academic or industrial partners who can help them to further develop their ideas and teach cash flow for their enterprises.
In 2009, Ms Al Qubaisi won a large sum at an entrepreneurship competition. She spent it on business-building within a month.
Ms Abu-Lail's voice-controlled wheelchair won first prize in the health category. Though there is no money involved, she learnt that registering her equipment was important to prevent plagiarism. "Many presented ideas [at the conference] for collaboration to move forward whether in enhancing or marketing my project," she says.
