AGYA Establishes its Cairo Office at the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT)

Thanks to the support of the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT), the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities establishes an AGYA office in Cairo. The office is one result of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by ASRT and AGYA in July 2017. On 26 November 2017, AGYA and ASRT celebrated the hand-over of keys ceremony in Cairo.

On 26 November, AGYA and ASRT reaped the fruits of their longstanding and trustful cooperation: In a festive hand-over of keys ceremony, AGYA and ASRT celebrated the establishment of the AGYA Cairo regional office at the Egyptian Academy.
ASRT-President and AGYA Advisory Board member, Prof. Dr. Mahmoud Sakr, highlighted the great opportunities for deepening the scientific dialogue between Egypt and Germany that arise from the close cooperation between AGYA and ASRT: ‘With the AGYA office at our academy, we will intensify research collaborations between Egypt and Germany and in particular we will promote research exchange between Egyptian and German early-career scholars’. ‘The establishment of the AGYA Cairo office at ASRT underlines the mutual respect and trust between ASRT and AGYA’, emphasizes AGYA Principal Investigator (PI) and curator at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, Prof. Dr. Verena Lepper: ‘With the hand-over of keys for the new AGYA office at ASRT in Cairo we mark today the beginning of something great. The establishment of the office allows to further strengthen the Egyptian-German scientific relations and to support joint innovative research projects’. 

The hand-over of keys ceremony was held in the framework of the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the German-Egyptian Year of Science and Technology on the invitation of the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), together with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Science and Technology Development Fund (STDF). Thanking the BMBF, DAAD and STDF, Verena Lepper stressed the crucial role of His Excellency Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar: On the occasion of his visit to Germany in July this year the Memorandum of Understanding between AGYA and ASRT was signed.

On the previous day, AGYA and ASRT had already held a workshop together, in which they met with members of the Egyptian Young Academy of Sciences (EYAS) and representatives of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. The participants decided to intensify the future research cooperation between AGYA and EYAS to address common challenges. They believe that scientists should unite against terrorism. It was agreed that next year in conjunction with the official opening of the AGYA office in Cairo a joint interdisciplinary conference on science communication will be held, entitled: ‘science for all’.
 

26 November 2017
Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT), Cairo, Egypt