Under the Patronage of His Excellency Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, Minister of Economy in the United Arab Emirates, the American University in the Emirates hosted its first International Research Conference on the 15th& 16th of November 2017, with the participation of 106 academics, researchers, and practitioners from more than 40 different countries, on the theme of “Creative Business and Social Innovation”.

The conference was inaugurated with the presence of his excellency Eng. Mohammed Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz Al Shehhi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy of the UAE, who spoke about the important role that innovation plays in contributing to the vision of the country and how universities play a vital role in contributing to supporting innovation in the country in all sectors particularly in the areas of smart strategy. Following his speech, The President of the American University in the Emirates asserted the University’s commitment to innovation over the past few years through various initiatives and research that is strongly aligned with the National Vision of the UAE. This was followed by the speech of the Vice President for Academic Affairs Prof. Abhilasha Singh who asserted that integrating research in education is what makes education valuable.

The conference welcomed two different keynote speakers, Prof. Suzanne Ortega who is the President of the Council of Graduate Schools, who spoke about the impacts of research on the public and Prof. Galal Hassan Galal-Edeen from Cairo University & UCL & University of London, who presented his fascinating ideas on how innovation should be implemented in universities so that students can contribute in making an interesting social change no matter how small that change can be.

Academics, practitioners, researchers, policy makers and students were brought together in this conference to share and discuss the challenges and solutions in contemporary disciplines. Participates presented their papers in 4 different sessions. Jacek Mikucki and his colleague Michal Glowacki from the University of Warsaw as an example, presented a paper under the title of Cities as a Platform: Case Study of Berlin & Warsaw which highlighted the differences between how smart cities and media are perceived by the two cities.

The second day of the conference featured various papers presentations and the presentation of the 3rd keynote speaker Prof. Ali Emrouznejad from Aston University, who explained to the attendees all about the importance of collecting data and big data in education and all other sectors emphasizing on the Smart City cases. A ceremony of awards was organized to honor the best papers with the presences of the participants and the members of faculty and admin. The conference was concluded with an enriching given by Pro. Ali Emrouznejad on “Data Envelopment Analysis” were he continued to explain the various ways of how bid data is collected and how to benefit from it using different software like IPM.