English 
Under the auspices of Professor Dr. Abdelaziz Konsowa, President of Alexandria University, Dr. Ali Abdelmohsen, Acting Vice President for Education and Student Affairs, received today a delegation from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with the aim of reviewing the Egyptian efforts in supporting innovation activities.
The meeting comes within the framework of joint work with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the National Innovation Policy Review Project, in supporting national entities, to stimulate innovation as a driver for achieving growth and sustainable development, enhancing the role of innovation in achieving national goals, and enhancing governance mechanisms for innovation fields in a way that reflects national efforts in this field, and ways to support entrepreneurship to increase Egypt's economic competitiveness.
The meeting was attended by Dr. Reem Hafez, Head of the Applied Linguistics Program at the Faculty of Arts, Dr. Sarah Osama Maklad, Communications Officer at the PILOT Incubator, and Dr. Mohamed Sultan, Financial Affairs Officer at the PILOT Incubator.
In his speech, Dr. Ali Abdelmohsen referred to the vision of Alexandria University in supporting innovation and applicable scientific research, cooperation between academia and industry, and ways to benefit from research outputs and projects, and develop the concept of knowledge-based industry, by employing scientific research to solve industry problems, which comes within the framework of the strategy of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Egypt's Vision 2030. He pointed out that Alexandria University is leading the Northern Alliance, which includes several partners from higher education institutions, scientific research and industry, with the aim of enhancing scientific and research cooperation between universities and the industrial and business community in its comprehensive concept, stimulating the knowledge economy in cooperation with industry, expanding the establishment of business incubators within the university, and continuously developing academic programs and curricula in cooperation with industry partners.
During the meeting, a presentation was given about the Centre for Educational Innovations and Distance Learning at Alexandria University and the services provided by this centre to help present innovative ideas in the field of educational technology and how to serve the education sector to develop these ideas through obtaining free training courses, using the prototype implementation lab, and providing funding of up to 200,000 Egyptian pounds to establish companies through the "INTILAC Program" funded by the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology and managed by the Educational Innovations Business Incubator at Alexandria University. The training includes ways to generate and develop innovative ideas, market study and economic feasibility study, technical study and financial study of the project, sources of funding, foundations of marketing and sales, basics of managing emerging projects, legal foundations for establishing companies and protecting intellectual property, in addition to the centre’s role in providing technical support to faculty members, producing electronic and digital courses, organizing workshops on digital education, international conferences periodically and seasonal training programs for faculty members, as well as many activities and initiatives.
