Qassim University

Qassim University is an extra comprehensive university, located in an intermediate area between the cities and governorates of Qassim region, and quite close to Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz International Airport, and to the capital city of the region Buraydah. The main campus site area is roughly 7.8 million m². The university has two satellite campuses located in two major cities of the region Unizah and Arrass. The university covers over 59 scientific specializations such as:

• Business and Economics
• Legitimacy, Islamic studies and Law
• Arabic, English Languages and Linguistics, and Humanitarian
• Physical & Biological Sciences
• Engineering
• Computer Science and Engineering
• Architecture and Planning
• Design
• Health:
  • Medicine & Surgery
  • Pharmacy
  • Dentistry
  • Medical Applied Sciences
  • Nursing
  • Medical Rehabilitation Sciences
  • Public Health and Informatics
• Education
• Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine

The university offers a number of academic programs with over 59 programs grants a bachelor’s degree (Deanship of Admission and Registration), over 62 programs grant master's degree, and over 19 programs grant PhD's degree (Deanship of Graduate Studies).

Qassim University has recently released its new strategic plan 2020-2025 which obviously contributes toward the achievement of the Kingdom vision 2030's objectives through applying the foundations of sustainability in research and development system, as well as in educational and professional programs at the university and adopting initiatives, projects and action plan to provide the university with applied research and high-quality educational programs in the fields of developmental, food, and sustainable natural and financial resources. Qassim University also believes in the importance of technology in the educational and research fields, hence one of its strategic objectives is improving technical, information performance and promoting digital transformation, which includes a number of strategic initiatives and projects such as artificial intelligence, data governance, and others.

Qassim University pursues in its education strategy the application of standards and foundations of quality assurance and accreditation, which resulted in fully accreditation of the university until 2027 by the National Center for Academic Accreditation and Assessment in the Kingdom. Moreover, many academic programs of the university have been accredited and recognized either nationally (23 academic programs) or internationally (15 academic programs) (Deanship of Development and Quality). Also, the university develops and improves its outputs through the use of a number of modern teaching methods, and strategies, inclusion of cooperative training programs and the introduction and development of programs to meet the requirements of the labor market. In addition, there was a noticeable development in the adoption of electronic learning in Qassim University. The number of electronic courses were developed from 3 courses on 2015/2016 to 459 courses in 2020/2021. On the other hand, the university is developing the performance of faculty members and those of similar standing and employees through special training programs provided by the Leadership and Capacity Development Center.

Along with providing a high quality education, Qassim University also gives a high priority to scientific research. Therefore, the Scientific Research Deanship has recently released its Scientific Research Strategy for the upcoming 5 years 2020-2025. The scientific research strategy of Qassim University was based on the university’s capabilities in line with national priorities and regional challenges and opportunities. The activities and outputs of the strategy include pioneering research activities that foster innovation and entrepreneurship, support the process of continuous development and improvement in academic programs, support research skills, develop and improve activities of community service. Obviously, the research strategy also contributes to the university’s role in achieving objectives of the Kingdome Vision 2030, as scientific research and development is a vital element that helps the nation to accomplish its ambitious long-term goals. The research strategy can be summarized in 10 priorities including:

• Sustainable and value chain research in agricultural and veterinary sciences.
• Prevention and control of non-communicable diseases.
• Sustainable Developments in the Energy, Water, and Environmental Engineering Sectors.
• Management of common Infectious Diseases.
• Increase the internal capability of researchers and research staff to perform excellent research.
• Roadmap for Sustainable Development of Qassim Region.
• Proposed approaches for Cybersecurity towards KSA Digital transformation.
• Innovative Biotechnology and nanotechnology for a healthy life.
• Development of Smart Cities.
• Application-based Intelligent Analytics for Problem Solving.

Additionally, the university established five research centers under the umbrella of the Scientific Research Deanship, where financial and technical supports are provided for researchers through grants, research projects, and special training programs. The University also shows interest in encouraging and motivating researchers through different support programs such as research awards, rewards and certificates of appreciation to faculty, teaching staff and students to enhance the scientific research output and recognize the distinguished researchers.

Furthermore, a number of specialized centers are established at the university to serve students, faculty staff, leaders, and the society including:

• The Leadership and Capacity Development Center Providing special training for the university staff and leaders, and preparing new recruited staff with all the needed skills for academics needs.
• The Sustainable Development Center: Applying and enabling all the sustainability measures and performance indicators along with increase of the awareness of sustainability among students, faculty and staff members, and leaders of the university.
• The Information and Decision Support Center: Assist decision makers with the appropriate data analytics and statistics regarding students, staff members, and the university proprieties and capacity.  
• The Center for International Cooperation and Knowledge Exchange
• The Innovation and Intellectual Property Center
• The university also has a distinguished community partnerships with various programs that performed through the colleges and the Deanship of Community Service.

Qassim University prepares and qualifies students to acquire knowledge and skills of scientific, critical, creative and professional thinking, in accordance with the requirements of academic accreditation standards and create programs that meet the requirements of the labor market and the needs of society.

Qassim University has created educational partnerships with other institutions on both national and international levels, which enhance the educational outcomes of the programs and support the studying journey of its students. Believing in the importance of the educational partnership, the university established the Center for International Cooperation and Knowledge Exchange, which is entrusted with making agreements in the educational and research fields to benefit from international experiences in targeted areas. Also, the university has a cultural diversity of faculty members who hold PhD degrees from different countries and scientific institutions around the world, which has a positive impact on providing students with excellent skills. The university has introduced in its developed programs cooperative training, so that students are fully aware of field problems and how to deal with them, which enhances their capabilities to perform their societal role in a way that achieves development.

Qassim University also offers full and partial scholarship students for international students from different countries that enrich cultural diversity and coexistence with multiple nationalities. These scholarships offered for Diploma, bachelor, master, and PhD students from different part of the world (Deanship of Student Affairs; Deanship of Admission and Registration; Deanship of Graduate Studies). 

Students & Research

Qassim University encourages and motivates students to participate in research work and innovation through the Innovation and Intellectual Property Center as well as the Scientific Research Deanship. The SRD provides training programs concentrate on developing the research skills of students, financial support, research awards and other type of supports to students. Also, the university's libraries provide access to a huge resource of knowledge and information via the various resources including hard books, journal, E-books, and subscriptions to multiple global-data base platforms. Additionally, the university provide a special support for students participate in research grants managed by the SRD, that involves a fixed salary for participated students, and research training programs.

Environment

Qassim University provides the requirements and principles of sustainability in all its facilities to provide a good learning environment through its location in a rural area, greenery, renewable energy and others. Also, the university provides to all its employees including students, the requirements of people with special needs in all its facilities to provide them with comfort and caring educationally, socially, culturally, and sports. The university also has a quite big hospital and a group of medical clinics that provide health care to students and university employees free of charge. Also, if you are a fan of pets or large animal, the university provides different veterinarian health services through the Qassim University Veterinary Hospital where faculty members, and students of the Veterinary Department demonstrated and trained professionally.

Qassim University provides an attractive educational environment for international scholarship students through housing on campus, supplied with all means of livelihood and various activities, so students can easily access the classrooms. These are carried out under the supervision of the Deanship of Student Affairs.

Different type of lifestyle can be experienced by studying at Qassim University including living in urban or rural area at affordable price. As student and faculty members can choose between living in large cities or enjoying the quietness and fresh airs of the country side between lovely farms and fresh air with fully access to all different services including health, grocery market, etc. Also, during the winter and spring seasons you can enjoy and experience the lovely cold and rainy weather in the dessert, and have an exceptional adventure in the sahara with the lovely local people of Qassim region, and have a taste of local exceptional harvested food.

Students Activates and Supports

Qassim University provides various student activities, cultural, social and sports as well as student special supports via the Deanship of Student Affairs. Students and faculty members can enjoy different sport activities in the university sports city and 15 sport stadium established for different type of sports such as tennis court, basketball, volley ball, football, swimming pool, and other activities. Also, the university encourages the formation of student clubs and societies and honoring the distinguished annually, which contributes to the rehabilitation and building of a community personality that capable of leadership, team work and self-dependence.

Qassim University adopts initiatives and priorities for applied research and high-quality educational programs in various fields such as renewable energy, developmental and food security, and the sustainability of natural and financial resources and other fields. Hence, the university has set a number of projects that enhance the educational and research process, including obtaining academic accreditation of all distinguished programs nationally and internationally; partnership and twinning in the field of programs, plans and curricula; activating the university's research identity; activating the research and development system, and marketing scientific research products, and other.

To achieve that the university attracts and retains distinguished faculty members, stimulates research innovations, and adopts projects related to attracting distinguished students and staff in targeted disciplines. In order to enhance excellence, innovation and leadership. Recently, the university has established the innovation and intellectual property center to encourage and stimulate these skills, and encouraged and stimulated scientific publishing in peer-reviewed journals. In the belief of the university with the importance of educational and research partnership, the university established the Center for International Cooperation and Knowledge Exchange.

Additionally, the Scientific Research Deanship at Qassim University provides both financial and technical supports for researchers through grants, research projects, and training programs. It also encourages and motivate researchers by different approaches such as introducing awards, rewards and certificates of appreciation to faculty, teaching staff and students to enhance the scientific research's quality, quantity, and impact, and recognize the distinguished researchers among the university staff and students.

The Scientific Research Deanship has recently released its 5-years Scientific Research Strategy for 2020-2025, which was set on the university’s capabilities in line with national priorities and regional challenges and opportunities. The activities and outputs of the strategy include pioneering research activities that foster innovation and entrepreneurship, support the process of continuous development and improvement in academic programs, support for research skills, develop their activities and improve them to serve the community. Ten major priorities in different fields were set for the research strategy summarized as follow:

• Sustainable and value chain research in agricultural and veterinary sciences

This priority addresses the sustainability of agricultural and animal health. Research activities under this priority deal with many topics such as industrial transfer of dates, recycling of date palm waste to valuable products, production of biofertilizers and biocontrol agents, and the development of local strains of broiler and laying hens. It also involves camel heath and production, mass production of natural enemies to eliminate the effect of destructive pests and reduce the use of harmful chemical pesticides, as well as finding effective ways to rationalize irrigation water and conserve water resources. All activities proposed in this priority are in line with international research and development trends (R&D) and targeting the goals stated by United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Outcomes of this research priority will enhance the global R&D trends through different means such as increase healthy farm products resulted in improving public health, reduction of environment contamination, and other.

• Prevention and control of non-communicable diseases

This priority addresses noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) as a global health, and facilitates research on prevention of NCDs and improvement of health care.

• Sustainable Developments in the Energy, Water, and Environmental Engineering Sectors

Energy and water systems have often been treated as a separate system over the entire pathway from production to consumption. However, their close interdependence requires some perspective of the water-energy nexus, especially in regions with very high water stresses combined with a myriad of rapid changes in resource production and consumption. The proposed research areas within this priority address 7 out of 17 Goals of Sustainable Development established by UN to transform our world including clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, industry, innovation, and infrastructure, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, and life below water

• Management of common Infectious Diseases

Infectious diseases considered a significant public health concern and cause considerable socioeconomic problems worldwide. So, this priority addresses the fundamental issues that are continuing to cause both health and economic problems in the country and try to minimize the spread of various communicable diseases transmitted from animal to human or from human to human; through the development of vaccines to prevent and manage the spread of disease. Also, as Infectious disease can spread from person to person and can travel from county to country, this priority is intended to reduce the burden of global infectious diseases through the management and control of the infectious diseases common in Saudi Arabia as well as by working with international partners.

• Proposed approaches for Cybersecurity towards KSA Digital transformation

One of the main pillars of Kingdom 2030 vision is the digital transformation, which creates a wide use and reliance on the technology, yet give a rise to the risk of cybercrimes/cyberattacks. Therefore, cybersecurity researches becomes one of the most important subjects that are under consideration around the world by governments, businesses and academia. In this research priority, Qassim University aims to perform multiple Cybersecurity research activities to enhance cybersecurity on the digital transformation. These activities include developing intrusion detection systems, access control and privacy protection and frameworks for analyzing the implementation of the cybersecurity regulation in Saudi Arabia and the big data security analytics. Moreover, the university aims to establish several collaborative MSc programs with international universities in USA and UK which can focus on cybersecurity R&D trends.

• Innovative Biotechnology and nanotechnology for a healthy life

Biotechnology and nanotechnology are disciplines that developed from the interaction of physical sciences, molecular engineering, biology, chemistry, and biotechnology, and holds major advances in pharmaceuticals and health care in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of various disease. Biotechnology and nanotechnology research is a promising field that can generate income, and can initially focus on the improvement of dangerous diseases treatment. Globally, nanoparticles have become part of daily life as they found in fertilizers, and cosmetics, for instance. Given the breadth of the potential applications, nanotechnology has become a research priority for many countries, as shown by the UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 in. Thus, the outcome of this research priority will focus directly on bettering the health of chronic disease patients such as cancer patients, etc. around the globe.

• Development of Smart Cities

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities today, with that figure set to rise over the coming decades. There is a pressure on cities to provide better and more efficient infrastructures and services. To address the growing demand from residents to deliver a better quality of life, cities should rely on information and communications technology, infrastructure and intelligent devices or what so called smart cities, where cities integrates the quality of life for its citizens, the energy-efficient, the local economy, transport, traffic management, environment, public safety and interaction with government for future cities developments. This research priority aims to pave the way for improving the quality of life in Saudi Arabia, and the globe. The university has the capacity in terms of highly-qualified researchers having multi-disciplinary research teams from different applied sciences departments to achieve sustainable smart cities with strategies that focus on autonomous Security/Safety Systems, Physical Infrastructure and Efficient use of Energy Resources, ultimately responding to the physical, social and safety needs of the citizens.

• Application-based Intelligent Analytics for Problem Solving

Recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has received an increasing interest of researchers and institutions. Different applications of AI in different domains (such as healthcare, industry, military, … etc) provide efficient solutions and improvements. With the recent local and world-wide interest in AI domain, this research priority aims at solving and directly augments many inherent KSA problems using Machine Learning, Computer Vision, optimally processing big data, big data tools and techniques, deep Learning, image-based solutions, data science for security and the Internet of Things (IoT) domains. All the activities in this priority are trying to solve real-world problems, which is an inherent theme of the AI and the Data Science paradigm.

• Increase the internal capability of researchers and research staff to perform excellent research
• Roadmap for Sustainable Development of Qassim Region