Manama: 18th  April 2012: Ahlia University in affiliation with Brunel University, UK has organized the Third Doctoral Symposium in the period from 14 to 15 April 2012. The Symposium is an annual event in which the students enrolled in the PhD (Without Resience) programme offered by Brunel University at Ahlia University present papers on their topic of research. The Symposium provides a forum in which the students present and discuss their research findings. 

The Symposium has been attended to by 24 PhD (WR) students, their supervisors and delegates from both Ahlia and Brunel Universities. A number of students presented papers on a wide range of research topics were at the second and third year levels of PhD (WR) programme.

Prof. Abdulla Y. Al-Hawaj President of Ahlia University said "As a First Category university, Ahlia is striving hard to ensure that research is naturalized as a process in the Kingdom of Bahrain and the community benefits from the research outcomes". "The Doctoral Symposium is an important forum that helps to develop the culture of research and provides a channel to the researching students to develop their ideas. The research outcomes are expected to make significant contribution towards providing solutions to many of the social, economical, cultural and technological issues faced by the community in this region", he added.

The successful organization of the first two Symposiums in 2009 and 2010 has enabled the students to publish their papers through the Proceedings of the Symposium.  "The research papers through the Symposium are expected to reach many experts across the world thus spreading the message that Bahrain is an important centre of research in the Middle East.", Prof. Al Hawaj said.

Prof. Mustafa Özbilgin, Brunel University, UK, delivered the first key note address and Prof. Amer Al Roubaie, Dean College of Business and Finance, Ahlia University, Kingdom of Bahrain delivered the second key note address. Prof. Mustafa Özbilgin provided a broad idea on key issues that need to be taken into account by researchers who want to publish their research papers in leading international journals while Prof. Amer Al Roubaie, covered "knowledge sharing" aspects in the Arabic countries.

Prof. Wajeeh Elali, Vice President, Administration & Finance, Ahlia University along with Dr. Tillal Eldabi, Senior Lecturer, Brunel Business School, Brunel University chaired the through the proceedings of the Symposium. The Symposium acted as an important forum to the researching faculty in Ahlia University and Brunel University and their students to discuss and brainstorm on a number of research topics and elicited many interesting questions from the audience that are relevant to the contemporary world.

Students presented papers according to their streams.   One stream of students under Brunel Business School presented papers on areas covering a wide spectrum of topics under Business and Management. The other stream of students presented papers under the School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics, presented papers on topics related to Mathematics, Information Systems and Computing. Prof. Mustafa Özbilgin and Dr. Ahmad Ghoneim, Brunel University were part of the jury who selected the best paper as well as the best presenter from amongst the participating students.  

Two PhD students were chosen to be awarded for their performance. Mr. Anjum Razzaque received the Best Paper award for his paper on "Virtual Community of Practice and Knowledge Shared Medical Decision-Making: Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing". The Best Presentation award went to Mr. Ammar Al-Dallal for his paper entitled Enhancing Recall and Precision in Web Search using Advanced Fitness Function. All the students who participated in the Symposium were given trophies and certificates by Prof. Al Hawaj.

The Symposium concluded with the presentation of awards by Prof. Al Hawaj and Prof. Mustafa Özbilgin to the winning students.  

-Ends-

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For more information please contact:
Ali Sahwan
Director, Public Relations & Media
Al Ahlia University
Tel:   +97   17  313501
Fax: +973 17  291773
e-mail: sahwan@ahliauniversity.edu.bh 

© Press Release 2012