HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), yesterday met Emperor Akihito and his wife Empress Michiko as part of her five-day visit to Japan.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko welcomed Sheikha Moza to Japan.

They also discussed issues of mutual concern especially the flourishing relations between Qatar and japan.

Sheikha Moza later met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to discuss co-operation in the fields of education, culture, science and technology.

She also conferred with Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Hakubun Shimomura to discuss exchange of students’ visits, scholarships, research cooperation as related to priorities and grand challenges involved in Qatar National Research Strategy (QNRS).

Also yesterday, as part of her visit to Japan, Sheikha Moza visited the Sony Corporation Headquarters in Tokyo.

Sheikha Moza met Chief Executive Officer of Sony, Kazuo Hirai, Director of the Sony Computer Science Laboratories Hiroaki Kitano and Sony Executive Vice-President Officer Shoji Nemoto to discuss areas of computing research in Qatar and Japan.

She also met representatives from the Sony Corporation, Japan’s National Institute of Informatics, Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, the University of Tokyo and Keio University.

Talks during the meetings dealt with ways of using new technology for social benefit and the prospects of future co-operation between technology institutes in Japan and Qatar Institute for Computing Research.

Sheikha Moza said that her visit aims to move the Qatari-Japanese relations to a new stage based on scientific co-operation to face the challenges of the 21st century.

Sheikha Moza was accompanied during the visit to Sony Corporation by Qatar Foundation’s President of Research and Development Faisal al-Suwaidi and Executive Director of Qatar Computing Research Institute Dr Ahmed Elmagarmid.

The visit comes after a series of meetings held in Doha last year between senior executives at Sony Corporation and senior Qatari officials, including Northwestern University in Qatar.

Sheikha Moza also visited Qatari students who are undergoing higher education in Japan. She met eight Qatari students to check on their situation.

The students said that the ir reason for choosing Japan to complete their higher education is the country’s progress in the fields of scientific research and engineering, as well as their willingness to recognise the unique Japanese culture which has some values similar to Arab culture and traditions.

Sheikha Moza reaffirmed her support and encouragement to the Qatari students in Japan.

Sheikha Moza is on a five-day exploratory research visit to Japan.

The visit seeks to strengthen ties between the two countries in the fields of research and development, with a focus on computing, energy, environment and biomedical research.

Sheikha Moza is accompanied by a high-level delegation from Qatar Foundation’s Research and Development, in order to identify and enhance collaboration between QF and a number of globally renowned research institutes in Japan.

The areas of collaboration have been identified in line with the ‘grand challenges’ of Qatar’s National Research Strategy, ie energy security, water security, cyber security.

The priority challenges identified in the Qatar National Research Strategy (QNRS) are to achieve: energy security, through raising the production of solar energy to 1 gigawatt by 2020; water security, through promoting the scientific research in the area of water desalination; cyber security, through strengthening information security management in an electronically open and overlapped space; and health promotion, through preventing and managing diseases such as diabetes and cancer and by advancing platform technologies such as genomics and stem cells.

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