Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) participated in the LIRA Program, which was held at Dbayeh Convention Center. Managed by the Ministry of Industry in collaboration with the Association of Lebanese Industrialists, the National Center for Scientific Research and Bank of Lebanon, since 1998, the LIRA Project aims to bring academic and industrial experience together by providing opportunities to meet and exchange their findings. NDU contributed four projects to the 14th edition of the LIRA Forum.
The opening ceremony involved prominent figures including Dr. Hussein El-Hajj Hassan, Former Minister of Industry, and Fr. Pierre Najem, President of NDU, who were invited to discuss pressing topics like promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, smoothing technology transfer, and encouraging industrial research projects.
“NDU has striven since its beginnings to support its students and grant them the best services to help them grow,” said President Fr. Najem in his opening address. He then went on to discuss the roles of higher education institutions, their relationship with industry and emphasized the different steps implemented at NDU to promote innovation and industry-oriented research projects. Steps which are linked closely to NDU’s quality education approach and the student-centric system, which form an integral part of its mission and core values.
During the ceremony, an extension of the original MOU between NDU and the LIRA Program, approved in 2012, was also signed. The current agreement is recurrently extended on a yearly basis as long as the two parties do not request termination. Another agreement establishing a LIRA student club at NDU was signed. The main objective of the student club is to promote the LIRA Program within the student body, and to encourage student participation in industrial research projects with the support of the LIRA Program and selected industrial partners.