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Smart Beirut Summit-SBS'18


The Faculty of Engineering at Antonine University organized the Smart Beirut Summit under the patronage of Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri presented by his consultant Mr. Fadi Fawaz, in cooperation with the BMW Group. SBS’18 was also attended by Minister of Energy and Water, Cesar Abi Khalil; MP Nicolas Sehnaoui; MP Dr. Antoine Habashi; the German Ambassador to Lebanon, Dr. Georg Birgelen; Antonine University President, Fr. Michel Jalakh; Head of the Beirut Order of Engineers, Jad Tabet; Vice President Logistics Planning at BMW Group, Dr. Dirk Dreher; the Chairman and CEO of Alfa, Marwan Hayek; and further ambassadors and representatives specialized in smart cities.

Smart Beirut Summit brought together researchers and specialists within the domain. During its one-day sessions, the Summit presented positive initiatives in transportation, energy and health. The summit also showcased key facts and requirements from a legal and logistics perspective to assist attendees achieve their goals. The summit organizing committee, consisting of Dr. Chady Abou Jaoudé, Dean of Faculty of Engineering, Dr. Chafic Jaber, Dr. Bechara Al Bouna, the Director of TICKET Research Lab at the University, and Dr. Kabalan Chaccour, have communicated the importance in putting a huge focus on Beirut towards being a smart city, believing it has the potential to be a leading smart city in the region.

Beirut has a vast network of startups and finance centers, in addition to its wealth in universities and young talents, capable of creating new technology innovations. Through such activities, in conjunction withthe influential role of universities, Antonine University seeks to bring together interested personsto launch research in areas of interest to the Lebanese people and their towns and cities, especially Beirut.

SBS’18 was organized in collaboration with BMW Group, which supports Lebanese students through internships. Since the beginning of their partnership in 2014, the BMW Group and key universities in Lebanon have worked closely together to support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) careers by offering internship opportunities at the BMW Group headquarters in Munich through a dedicated program.

Around 50 fortunate students from the Antonine University and other Lebanese universities have been able to intern with the BMW Group in Munich. The program has been extremely successful and is the first program of its kind in the Middle East.

Through this partnership between BMW Group and Universities in Lebanon, there are three major goals: empowering students’ transfer of knowledge learnt in university into real-world scenarios, attract highly talented graduates to the BMW Group; and to give back to the Lebanese community for further research and leadership growth.

Furthermore, Lebanese universities also participated in the ‘Hackathon’ organized by the Faculty of Engineering at the Antonine University.

The conclusions of the Smart Beirut Summit will be published with the aim of helping the development of Beirut, based on the conviction of those who believe that the city has renewable energy potential.

“In the world of digital competitiveness, we at BMW Group are targeting top talents in Lebanon and worldwide. A major part of securing a leading position is to have efficient and optimized internal processes (e.g. logistics planning processes), that’s why we are increasingly relying on Artificial Intelligence including Computer Vision, Analytics and Natural Language Processing, and we are strengthening our close collaboration with tremendous partners like Splunk” said: Dr. Jimmy Nassif, BMW Group

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