Dr Mohammad bin Saif Al Kuwari (left), Director of the Environmental and Municipal Studies Center at MME, presenting a certificate of honour to Dr. Mai Mohammed Al Ghanem yesterday. Pic: Abdul Basit / THE PENINSULA
DOHA: The Municipal and Environmental Studies Center of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment has honoured four Qatari research scholars under an initiative to support national cadres and enhance their roles in sustainable development.
“The initiative will help Qatari researchers to focus on the qualitative research work during their PhD pursuits and to participate in the process of development,” said Dr Mohammed bin Saif Al Kuwari, Director of the Municipal and Environmental Studies Center while speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the honouring ceremony held at the headquarters of the Center yesterday.
Under the initiative, the first scientific workshop entitled “investigation of the biodiversity of encrusting epifauna associated with bivalve Molluscs in the North-East Atlantic and Qatar” was held. Dr. Marwa Mohammed Al Ghanem, from Environmental Monitoring Department at Ministry of Municipality and Environment gave a presentation on the said topic which was her PhD thesis, at Heriot Watt University, Scotland.
Dr Mohammed Saif Al Kuwari stressed that the Center is keen to support national cadres to move forward in their scientific journey as a means of achieving their goals in all fields. Dr. Al Kuwari said at the beginning of the workshop that the Center has set a schedule for the holding of lectures and workshops for Qatari graduates who have received a doctorate in order to allow them to present their dissertations and discuss them.
Dr Al Kuwari pointed out that the initiative aims to provide the opportunity for specialists in the ministry to study these research works and benefit from them to exchange knowledge and experiences. Al Kuwari pointed out that the initiative includes honoring PhD students in recognition of their efforts, noting the honoring of four Qatari researchers on the sidelines of the workshop.
Speaking at the event, Dr. Marwa Mohammed Al Ghanem said that under her research work the collected and classified benthic marine organisms were reviewed from the temperate region of the Northeast Atlantic, coral reefs and pearl oyster areas in the tropics in the marine environment of Qatar. She said that the study contains the first information about the organisms of the Bryozoa group collected from Qatar in particular.
“Twenty-five species were identified, nine of which were recorded as new species classified for the first time using electronic microscopy,” said Dr. Marwa. “The mineral composition of the Bryozoa organisms was also identified to show how they could withstand the pressures on the marine environment of Qatar from high temperatures and salinity,” she added.
Dr Mai Mohammed Al Ghanem, a biological researcher at Agricultural Research Department of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment said that her research work was about investigating the secreted antibacterial activity of an environmental isolate of Serratia plymuthica.
She said that serratia species are an important source of antimicrobial compounds with numerous studies concerning their production of secondary metabolites with applications in medicine, pharmaceutics and biotechnology. “The species of the Qatari natural environment are vast and provide an excellent basis for investigation for future drug discovery and the expansion of the pharmaceutical pipeline, said Dr. Mai.
