Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) on Wednesday signed an agreement with Huawei Jordan to establish an academy on the PSUT campus. 

The academy will specialise in the fields of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and cloud computing and aim to enhance students’ skills and knowledge of Fifth-Generation Mobile communications, in order to enrich the local, regional and global labour market with outstanding expertise, according to a PSUT statement. 

The agreement was signed on behalf of PSUT by its President Mashhoor Al Refai, and for the company by its CEO in Jordan, Ethan Wang. The ceremony was attended by Minister of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship  Ahmad Hanandeh, and Chief Data Officer and Technology Adviser at the Royal Scientific Society Nabeel Al Fayoumi.

Hanandeh praised the high standards reached by PSUT and the quality of its programmes. 

The minister also thanked Huawei, highlighting the depth of Jordanian-Chinese relations in all fields, especially in technology. He expressed high hopes that the academy would support all Jordanian universities and their students, facilitate ways for them to engage in new labour markets, and give them the ability to deal with the latest developments in the digital age.   

 Refai said the agreement "bridges the gap between the academic and industrial sectors”, stressing that it is consistent with the directives of HRH Princess Sumaya, chair of the University’s Board of Trustees, which focus on networking with international companies. 

Refai added that cooperation with Huawei would open "broad future horizons” in line with PSUT’s endeavours to be a pioneer in developing smart facilities, and that the company would provide laboratories equipped with the latest technologies to provide its professional programmes. 

He said that the academy would also participate in the future plans of the University. The academy will be the first smart educational facility in the Kingdom.

The CEO of Huawei in Jordan, Ethan Wang, praised PSUT’s successes and achievements, stressing that the agreement is one of the steps that the company is taking to enhance local talent by working with government agencies and institutions to prepare and support future leaders in the ICT field, and thus support the efforts of digital transformation in the Kingdom.

The academy will help students to raise their competency levels, familiarise them with the latest publications in the field of artificial intelligence, information security and cloud computing, and provide them with the ability to interact with others and acquire teamwork skills, thus making them better qualified to enter the labour market, according to the statement.

At the start of the 2020/21 academic year, PSUT launched a Bachelor of Cybersecurity programme which was added to its array of existing related disciplines: Bachelor of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Bachelor in Networks & Information Security Engineering, Master of Data Science, and Master of Information Systems Security and Digital Criminology.