Dubai Aluminium Company (Dubal), the world’s largest modern smelter with a captive power station, developed and recently implemented a cooperation project for sharing resources with engineering students of UAE University (UAEU).

The initiative, known as the “Ta’awon Programme” (Ta’awon is Arabic for ‘cooperation’) will develop the UAE’s national human resources, with a view to enhancing the employability of UAE nationals, a statement said.

“This is a Dubal initiative to enhance industry collaboration with prominent universities in the UAE,” said Khalid Buhumaid, vice president: corporate relations and international affairs and official spokesperson of Dubal.

“It gives UAEU students exceptional opportunities to work on genuine engineering problems. The programme aims to provide support for students enrolled in engineering colleges, with respect to their graduation projects,” he added.

“Through Dubal, the students will receive valuable industrial exposure. In return the students, with the help of their universities, will invent solutions for real-life industrial applications, ideally providing cost-effective solutions for upgrading Dubal’s existing process requirements,” Buhumaid continued.

“Through this investment in people, Dubal is enriching both the students and the company itself: the students tackle real issues, giving them meaningful experience in the workplace, while simultaneously granting Dubal access to the intellectual capacity and creativity of our country’s talented young engineers.”

UAEU’s Dr Nabil Bastaki, head of industrial training and graduation projects unit, said: “In the senior design course, students choose a design project with the approval of a faculty advisor, with each project involving the use of open-ended problems, development and use of design methodology, formulation of design problem statements and specification, consideration of alternative solutions, feasibility consideration and detailed system descriptions.”

“Typically, three to four students form a team to work on a single engineering design project,” added Dr Bastaki.

“The pilot phase has confirmed the value-add of such an initiative to all partners in the project,” said Buhumaid.

“Based on the results to date, we look forward to rolling out the Ta’awon Programme on a larger scale in the next academic year. Dubal’s goal is to expand the Ta’awon Programme to include students from more disciplines of engineering and engage collaboratively with other universities across the UAE,” he concluded. – TradeArabia News Service