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

Smart Beirut Summit brought together researchers and specialists, as well as ambassadors and representatives specialized in technology.

During its one-day sessions, the Summit demonstrated positive initiatives in transportation, energy, and health. The summit also showcased key facts and requirements from a legal and logistics perspective to assist attendees in achieving their goals. The organizing committee consisted 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. Those experts revealed the importance of working towards transforming Beirut into a smart city, believing it has the potential to be a leading smart city in the region.

Beirut has indeed 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 with the influential role of universities, Antonine University seeks to bring together research teams that will aid in developing 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.

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 of its kind in the Middle East.

Through this partnership between BMW Group and universities in Lebanon, there are three major goals: empowering the application of students’ knowledge learned in university into real-world scenarios, attracting highly talented graduates to the BMW Group; and giving 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 Antonine University.

The outcomes of the Smart Beirut Summit will be published, with the aim of boosting the development of Beirut, based on the convictions 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”, declared Dr. Jimmy Nassif from BMW Group.