At ASPIRE, we respond to customer needs, define strategy, create challenges, and manage programs to inspire technological solutions that are resilient in an ever-changing world.
Working with visionary purpose, ASPIRE acts as Abu Dhabi’s technology wayfinder and catalyst – managing ‘Grand Challenges’ and co-ordinating the competitions that will shape our research for years to come.
Customer-Focused Thinking, Structured for Tomorrow
Our Industries and Approach
We work in partnership with industry stakeholders, regulators, researchers, and innovators from all sectors and levels of the local and international economies to bring advanced technology solutions to life.
Understanding
Customer Needs
At ASPIRE, it is our responsibility to collaborate with businesses and industries to better understand their challenges and help identify solutions.
Through facilitating partnerships, connecting to the customer, and gaining key insights into their requirements, we shape technology R&D across Abu Dhabi ensuring that innovations have a clear path from lab to commercialization to help solve real-world problems.
These multi-stakeholder partnerships are focused on solving challenges through technology R&D across six key sectors.
Our Programs
Channeling funding.
Attracting talent.
At ASPIRE, we reach out. Shape the agenda. Set new standards. Working with partners locally and globally, we play a leading role in creating, supporting, and organizing international research programs, awards, and grand challenges that inspire new generations, fire the imagination – and make headlines around the world.
ASPIRE Award for Research Excellence (AARE)
The ASPIRE Award for Research Excellence (AARE) is a competitive funding program for outstanding research proposals in key areas within the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. This research is expected to advance scientific and technological development in Abu Dhabi, as well as develop meaningful partnerships between Abu Dhabi scientists and leading academic and industrial collaborators, nationally and worldwide.
ASPIRE Young Investigator Award (AYIA)
The ASPIRE Young Investigator Award (AYIA) is a program open to researchers who have obtained their Ph.D. (or equivalent) within the past six years and seeks to inspire outstanding research proposals in priority sectors in Abu Dhabi. Applicants will be required to demonstrate the potential impact of their research and identify how it can be realized.
Virtual Research Institutes Programme (VRIs)
Our ASPIRE Research Institutes (ARIs) Program is a competitive funding initiative for outstanding center-based research proposals in Abu Dhabi. Initially, three ARIs will be established to stimulate innovation, enable economic diversification, and build highly skilled human capital. The development of the ARIs will provide a structure with sufficient scale, diversity, and multi- disciplinarity through academia and industry collaboration, to generate leading relevant research.
ASPIRE Visiting International Professorship Program
Our Visiting International Professorship (ViPs) Program is a funding initiative that aims to accelerate Abu Dhabi’s research output by attracting pre-eminent international researchers to our ecosystem. Fostering cooperative ties between Abu Dhabi’s higher education institutes and international research institutions, the program aims to establish long-term, sustainable partnerships.
Newsroom
Explore our latest developments and download media resources and content.
We Imagine. We Plan. We Partner. We Invest. We Challenge. We are ASPIRE.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring? At ASPIRE, we play a pioneering role in bringing together talents and technologies to help solve society’s most complex challenges. Discover more about us and our role in shaping the future – and partner with us to make it possible.