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AMMAN ? His Majesty King Abdullah on Monday presented certificates to graduates of Yarmouk University and Prince Faisal Centre for Computer Engineering.

The graduates, who work for the Jordanian, UAE and Bahraini armed forces, were enrolled in the engineering programme for the last 14 months to learn how to develop military, medical and industrial systems and equipment locally.

The students, who received masters degrees in embedded systems, worked on more than 30 projects that can be further developed to become sophisticated military and medical products, according to graduate Major Khaled Sarayreh.

Retired Major General Fadel Mohamamad, director of the Prince Faisal Centre, said the students spent long hours in laboratories throughout the programme, developing solutions to technical difficulties faced by the military by creating cheap and efficient local programmes that could replace the imported programmes used by the armed forces.

An embedded system, the subject of study, is a specialised computer system that is part of a larger system or machine. Typically, it is housed on a single microprocessor board with the programmes stored in a memory chip.

All appliances that have a digital interface ? watches, microwaves, VCRs, cars ? utilise embedded systems. Some embedded systems include an operating system, but many are specialised to an extent that the entire logic can be implemented as a single programme.

Yarmouk University President Mohammad Sabbarini said the first batch of the programme's graduates is ready to play a role in improving military systems. He said the success of the programme is an indication of the success of King Abdullah's vision of making the Kingdom an ICT hub in the Middle East. The government has been exerting efforts to achieve this goal by linking education with technology to develop human resources, and by providing the adequate infrastructure to attract the world's major ICT companies to invest in Jordan.

Meanwhile, on Monday the Monarch received Kuwaiti Minister of Justice Ahmad Yaqoub Baqer who is currently on a visit to the Kingdom to enhance cooperation between the justice ministries of both countries.

Also yesterday, King Abdullah met with United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) Director General Carlos Magari?os. Discussions focussed on ways to activate cooperation between the Kingdom and UNIDO in the development and industrial sectors as well as in supporting and upgrading small- and medium-size enterprises in rural and remote areas of the country.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005
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