The National Bank of Bahrain (NBB) is sponsoring a group of 8 students from Bahrain Polytechnic in the completion of their Smart Aquaculture System project known as “Medaar”. The Bank’s support will further assist the students in their research and development, allowing them to finalise their environmental initiatives.

In line with its efforts to support the advancement of the Kingdom across various sectors, NBB will be providing aid to the students to help bring their project to life. The smart aquaculture system aims to solve the current issues arising from the fish hatchery in Bahrain, which include a high mortality rate of fingerlings, high costs and an increased amount of required labour.

This project was conducted at Bahrain Polytechnic’s Cloud Innovation Centre (CIC) which is supported by the Labour Fund (Tamkeen) and by utilizing Amazon Web Services (AWS) technologies, with the aim to develop a smart system to control and monitor the aquaculture environment and contribute to achieving local and regional food security goals. Through the bank’s support, the students will be provided with the necessary resources to create an Internet of Things (IoT) solution that will provide real-time and automated readings of temperature and dissolved oxygen levels.

On his end, Professor Ciarán Ó Catháin, CEO at Bahrain Polytechnic, said: “The Polytechnic, in collaboration with Tamkeen and AWS , launched the CIC in 2020 to provide an opportunity to collaborate with other public sector organizations on their most pressing challenges, and provide students to solve these challenges using technology expertise of AWS, potentially leading them to be entrepreneurs. We are proud to be partnering with NBB, a leading financial institution in the Kingdom in this regard. The Smart Aquaculture System project aims to improve the Kingdom’s economic sector by enhancing the overall production of fish hatcheries, which, in turn, will impact our community for the better.”

Commenting on the occasion, Hisham Abu Alfateh, Head of Corporate Communications at NBB, said; “As part of our continued support for the education sector in the Kingdom, we are pleased to be supporting the students at Bahrain Polytechnic. We believe the project will contribute positively to our community and develop Bahrain’s environmental system. NBB continues to invest in the growth of potential talent as part of our commitment to uplifting future industry leaders.”

As part of its promise to uplift rising talent in the Kingdom, NBB continuously engages in various student and graduate-level initiatives to achieve the Kingdom’s Economic Vision 2030 and the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals.