the sifr prize
an essay contest for science and technology in the Arab world
The first Sifr Prize ·
The results are here.
Five winning essays and sixteen honorable mentions, selected from 156 submissions across 29 countries. Explore the ideas and meet the authors.
Read the results →$5,000 in unrestricted cash prizes: $2,500 for first place, $1,000 for second, and $500 each for three third-place essays.
Earlier update First report · August 16, 2026
The first report is out. 156 submissions from 130 people in 29 countries — where they wrote from, and what they chose to write about.
What should exist for science and technology in the Arab world, but doesn't?
We asked people to identify a specific problem where the bottleneck is technical, not just a matter of funding or willpower, and describe what R&D it would take to solve it. The problem could be at any scale, from one city or one country to the region as a whole.
Maybe it's a technology that needs to be built: something no one has made because the underlying science isn't solved, or because the people who understand the problem aren't the ones doing the research. Maybe it's something that already exists elsewhere but can't work in the region, and adapting it requires genuine technical innovation.
Entrants were asked to do three things:
- Define a specific problem.
- Explain what scientific or engineering R&D is needed to solve it: what's technically hard, not just missing.
- Lay out how you (or a small team) would start.
From the original call: “We'd rather get ten essays from people who've been thinking about their problem for a while than a hundred from people who went looking for one after seeing this contest.”
- Format
- Essays of under 2,000 words, submitted as text or a file. Clarity mattered more than formatting.
- Eligibility
- Anyone. No nationality, ethnicity, age, or institutional requirements. You don't need to be from the region or be Arab, but you do need to actually understand it.
- Judging
- Problem definition, technical depth, actionability, and insight. Details →
The Arab world is in no shortage of scientists, engineers, or technologists. What it often lacks is connective tissue. The people who understand the region's problems deeply (and could actually solve them) are scattered across institutions and countries that don't talk to each other. Many are in the region. Many left. Most have no venue to contribute what they know, and no one is asking.
We think identifying the right problems is half the work, and finding the right people is the other half. This contest is how we start doing both.
- Founder
- Ubadah Sabbagh, PhD
- Funding
- Ubadah Sabbagh & Eyad Ebrahim
Ubadah is a neuroscientist working in science and AI. Eyad is a software engineer.
You can learn more about Ubadah here.
