Community in the Middle East
Northrop Grumman works in partnership with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to strengthen communities through educational initiatives.
Community in the Middle East
Saudi Arabia
Northrop Grumman is one of Saudi Arabia's largest defense industry partners, and we're committed to supporting the Kingdom's Vision 2030 goals of economic diversification, localization and knowledge transfer.
In April 2018, Northrop Grumman sponsored the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology's (KAUST's) STEAM Innovation Challenge hosted by the school's Innovation and Economic Development department. More than 300 Saudi university students from 16 universities participated in the intensive ideation program. Entitled "Secure Generation 2030," the event focused on creating solutions to regional and global challenges in cybersecurity, supply chain localization and the environment. Northrop Grumman employees in the Middle East served as mentors to the students as they engaged in teams to create realistic solutions that could be implemented in Saudi Arabia — and potentially scaled to other countries.
As a leader in cybersecurity solutions, Northrop Grumman supports educational initiatives that foster cybersecurity innovation among students. Northrop Grumman, in partnership with King Saud University, hosted an annual cybersecurity workshop and competition known as CyberArabia from 2015 to 2017. Each year the competition recognized winners on both the men's and women's campuses across Saudi universities.
UAE
Northrop Grumman supports the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 goals of attracting a skilled workforce, further increasing national women's participation in the labor force, enhancing competitiveness, enlarging the enterprise base and reducing UAE GDP volatility through diversification.
The Northrop Grumman Foundation screened a documentary film produced by filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn about NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to nearly 2,000 Emirati students, teachers and space enthusiasts across the UAE at 11 venues. The film, called "Into the Unknown," explains how the telescope will peer into the past to measure and capture images of stars and galaxies that began to form billions of years ago. Northrop Grumman, NASA and other relevant organizations' employees answered questions after each screening.
In 2010, Northrop Grumman instituted the "UAE Innovation Challenge" program with the UAE Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT). Hundreds of HCT students from every Emirate in the UAE had the chance to participate in this annual competition that promotes science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as student teams design, build and operate unmanned air vehicles. Other partners for this program include Abu Dhabi Autonomous Systems Investments (ADASI), the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Foundation (AUVSI) and the Defense Services Marketing Council.