Through alignment with National Policy Agenda, especially in the Data Science sector, the proposed Chair will offer a number of benefits to the State of Palestine including:

• Promote the usage of data science as important area to promote sustainable growth and development.
• Enhance the sector’s capacity in data science areas related to planning and development.
• Contribute to enhancing the capacity of data science related institutions and improving their roles and regulations.
•  Provide core skills necessary to build a data-enabled culture within different sectors and communities and support data-related projects and research initiatives.

The proposed Chair seeks to create an international and multidisciplinary platform allowing data scientists from academia and industry to sustain a dialogue that allows the integration of findings from different fields into a more cohesive understanding of developing counties needs and issues in relation to the application of data science. The Arab American University’s faculty and department staff, various partners, and interested researchers from other Palestinian universities and Arab, Middle Eastern countries and international partners, will be engaged to participate in the interdisciplinary program of the proposed UNESCO Chair. By doing so, the Chair will bring together a diverse range of data science expertise in order to explore making data science tools and techniques available for developing countries and tailored for their needs.