The Director General of the Industrial Research Institute, Dr. Bassam Frenn, singed a collaboration accord with the German Institute, Fraunhofer ABK, Berlin. The aim of this accord is to create and revise organizational systems in compliance with IRI’s strategy to build a wider network of cooperation and communication with the most important research and technology centers in major industrial countries. Fraunhofer Institute is considered one of the most important educational, research and application organizations in the world, consisting of more than forty five thousand members including researchers, inventors, engineers, industrialists, and technicians.

Both IRI and Fraunhofer agreed on close collaboration in the fields of research and development through the application of these steps:

1. Supporting and developing innovation processes in the
   Lebanese industrial sector
2. Working on the generalization and development of concepts of
   technological exchange
3. Motivating industrial production
4. Holding research and training programs
5. Participating in the exchange of information on scientific
   activities.

The agreement states that both institutions shall aim to strengthen their cooperation in all its aspects including scientific, economic and industrial. Each team must maintain strict confidentiality of all mutual research processes and results and is forbidden from imparting any information to a third party without the expressed consent of both parties.