Scientific Research Devices Supervisor Licence in Qatar
October 8, 2026
11 min read
DITEC Experts, Radiation Protection Team, ALDuha Institute for Training and Environmental Consulting
The research devices entry in the industrial applications
One point before anything else. Meeting the conditions in the Decision is what you can prepare for. Whether a licence is granted, and when, is a decision of the competent authority alone, and nothing in this explanation and nothing in any course is a commitment that a licence will be granted or that it will be granted within a given period. What this article does is set out the condition as the instrument states it and point to the training that bears on it.
Item 17 of the industrial applications in the schedule attached to Decision 4 of 2007 is the last of the five entries this batch reads, and it licenses a function that does not sound industrial at all: supervising scientific research devices. A university physics department, a materials laboratory, a petroleum research centre, an analytical laboratory running an X-ray diffractometer or a fluorescence instrument, a facility holding check sources for calibration work: these are the places this entry is written for, and the people who run them usually do not think of themselves as holding an industrial licence.
That mismatch between where the entry sits and where its work is done is the most useful thing to know about item 17, because it is the reason the entry goes unread. A researcher looking for the conditions that apply to his laboratory does not open a part of a schedule headed industrial applications, and a safety office building a licence register from the plant practices does not reach a university department. In our reviews the research entry is the one most often absent from a register that is otherwise maintained.
Item 17 sets four conditions. It is written compactly, and two features of its wording are worth isolating before it is read as a whole, because each is a place where a reader can take more or less from the entry than it contains. Its academic condition carries a parenthesis naming five specialities. And its experience condition is written without the word practical that the parallel conditions in items 13 and 14 carry.
One point of orientation before the conditions themselves: they are in the schedule attached to the Decision rather than in the body of it. The preamble records that it was issued having regard to the Executive Regulation and in particular to Article 25 of it, and, on the Committee recommendation, on the recommendation of the Radiation Protection Committee, and the issuing article does one thing only: the conditions for licences to work in the fields of radiation work, attached to this Decision, shall apply. So a reader who opens the Decision and reads the article that issues it finds a referral and no conditions.
The four conditions
Item 17 opens with the formula the following conditions must be present in the person who is granted a licence to work as a supervisor of scientific research devices. The function it names is supervising scientific research devices, the conditions are attached to a person and not to an institution, and they are required cumulatively. A department does not hold this licence; a person holds it, and he holds it for the supervision.
Then come four conditions. The academic condition is that he hold the diploma in a branch of engineering or sciences (physics, nuclear physics, radiochemistry, medical physics, radiation physics), at minimum. The training condition is that he pass a training course in radiation protection in industrial applications from an approved centre. The experience condition is that he have experience in the field of scientific research of not less than two years. And the fourth is that he pass the prescribed medical examination. There is no full-time condition in the item. The prescribed medical examination stands as its own condition among the conditions the item sets, and the item says nothing about what it contains. Our practical reading is that it is not a protective measure, that it does not stand in for any course the item names, and that it does not stand in for anything in operational protection.
The training condition is written in the wording items 16 and 17 share, a training course in radiation protection in industrial applications, from an approved centre, and it is not the wording items 13 and 14 use for the officer course. That distinction is the one this batch exists to flag and it is set out in full further down this page. The practical point for a research supervisor is immediate: the course this entry names is the industrial applications protection course, notwithstanding that the work is in a laboratory, and an officer course bought because the department calls its appointee a safety officer is a certificate in a differently named course.
The academic condition is a diploma, it carries the phrase at minimum, and the fields are a branch of engineering or sciences. Then the parenthesis names five: physics, nuclear physics, radiochemistry, medical physics and radiation physics. That is the only academic condition among the five items read in this batch that inserts a parenthesis naming specialities. What the parenthesis does, the item does not say: it does not say that the five are an exhaustive list, and it does not say that they are examples. So we do not say either. A candidate whose diploma is in one of the five is reading a condition that names it; a candidate whose diploma is in another branch of engineering or sciences is reading a condition whose opening words name his field and whose parenthesis does not, and that is a question for the competent authority rather than one to be settled by reasoning about what the drafter must have meant.
Two years of experience, and one word that is not there
The experience condition reads that he have experience in the field of scientific research of not less than two years. It names a period of not less than two years, and it ties the experience to a field: in the field of scientific research. It does not tie it to radiation work, to sources or to devices.
There is one more thing about this condition, and it is a single word. Items 13 and 14 write their experience conditions as practical experience. Item 17 writes experience, without that word. The absence of that one word is the whole of what we record; the three officer conditions differ from this one in more than that word, because they tie the experience to a field or to a place that item 17 does not name. We record the absence and we do not state what it signifies, because stating what it signifies would be telling you what the instrument means where it has not said: a note that a word is absent says that we observed an absence, and a reading of that absence would say that we know what it does, and we do not. If your own candidate case turns on whether academic research counts, that is precisely the question to put to the Ministry in the words of the item rather than to settle from a comparison.
A note on one word in the text. The experience condition of item 17, in the copy of the schedule held in our library, writes the pronoun attached to the word rendered here as he has in a form that is not the standard one, and the standard form appears in the parallel wording of items 13 and 14. The difference is one letter and it changes no meaning. It is recorded as probably a printing error in the original rather than in our transcription, and it is flagged here rather than corrected inside the quotation, because in this series what is quoted is quoted as the copy carries it. Nothing in the reading of the condition turns on it.
The third part of the schedule provides for that situation: a licence to practise radiation work as a trainee is granted to a person in whom the conditions of the licence sought are present with the exception of the experience condition, and then in that case he may not practise radiation work except under the supervision of a licensed person. So the exception is for the experience condition and for that condition only: every other condition in the entry still has to be present, and the practice is under the supervision of a licensed person. On item 17 that means the diploma, the protection course and the medical examination all still have to be present, and the practice is under the supervision of a licensed person. A research student is the typical candidate for that provision, and the records that will later evidence two years in scientific research have to be created while they are being worked.
Item 17 against the four entries read with it
The table sets item 17 against the other four entries this batch reads. It is a reading of items 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 of the industrial applications, all of them quoted in full on the Arabic version of these articles, and nothing is added to it. The rows record where the wording differs. They do not place the entries in an order, and the number of conditions in an entry is a count of what it contains rather than a measure of the hazard of the work or of the level of the role.
The five entries read in this batch
| Entry | Course named | Experience | Full-time working | Conditions in all |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Officer, large, item 13 limb 1 | A radiation protection officer course in industrial applications, from an approved centre | Practical, in the field of industrial radiation work, not less than two years | A condition of its own | Five |
| Officer, small, item 13 limb 2 | The same wording: a radiation protection officer course in industrial applications from an approved centre | Practical, at an institution that deals with radioactive sources, not less than one year | Expressly not required | Four, and with them the sentence negating full-time |
| Field officer, item 14 | The same wording: a radiation protection officer course in industrial applications from an approved centre | Practical, at an institution that deals with radioactive sources, not less than five years | Not a condition in the item, and no sentence negating one | Four |
| Carrier, item 15 | A training course in the field of radiation protection in industrial applications, from an approved centre | No experience condition in the item | Not a condition in the item, and no sentence negating one | Three |
| Maintenance technician, item 16 | Two courses: a maintenance course whose source the item does not describe, and the protection course from an approved centre | No experience condition in the item | Not a condition in the item, and no sentence negating one | Four |
| Research devices supervisor, item 17 | A training course in radiation protection in industrial applications, from an approved centre | Experience, without the word practical, in the field of scientific research, not less than two years | Not a condition in the item, and no sentence negating one | Four |
What a department should settle before the file is assembled
Below is the order we use when a university department or a research laboratory asks us to look at a file on this entry. It is the Institute's own working practice, and the items set out in this explanation impose no form of file.
Preparing a research devices supervisor file
Look for the entry where the work is, not where the heading is
- The entry sits in the part of the schedule headed industrial applications and the work it licenses is done in laboratories, which is why it is, in our reviews, the entry most often absent from a register built from plant practices. A register is built from the devices and the people, not from the headings.
Read the parenthesis against your candidate diploma before anything else
- The academic condition names a branch of engineering or sciences and then names five specialities in a parenthesis. The item does not say whether the five are exhaustive or illustrative, so if the diploma is in one of the five the question does not arise, and if it is in another branch the question is for the Ministry and is worth asking before the file is built.
Buy the course this entry names and not the one with the officer name
- Item 17 names a training course in radiation protection in industrial applications from an approved centre. Items 13 and 14 name a radiation protection officer course. The two wordings are not the same, and a department that appoints a person it calls its safety officer may buy the officer course against an entry that names the other.
Record the two years in the terms of the condition and then in terms of the work
- The condition ties the period to the field of scientific research and does not tie it to radiation work, sources or devices, and it is written without the word practical that the officer entries use. So record the dates, the institution and the research, and record separately whether the work involved sources or devices at all. Then ask.
- A doctoral programme and a two-year research post are both records somebody has to write down at the time, because a thesis title is not an employment record.
Questions we are asked about this item
Our laboratory is in a university, not in industry. Does an industrial entry apply to us?
The entry is item 17 of the part of the schedule headed industrial applications, and the function it names is supervising scientific research devices. So the heading of the part and the work the entry describes are not the same thing, and that is a feature of where the entry sits rather than a reading we have supplied. Whether a particular laboratory and a particular set of devices fall inside the function the entry names is a question for the Ministry. What we can say is that in our reviews this is the entry most often absent from a licence register that is otherwise maintained, for exactly the reason in your question.
My diploma is in chemical engineering, which is not one of the five in the parenthesis. Does it count?
The condition names a diploma in a branch of engineering or sciences and then names five specialities in a parenthesis, and the item does not say whether the parenthesis is an exhaustive list or a set of examples. So we will not tell you that your diploma is inside the condition and we will not tell you that it is outside it: the item supplies neither answer and supplying one would be telling you what it means where it has not said. That is a question to put to the Ministry, quoting the condition in full and naming your diploma, before a file is built on either reading.
Does the item require the two years to have been years of radiation work?
The condition ties the period to the field of scientific research and names no source, device or radiation practice at all, so on its wording it does not require that, and it does not say that two years of research without radiation satisfy it either. The condition is also written without the word practical that the parallel conditions in items 13 and 14 use, which is an absent word that we record and whose significance we do not state. Document what the two years consisted of and put the condition to the Ministry with that record attached.
Can the same person be our research supervisor and our radiation protection officer?
The schedule licenses functions, and supervising research devices and acting as a radiation protection officer are named in different entries with different conditions, and each entry sets its conditions in itself; the items read here do not address one person holding both licences, so that is a question for the Ministry. Item 17 contains no full-time condition and contains no sentence negating one, and the first limb of item 13 does contain a full-time condition for that work, so whether one person may hold both depends on which officer entry would govern and is a question for the Ministry. Describe the arrangement and ask, rather than inferring an answer from the silence in item 17.
Our devices are a kind the entry does not describe. What then?
The third part of the schedule provides for that: licence applications for the specialities that are not stated in these instructions are referred to the Radiation Protection Committee to decide on them, and the Committee shall be guided by international instructions and standards, in particular those issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency. So the route is referral, the decision is the Committee's, and the guidance it is directed to is named in the provision. The provision does not give you the alternative of applying to yourself the conditions of whichever listed entry looks closest, and in our practice that assumption is the error we see. On research devices that assumption takes a particular shape worth naming: taking item 17 to govern because its own name is the one that mentions research devices, without reading what its conditions say, when the heading of item 13 names industrial and research applications in its own words; or taking one of items 7 to 10 because the device resembles a gauge.
A technical note: the licence is not the protection
A technical note, and it is the most important passage on this page. The conditions in this Decision are licensing conditions, not site work instructions. Meeting them, and any licence that may follow, replaces nothing in operational protection, and no course makes anyone safe by itself. One rule governs every judgement about where a source is and what is coming off it: it is settled by measurement, never by inference.
The measurement is made by the licensee, through a person qualified to make it, and the instrument has to respond to the radiation actually present and at the energies present. For a gamma source that means a gamma survey meter within its calibration validity and response-checked before work starts. Where neutron-emitting material may be present, a gamma-only meter can read clean beside an unshielded source and tell the person holding it nothing, so the instrument has to respond to neutrons as well.
What does not count is an inference. Not a mechanical indicator, not a position switch, not a painted mark, not a label on a container, and not the fact that the work went as planned. And if the measurement does not establish that the source is shielded, the work stops where it is, no one approaches, and the licensee acts on his own emergency arrangements and notifies the Ministry. These are obligations on the licensee under the Law, the Regulation and the conditions of his own licence, and their place is not this Decision.
Research is the practice in which the measurement rule above is hardest to apply. The reason is not that the devices are more energetic. It is that a research setting is the one in which the configuration changes. A plant installation is set up once and then runs. A research arrangement is rebuilt for the next experiment, by a different person, often a student. And it is often rebuilt when the result has become interesting and the day is nearly over. So the state established by measurement last week establishes nothing about this week. The person best placed to know what is in the beam is the person who has just changed it.
The devices in these settings are not all sealed sources, and an electrically generated source changes the rule rather than softening it. An X-ray instrument produces radiation only while it is switched on and connected to the supply. A measurement on a tube with the supply cut reads clean and establishes nothing about the next minute, because the tube can be switched on from the control system or by another person. So what makes the device safe to work on is that the means of switching it on has been taken out of service and kept under the control of the person doing the work, under the licensee's own written procedure. Measurement confirms only that no radiation is being produced at the moment it is made; it does not establish that the device has been made unable to produce it. It is made with an instrument whose energy response covers the photon energies that device produces: a meter whose calibration covers the energies of a gamma source may under-read at the much lower photon energies such an instrument emits. A lamp on a panel settles nothing either way.
Where unsealed material is handled, the hazard includes contamination and intake, which a dose-rate measurement does not address at all. So the monitoring has to match the material and not only the geometry. Surface contamination is looked for with a probe that responds to the emission of the nuclide actually in use: an alpha emitter will not be reliably detected by a gamma or a beta instrument. Intake is not something a surface monitor shows at all, so it sits with the licensee's own air sampling and personal monitoring arrangements. None of this is in this Decision. The dose assessments, the area delineation, the contamination control and the emergency arrangements are duties on the licensee under the Law, the Regulation and the conditions of the facility licence, and the procedure for a given arrangement is written by whoever is competent to write it.
How the Institute can help
Two findings recur on research files. The first is that there is no file at all, because the entry sits under a heading that reads as industrial and the licence register was built from the plant practices, so a department running devices for years has never read the entry written for it. The second is a certificate in the officer course offered against a condition that names the protection course, which happens because the department calls its appointee a safety officer and bought the course with the matching name.
The Institute delivers radiation protection training for industrial applications and the radiation protection officer course, reviews which entry in the schedule applies to each role in a laboratory and to the devices as the client describes them, reviews a file against item 17 condition by condition, drafts the enquiry to the Ministry on whether a diploma outside the five specialities named in the parenthesis meets the academic condition, on the standing of a named course at a named provider and on the prescribed medical examination, and advises on the records that evidence two years in the field of scientific research. One of the courses these items name is a separate qualification obtained from a provider that offers it and the Institute does not issue it: the maintenance course named in item 16 for devices containing radioactive material. The Institute also does not issue product training on a particular make of equipment, which no item among these five names. What the Institute delivers is radiation protection training for industrial applications and the radiation protection officer course; whether a particular course at a particular provider satisfies the approved-centre requirement of a particular condition is for the Ministry to say.
Scope of what the Institute does: training and consulting. Field radiation surveys are carried out through specialist partners. The Institute does not carry out laboratory analysis, instrument calibration or equipment testing.
A note on the names of two courses, and it is the single most useful distinction in this batch. The items read here do not all name the same course. Items 13 and 14, the two officer entries, require a radiation protection officer course in industrial applications from an approved centre. Items 15, 16 and 17 require a training course in radiation protection in industrial applications from an approved centre, and item 15 writes that phrase with an additional word rendered here as in the field of. Those are different wordings naming courses that are not written identically, and an officer entry and a technician entry therefore do not name the same thing. We record the difference and we do not resolve it: we do not say that one of them discharges the other, we do not say that one ranks above the other, and we do not say what a certificate in one would do against a condition naming the other, because the items do not say. What follows practically is narrow and it is worth acting on: read which of the two wordings your own entry uses, buy the course the entry names rather than the one the market calls by a similar name, and put the question of whether a particular certificate answers a particular condition to the Ministry in the words of the item, in writing, before the course is paid for.
A note on the source of a course in these items. Each of the five items read in this batch requires a course that is to come from a centre the Decision describes with an Arabic word this explanation renders as approved. The items set out in this explanation do not define the term, do not say who gives that approval, and do not say whether it is a general status or given for a particular course. Our reading of the wording is that where the description appears it is attached to the centre the course comes from and to no other party. There is one course among these items that carries no such description at all: the maintenance course named in item 16. Silence in an instrument is neither a permission nor a prohibition, so it is recorded and not read either way. The English word is a rendering chosen for this explanation and is not a term of art: our practical reading is to ask in the Arabic wording of the item, naming the specific course and the specific provider, and to keep the answer in writing, because what the instrument leaves open the authority settles. The Institute is a licensed training provider and describes itself that way and no other way.
A note on the authority. The transcribed preamble of the Decision refers to the Executive Regulation issued by decision of the President of the Supreme Council for the Environment and Natural Reserves, number 4 of 2003, and it does not state who issued Decision 4 of 2007. So this explanation does not say that body issued it, and its name appears nowhere in this explanation outside a verbatim quotation but in this note. The authority addressed today is the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, and the unit concerned is named in the organisational decisions as the Radiation Protection Department; that is an administrative statement about who is addressed now and it is not offered as a reading of the Decision. In the Institute's own advice the authority is written as the Ministry.
This explanation is published for awareness by the radiation protection team at ALDuha Institute for Training and Environmental Consulting. The English text is an explanation, not an official translation: the Arabic text published in the Official Gazette governs in case of any difference, and the official Arabic wording of every condition discussed here is quoted in full on the Arabic version of this article. This explanation is introductory. It is not a legal opinion, it does not replace the conditions of your own licence, and it does not replace review by the regulator. Last updated 8 October 2026.