The CERT (Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Training) Group of Companies began as the commercial arm of the Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Arab Emirates, and has grown to be the largest private education provider in the Middle East. CERT is also the largest MENA (Middle East North Africa) investor in the discovery and commercialization of technology, investing US$35 million in 2006.

The Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Training  (CERT)

Company type	Establishment owned by The Higher Colleges of Technology
Industry	Education
Founded	Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (1996)
Founder	Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan
Headquarters	Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Number of locations	16 separate campuses across the United Arab Emirates
Key people	Abdulrahman Al Awar, Chairman Mohamed Baka, CEO
Products	Consultancy  Education & training  Technology solutions  Real estate
Number of employees	300+ FTE (Post March 2021)
Subsidiaries	CERT Foundations
Website	www.cert.ae

In 2005, CERT signed Telematics with IBM, that has led to the development of Telematics technology in the United Arab Emirates. CERT provides the only super computing center in the South Asia, Middle East, North Africa region. The CERT Blue Gene supercomputer^[1] offers 5.7 teraflops calculating speed to corporate clients for use in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and genetics research as well as oil and gas simulation.

CERT Technology Park in the UAE is home to international companies such as Intel, Honeywell and Lucent Technologies.