Quarterly Newsletter

As we embark on a new year, we look back at some of the achievements of the University’s milestone fifth anniversary.

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Seventeen prestigious universities worldwide participate in the awards, with one first-place winner and one runner-up being chosen from each university’s group of participating students.

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Organisms making up the so-called “rare biosphere” of the world’s marine ecosystems comprise less than 1 percent of the bacterio-plankton communities in these environments, but are extremely diverse, playing an important role in the functioning of marine food webs.

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Over 30 upstream specialists, including academics from KAUST and other international universities and industry, joined Saudi Aramco's upstream petroleum experts to present on critical issues in this important field.

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Dr. John L. Hennessy, President of Stanford University, was the evening's Distinguished Commencement Speaker. In a ceremony presided over by the University's Academic Leadership and His Excellency Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi, Chairman of KAUST's Board of Trustees, President Chameau welcomed the graduates, their friends and families and the KAUST community in honoring the students as they "begin another journey in life."

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The International Business Relations (IBR) Committee of the Graduate Student Council, in collaboration with KAUST's Career Development Office, Saudi Initiatives and the Alumni Affairs Office, held its inaugural Alumni Panel during the annual fall 2014 Career Fair. Graduate Student Council moderators Michael Margineanu and Nadia Kouraytem opened the session with welcome remarks.

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Professor TorOve Leiknes has been appointed the new director of the Water Desalination and Reuse Center (WDRC). Since June 2014, Dr. Leiknes has served as the center's interim director, following the retirement of Gary Amy and his subsequent appointment as an Emeritus Professor.

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Two members of KAUST's research community, Jasmeen Merzaban, Assistant Professor of Bioscience, and Ph.D. student Nouf Alshareef, have been honored by the L'Oréal Foundation, receiving the L'Oréal-UNESCO "For Women in Science" fellowships at a ceremony in Dubai on November 17.

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Prof. Pierre Magistretti, Dean of KAUST's Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division, was awarded an honorary membership from the Chinese Association for Physiological Sciences (CAPS) in October. CAPS is part of the China Association for Science and Technology, whose purpose is to promote scientific and technological progress, economic revitalization and social development of China.

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In a recent paper published jointly by scientists from the KAUST Catalysis Center (KCC) and Technische Universität München (TU Munich) it is stated that “the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now set to surpass the symbolic mark of 400 ppm (parts-per-million) with a growth rate of over 2 ppm per year.” They also report that only about 0.5% of the CO2 emitted is currently exploited as renewables for the production of useful chemicals.

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Professor Jean-Luc Bredas, the Director of the Solar and Photovoltaics Engineering Research Center (SPERC) has recently been elected member of the European Academy of Sciences (EURASC). While he is recognized as one of the most highly cited chemists in the world, the EURASC distinction highlights Dr. Bredas’ status as one of the world’s most preeminent scientists in the field of organic semiconductors and solar cells.

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In a study recently published in Nature Geoscience by a group of Icelandic and Swedish researchers, including Prof. Sigurjón Jónsson, an interesting correlation was established between two earthquakes greater than magnitude 5 in North Iceland, in 2012 and 2013, and the observed changing chemical composition of area groundwater prior to these tectonic events.

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KAUST announced the acquisition of a Cray XC40 supercomputer. The new system, called Shaheen II, will be twenty-five times more powerful than KAUST’s current system. With this investment, KAUST will significantly augment its world-class academic and research facilities and capabilities to advance scientific discoveries.

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As highlighted in a recent KAUST article focusing on surveying work from the Director of the Red Sea Research Center, Prof. Xabier Igigoien, a major human-induced stressor is pollution – mainly from plastics making their way into the oceans of the world. Another factor are the globally increasing temperatures and the resulting problems from decreasing ocean pH and ocean acidification.

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A KAUST team led by Dr. Husam Alshareef, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, has developed a microfabricated energy storage device that delivers unprecedented energy and power density higher than current thin film batteries.

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The long-term goal is to fully couple the ocean-atmospheric models and simulate these as one system, exactly as in nature.
Understanding the variability of ocean currents is also of vital importance in order to develop a large-scale and comprehensive picture to study and predict the Red Sea's physics and even biology. By assimilating data, Prof. Hoteit's group seeks to provide real-time nowcasting and forcasting models for the Red Sea.

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