David Murphy

Professor Mario Lanza is a man who cares passionately about his work, his colleagues and his students. He truly enjoys navigating the storm and stress of achieving excellence in his chosen field of materials science and engineering.

Many disciplines, including health, the environment and climate, rely heavily on statistics and data science. From measuring human lifespans to the impact of distributed solar photovoltaics on electrical grid operations, data science and statistics significantly affect a wide range of fields.

Professor Suhaib Fahmy joined KAUST in late 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the prospect of building a team of highly motivated researchers with sufficient resources that convinced him to come to the University.

In the heart of the Arabian desert, where ambitious visions of futuristic smart cities like NEOM are taking shape, a significant challenge arises: urban air pollution. As Saudi cities bristle with innovation, technological advancements and unparalleled connectivity, ensuring clean air is crucial to their continued progression.

The Communications and Computing Systems Lab (CCSL) at KAUST, led by Professor Ahmed Eltawil, has received two awards in the International Telecommunication Union AI for Good Machine Learning Challenge, tinyML Hackathon Challenge 2023: Pedestrian Detection.

KAUST Ph.D. student Cristina Queirós da Silva recently won a best poster prize at the 15th edition of the biannual congress of the European Federation of Catalysis Societies (EFCATS), EuropaCat 2023.

As climate change impacts and greenhouse gas emissions grow worldwide, the need for sustainable energy solutions has become increasingly important. Now more than ever, the work of the world’s leading scientists is crucial as we attempt to reverse the negative impact our actions have on the environment.

KAUST Ph.D. student Yue Yuan recently won the Saudi Arabian Falling Walls Lab and will now represent KAUST and the Kingdom at the prestigious Falling Walls Science Summit 2023.

The event, which will be held in Berlin, Germany, on November 7-9, 2023, will serve as a space to explore the forefront of scientific breakthroughs developed by students and early-career professionals and emerging trends shaping our world in 2023.

From its conception, KAUST was an ambitious project. No other university in Saudi Arabia has aspired to raise Saudi Arabia’s research and education in science and technology to such a level. Throughout, the University has staffed some of the best scientists in their fields, and it is constantly churning out students who are pushing the frontiers of science in academics and industry.

KAUST Professor of Geophysics Tariq Alkhalifah has been awarded the Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). Alkhalifah received the award at the third annual International Meeting for Applied Geoscience & Energy 2023 (IMAGE '23).

The KAUST Extreme Statistics (extSTAT) Research Group received two prestigious awards at this year’s Extreme Value Analysis (EVA 2023) Conference in Milan, Italy.
The 13th International Conference on Extreme Value Analysis was held at Bocconi University from June 26 to June 30, 2023.

Two KAUST students—Kerven Durdymyradov and Charles Edward Sexton—participated in and won honors at this year’s Open Mathematical Olympiad for University Students (OMOUS-2023). The Olympiad was held at the International University for the Humanities and Development (IUHD) in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, from April 23-28, 2023.

“What allowed me to ‘flourish’ as a researcher was definitively a supportive family, a good education system, a lot of personal effort, the great people I collaborated with or learned from, and, to a not negligible extent, luck—or destiny—if you prefer.” These are the insightful words of one of KAUST’s newest faculty members, Professor Roberto Di Pietro.

Deep learning — a machine learning technique that teaches computers to process data similarly to how humans do—might be the most successful form of AI; however, current training algorithms are far from fully automated. Instead, they require constant human supervision to ensure that algorithms converge correctly.

Therein lies the paradox: We use machine learning algorithms to automatize tasks, but their training still requires a large amount of human supervision.

The Atlantic Council estimates that fewer than five percent of women-led businesses exist in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, a small number compared to a global average of up to 26%.

However, this figure does not reflect the growing number of women in the region forging ahead in establishing businesses, companies and tackling global crises.