KAUST recently announced that Professor Jürgen Schmidhuber will join KAUST as director of the University's Artificial Intelligence Initiative. Schmidhuber is a renowned computer scientist who is most noted for his pioneering work in the field of artificial intelligence, deep learning, and artificial neural networks.
"I am delighted that we are able to recruit to KAUST a seminal leader in AI and machine learning in Dr. Schmidhuber," KAUST President Tony Chan, said. "This signifies the commitment that KAUST, as well as Saudi Arabia, is making to lead in and contribute to this very important field."
The future of AI research
Schmidhuber will join prominent AI faculty at KAUST, including Provost Lawrence Carin; Deputy Director of the AI Initiative Bernard Ghanem; founding Interim Director Wolfgang Heidrich; and many other highly cited faculty in computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, biological sciences and earth sciences. His focus initially will be to recruit new faculty members and top student prospects, develop educational programs and entrepreneurial activities, and engage with key public and private sector organizations.
KAUST expects AI to aid in the analysis of huge amounts of data coming from the Kingdom's gigaprojects, and the design of data gathering in these domains. AI is also expected to play a big role in the Kingdom's energy transitions in hydrogen, carbon capture, solar and wind. In both basic research and incorporation into its daily operations, KAUST is aligned with the vision of the Kingdom for a digital transformation powered by artificial intelligence.
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