The global, multifarious challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic has scientists tapping their wide-ranging fields of expertise to attack the problem on many fronts. Answering the call from KAUST President Tony Chan, and coordinated by the University's leadership team, KAUST researchers making up the Rapid Research Response Team (R3T) are turning this crisis into an opportunity to innovate.
KAUST Professor David Keyes, director of the KAUST Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC) and professor of applied mathematics and computational science, chaired this year's International Supercomputing Conference (ISC). The ISC, which takes place in Frankfurt, Germany every June, is where the world's supercomputers are re-ranked for computational power, power efficiency, and performance on various scientific benchmarks.
KAUST Professor Peter Markowich has been elected as a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc). Established in 2003, the EurASC is a fully independent international organization of distinguished scholars that aims to recognize and elect to its membership the best European researchers to strengthen European science and scientific cooperation. 
Upon the recommendation of the DTA selection committee and the KAUST Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs Professor Yves Gnanou, Dr. Alexandra Gomes has been awarded the 2020 KAUST Distinguished Teaching Award. Gomes, who is a member of the KAUST CEMSE Division, was recognized for the award due to her exceptional contributions to the classroom instruction mission of KAUST. The award will be conferred at the annual KAUST Faculty Recognition Dinner scheduled for this fall.
KAUST Ph.D. graduate Dr. Noha Al-Harthi and doctoral student Rabab Alomairy, have won the German Gauss Center for Supercomputing (GCS) Award for original research that best advances high-performance computing. This makes KAUST the first Middle Eastern institution to receive this prestigious award.
The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed challenges across the globe that need to be solved using scientific discovery and innovation. In line with that, the KAUST Supercomputing Core Laboratory (KSL) has opened a call for proposals that require its supercomputer Shaheen II, as well as other cluster computing resources, to support research projects.