News

May 2019

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  Cutting datasets down to size

  1 min read · Thu, May 16 2019

  News

  applied mathematics computational science statistics environment

  A powerful statistical tool could significantly reduce the burden of analyzing very large datasets.
• West Africa warms but airborne dust keeps the Red Sea cool

  1 min read · Wed, May 15 2019

  News

  climate science climate projections supercomputing earth science and engineering

  World-class computing facilities at KAUST enable researchers to tackle complex questions in climate science and oceanography.
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  KAUST Associate Professor Andrea Fratalocchi’s research leads to Institute of Physics Fellowship

  1 min read · Sun, May 12 2019

  Awards Spotlight News

  photonics cybersecurity

  Andrea Fratalocchi, associate professor in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) division, was recently granted a Fellowship of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) by the Institute of Physics (IOP). Fratalocchi was awarded the IOP's highest level of membership in recognition of his outstanding accomplishments in physics.
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  Taking aim at outliers

  1 min read · Sun, May 5 2019

  News

  statistics Environmental Statistics

  Automatic detection of uncharacteristic data sequences could change the way data is processed and analyzed.
• Smart pill bottle keeps drugs safe

  1 min read · Sun, May 5 2019

  News

  drug safety sensors electrical engineering

  Low-cost, stretchy sensors can be assembled inside the lid of a drug container to help monitor patient safety.
• 

  Al Baha

  1 min read · Sat, May 4 2019

  Spotlight

• 

  Semiconductor Today features “Distributed feed-back gratings for indium gallium nitride laser diodes”

  1 min read · Fri, May 3 2019

  News

  Distributed feedback gratings for indium gallium nitride laser diodes” was featured in the May issue of Semiconductor Today Magazine.
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  Eddy currents affect flux of salt more than heat

  1 min read · Thu, May 2 2019

  News

  earth science and engineering marine science ocean circulation Red Sea

  Modeling the 3D structure of Red Sea eddies shows how transport of energy and biochemical materials influences circulation patterns in the Red Sea.
• 

  Electronics conference gives a positive charge

  1 min read · Thu, May 2 2019

  News

  Electronic devices piezoelectric nanosystem

  Highlighting sustainability and the work of female researchers was a strong focus of the international KAUST-US NSF electronics conference.

April 2019

• 

  The darkest black

  1 min read · Tue, Apr 30 2019

  News

  gold nanosphere nanorods insects light

  Metallic nanostructures absorb light better than any other known structures.
• 

  Simple statistics can be good enough

  1 min read · Tue, Apr 30 2019

  News

  Computer science statistics environment

  Study of the mismatch between spatial environmental data and a commonly used statistical analysis suggests simpler statistics are sufficient in many cases.
• 

  KAUST alumna’s paper recognized by American Statistical Association

  1 min read · Tue, Apr 30 2019

  Awards News Spotlight

  data transformations wind emulation and forecasting depth for functional data

  KAUST alumna Yuan Yan recently received an honorable mention from the American Statistical Association (ASA) for her paper entitled "Vector Autoregressive Models with Spatially Structured Coefficients for Time Series on a Spatial Grid." Yan, who participated in the ASA student paper competition last year, will be officially recognized for her contribution later this year at the association's 2019 Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver, Colorado, U.S., from July 27 to August 1.
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  An Ultra-Area-Efficient 1024-Point In-Memory FFT Processor

  1 min read · Fri, Apr 26 2019

  News

  FFT Circuits

  Hasan E. Yantir, et al., "An Ultra-Area-Efficient 1024-Point In-Memory FFT Processor", Micromachines, 10 (8), 2019, 509. Current computation architectures rely on more processor-centric design principles. On the other hand, the inevitable increase in the amount of data that applications need forces researchers to design novel processor architectures that are more data-centric. By following this principle, this study proposes an area-efficient Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) processor through in-memory computing. The proposed architecture occupies the smallest footprint of around 0.1 mm2 inside
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  A Comparison of Artificial Neural Network(ANN) and Support Vector Machine(SVM) Classifiers for Neural Seizure Detection

  1 min read · Thu, Apr 25 2019

  News

  Elgammal, M. A., Mostafa, H., Salama, K. N., & Mohieldin, A. N. (2019, August). A Comparison of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) Classifiers for Neural Seizure Detection. In 2019 IEEE 62nd International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS) (pp. 646-649). IEEE. In this paper, two different classifiers are software and hardware implemented for neural seizure detection. The two techniques are support vector machine(SVM) and artificial neural networks(ANN). The two techniques are pretrained on software and only the classifiers are hardware implemented
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  Wearable Electronics: An Imperceptible Magnetic Skin

  1 min read · Thu, Apr 25 2019

  News

  Abdullah S. Almansouri, et al., "An Imperceptible Magnetic Skin." Advanced Materials Technologies 4 (10), 2019, 1900493. Flexible and wearable magnetoelectronics add intriguing new functionalities to natural perception. Of particular interest regarding these artificial skins are wireless sensing and touchless interactions. Biocompatibility and imperceptibility are the most significant features of devices attached to the bodies. A biocompatible magnetic skin is introduced. It offers extreme flexibility, stretchability (>300%), and is lightweight, while maintaining a remanent magnetization up to
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  KAUST Ph.D. student wins best paper award from American Statistical Association

  1 min read · Thu, Apr 25 2019

  Awards News Spotlight

  Statistical computing High Performance Computing

  KAUST Ph.D. statistics student Jian Cao was recently selected as a best paper award winner by the American Statistical Association (ASA) for his paper entitled "Computing High-Dimensional Normal and Student-t Probabilities with Tile-Low-Rank Quasi-Monte Carlo and Block Reordering." Cao's paper was chosen in an ASA student paper competition under the section on Statistical Computing.
• Putting the sense in materials

  1 min read · Wed, Apr 24 2019

  News

  sensors machine learning supercomputing

  An interdisciplinary initiative is helping KAUST be at the forefront of a digital revolution, where sensors can find a use just about anywhere.
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  Marine Skin dives deeper for better monitoring

  1 min read · Mon, Apr 22 2019

  News

  monitoring electrical engineering marine science

  A pioneering tagging system that monitors the movement and local environment of sea animals reaches deeper depths and higher sensitivities.
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  Student Focus: Muhammad Akram Karimi

  1 min read · Fri, Apr 19 2019

  News Spotlight

  integrated circuits sensors energy harvesting

  Muhammad Akram Karimi describes himself as an inquisitive-minded researcher who loves to solve industrial challenges through science and technology. Karimi is a third year Ph.D. student working in the Integrated Microwaves Packaging Antennas & Circuits Technology (IMPACT) Lab under the supervision of Professor Atif Shamim. His current research focus is on the design of low-cost and printed microwave sensors for various industrial applications, with a prime focus on the oil industry.
• MOFs can sense and sort troublesome gases

  1 min read · Wed, Apr 17 2019

  News

  sensors chemical science electrical engineering gas monitoring MOFs

  Fluorinated metal-organic frameworks make excellent materials for selective sensing and removal of toxic gases.
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  Tiny, fast, accurate technology on the radar

  1 min read · Wed, Apr 17 2019

  News

  communications electrical engineering sensors

  A tiny, portable radar device could allow visually impaired people, or unmanned moving devices, to detect objects in real time.
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  Alumni Focus: Suzan Katamoura

  1 min read · Mon, Apr 15 2019

  News Spotlight

  KAUST alumna Suzan Katamoura graduated from the University in 2013 with a master's degree in computer networks. She currently works at King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy as a researcher and a director of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Unit in the Atomic Energy Sector‏.
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  KAUST to launch first virtual fabrication lab

  1 min read · Mon, Apr 15 2019

  News

  MOOC CMOS technology electrical engineering virtual lab distance learning

  The vFabLab™ platform, short for Virtual Fabrication Lab, will be presented on April 24th during a webinar organized and hosted by the IEEE Electron Devices Society.
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  Conducting Fab lessons in a virtual clean room

  1 min read · Sun, Apr 14 2019

  Spotlight

  Training nanofabrication materials science electrical engineering

  A virtual platform makes learning how to fabricate a semiconductor device easier, safer and more interactive.
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  KAUST

  1 min read · Thu, Apr 11 2019

  Spotlight

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  Saudi Arabia

  1 min read · Mon, Apr 1 2019

  Spotlight

March 2019

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  EE Graduate Seminar: Visible light communication

  1 min read · Sun, Mar 31 2019

  News

  A ​seminar by Dr. Guangyu Liu on Visible light communication​
• Clustering helps unlock secrets of the human brain

  1 min read · Sun, Mar 31 2019

  News

  statistics brain science environmental science

  The latest statistical methods from research on complex high-dimensional environmental data also yield powerful tools for interpreting brain activity.
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  Student Focus: Adel Bibi

  1 min read · Sun, Mar 24 2019

  Spotlight

  machine learning artificial intelligence

  KAUST Ph.D. student Adel Bibi, who works on bridging the gap between theory and practice in deep learning, believes we're living in a very exciting time.
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  Using sensor technology to tackle red palm weevils

  1 min read · Thu, Mar 14 2019

  News

  red palm weevil palm trees coconut palms

  The red palm weevil ( Rhynchophorus ferrugineus) is a snout beetle insect originating from tropical Asia. Over the last few decades, it has spread to a large part of the Middle East, North Africa, and virtually the entire Mediterranean region. Weevil larvae, the insects at their stage of development from an egg to before their adult form, are the cause of severe and widespread damage to certain palm tree species. The weevil larvae spend their entire four-month life cycle within the palm tree's trunk, hollowing it out from the inside until the tree dies. They are considered the most destructive
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  Chinese students explore KAUST

  1 min read · Thu, Mar 14 2019

  News

  Students from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu recently visited the KAUST campus.
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  A race against time

  1 min read · Thu, Mar 7 2019

  News Spotlight

  Formula 1 algorithm aerodynamics

  The theme of the University's 2019 Winter Enrichment Program (WEP) was "time." It represented an opportune moment for KAUST to welcome members of the McLaren Group to campus to discuss the recently signed extreme performance research partnership between KAUST and McLaren.
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  Alumni Focus: Albara Alauhali

  1 min read · Tue, Mar 5 2019

  News Spotlight

  saudi vision 2030 KFUPM

  KAUST alumnus Albara Bin Mousaed Alauhali is currently the executive advisor and director of strategic projects at the National Identity Enhancement Program, a program aimed at achieving Saudi Vision 2030.
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  KAUST alumna wins ADIPEC Young Engineer of the Year Award

  1 min read · Sun, Mar 3 2019

  Spotlight

  award

  KAUST alumna Shamael Al-Shuhail won the prestigious Abu Dhabi International Exhibition & Conference (ADIPEC) Young Engineer of the Year Award at ADIPEC 2018 held in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
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  EE Graduate Seminar by Dr. Islam Ashry

  1 min read · Sun, Mar 3 2019

  News

  Optical fiber sensors possess numerous advantages including immunity to electromagnetic interference, harsh environment operation, and miniature size. One attractive category of them is the distributed optical fiber sensors which can measure several parameters, such as temperature and vibration, along the entire. Such distributed optical fiber sensors are used in a myriad of important applications such as oil and gas industry, real-time structural health monitoring, and aerospace transportation, among others. In this talk, we summarize the operation principles of the optical fiber distributed

February 2019

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  AAAS honors KAUST Professor David Keyes as elected Fellow

  1 min read · Thu, Feb 28 2019

  Awards Spotlight

  award

  KAUST Professor David Keyes has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society. Keyes was honored for fundamental research contributions at the interface of parallel computing and numerical analysis and his service to the mathematical sciences profession. The Fellows, announced on November 27, 2018, were recognized during the week of February 18 at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., where they received an official certificate and the AAAS Fellows' gold and blue rosette pin, the colors of which
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  Photonics Lab Members Selected for Saudi's Delegation to the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

  1 min read · Thu, Feb 28 2019

  News

  ​Two Photonics Lab members, Latifah Al Maghrabi and Dr. Abderrhamen Trichili, have been selected for the Saudi delegation to the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting​, which will be held in Lindau, Germany. The meeting will be dedicated ​to physics with an emphasis on laser physics, cosmology, and gravitational waves. More than 40 Nobel Laurea​tes from around the world have confirmed their participation.
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  KAUST Research Conference: AI in Medicine

  1 min read · Mon, Feb 18 2019

  News

  artificial intelligence

• Scanning in the Fourth Dimension

  1 min read · Sun, Feb 17 2019

  News

  visualization visual computing

  Three-dimensional (3D) computed tomography is a widely used technology that visualizes an object's external and internal structure by assembling a series of two-dimensional images taken sequentially across or around it. However, as anyone who has had a medical magnetic resonance imaging scan will recall, this type of 3D reconstruction requires the subject to be motionless throughout the capture process, which can take minutes. Capturing a 3D structure that changes or deforms over time is much more difficult, and existing approaches often yield reconstructions marred by image artifacts and
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  Tweaking tools to track tweets over time

  1 min read · Sun, Feb 17 2019

  News

  Social media data machine learning artificial intelligence

  Computer model learns to identify Twitter users’ evolving interests by analyzing their Tweets.
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  Professor Ivan Viola Joins the Visual Computing Center

  1 min read · Wed, Feb 13 2019

  Spotlight News

  visualization visual computing

  We are proudly announcing that Professor Ivan Viola has joined VCC as an Associate Professor of Computer Science in November, 2018. He is establishing the Nano-visualization Research Group as a part of the Visual Computing Center. Prof. Viola has a master and Ph.D. from TU Wien in Austria. He has received a series of honors and recognition for his contribution to computing visualization such as the Austrian Computer Graphics Award 2016 for the Best Technical Solution, and the 1st Place Eurographics Dirk Bartz Prize for Visual Computing in Medicine 2013. Prof. Viola was attracted to KAUST for
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  Robust fractional-order proportional-integral observer for synchronization of chaotic fractional-order systems

  1 min read · Wed, Feb 13 2019

  News

  chaos control system synthesis linear matrix inequalities linear systems

  Ibrahima N' Doye, et al., "Robust fractional-order proportional-integral observer for synchronization of chaotic fractional-order systems", IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica 6 (1), 2019, 268. Abstract: In this paper, we propose a robust fractional-order proportional-integral (FOPI) observer for the synchronization of nonlinear fractional-order chaotic systems. The convergence of the observer is proved, and sufficient conditions are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) approach by using an indirect Lyapunov method. The proposed FOPI observer is robust against Lipschitz
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  Matthias Mueller Wins the Innovation Award

  1 min read · Tue, Feb 12 2019

  Awards Spotlight

  student award Poster Competition

  Matthias Mueller, a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering, who works in the Image and Video Understanding lab (IVUL) under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem, was awarded the Innovation Award at the WEP Library E-Poster Competition on the poster "Driving Policy Transfer via Modularity and Abstraction". The competition was held at the campus library as part of the Winter Enrichment Program (WEP) 2019 that took place in KAUST from the 13 th until 24 th of January, 2019. The winners received their awards at the Final Gala that was held to celebrate the end of the tenth annual Winter
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  Professor Helmut Pottmann Returns to Visual Computing Center

  1 min read · Tue, Feb 12 2019

  Spotlight News

  The Visual Computing Center would like to welcome back Professor Helmut Pottmann who recently rejoined the center in October 2018. Helmut Pottmann is a professor of Applied Mathematics and Computational Science (AMCS) at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and Principal Investigator of the Geometry and Computational Design group (GCD). He was the Founding Director of the Geometric Modeling and Scientific Visualization Center, which is now the Visual Computing Center, from April 2009 to December 2013. Professor Pottmann shared these words on returning back to KAUST: "After
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  EE Graduate Seminar: Self-Assembled AlGaInN Axial-Nanowires on Unconventional Substrates

  1 min read · Sun, Feb 10 2019

  News

  Group-III nitrides (AlGaInN) feature direct bandgaps covering a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum, making them suitable for solid-state lighting, chemical/biological sensing, water splitting, medical diagnostics, and optical communication. These nanowires defy the conventional crystal/epitaxial growth requirements of lattice-, thermal and crystal-structure-matching, as the nanostructures can be grown strain- and defect-free on various unconventional substrates, such as silicon and metals. The combinatorial choice of composition, layer-structure arrangement and materials (metal
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  Marine sensor gets to grips with salt

  1 min read · Sun, Feb 3 2019

  News

  electrical engineering marine science sensors

  Laser-induced graphene formation creates tailor-made sensors for monitoring ocean creatures and ecosystems.

January 2019

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  KAUST Associate Professor Taous-Meriem Laleg-Kirati finalist at Leadership Excellence for Women Awards & Symposium

  1 min read · Wed, Jan 30 2019

  Spotlight News

  modeling numerical analysis

  Taous-Meriem Laleg-Kirati, KAUST associate professor of electrical engineering in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Division, was selected as one of three finalists in the academic of distinction category at the recent Leadership Excellence for Women Awards & Symposium (LEWAS) in Bahrain.
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  Adel is invited to give a talk in EECVC on "Optimization meets Deep Learning"

  1 min read · Tue, Jan 22 2019

  News

  Deep learning optimization EECVC

  ​Adel is invited to give a talk in EECVC on "Optimization meets Deep Learning"​. It is a 45 minutes talk scheduled on the 6th of July 2019.
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  A broader bandwidth for electrical devices

  1 min read · Tue, Jan 22 2019

  News

  A simple fractional-order capacitor has been developed by a team from KAUST. Made from a single component, this device expands the range of frequencies that can be achieved by these devices, making them better at energy storage. Traditional analogue components are resistors, capacitors, and inductors. More recently, fractional-order components have gained attention due to their unconventional properties that enable increased flexibility. For example, fractional-order capacitors can temporarily store the signal in a manner that is similar to the behavior of neurons, thus imitating the
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  Raphaël Huser’s article among the top downloaded articles in Springer’s Environmental Sciences Journals

  1 min read · Tue, Jan 22 2019

  News

  INLA statistics xstat research highlights

  Luigi Lombardo, Thomas Opitz, and Raphaël Huser’s article “Point process-based modeling of multiple debris flow landslides using INLA: an application to the 2009 Messina disaster”, published in the scientific journal Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (SERRA), in July 2018, is among the top downloaded articles in Springer’s Environmental Sciences Journals for the year 2018. Huser is an Assistant Professor of statistics in the CEMSE division and principal investigator of the Extreme Statistics (extSTAT) Research Group at KAUST.