Making collective sense of brainwaves 1 min read · Wed, Oct 31 2018 News neuroscience data A new statistical tool for collectively analyzing large sets of brainwaves promises to accelerate neurofunctional research.
Teaching algorithms to see 1 min read · Tue, Oct 30 2018 News UAV visual computing Four hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Other than using text to search the title, description or tags associated with a video, video content search is limited. In addition to helping users find content more quickly and accurately, the ability to search video content is of paramount importance to video platforms and advertisers. Last year, YouTube was embroiled in controversy after rolling video ads for Coca-Cola and Amazon, among others, were shown before racist and extremist content. Advertising content is a major revenue stream for video platforms like YouTube
Solving the grandest of challenges 1 min read · Tue, Oct 30 2018 News energy nuclear fission ITER KAUST Around the world, scientists, researchers and engineers seek to develop sustainable alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels. Some explore the kinetic energy of wind, gravity or water. Others capture excited electrons using photosensitive materials. William Tang, a principal research physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University, wants to power the world using the chemical reaction that stars run on—nuclear fusion—and he believes deep learning is a key.
Ammar Alqatari wins first place in KGSP Poster Competition 1 min read · Mon, Oct 29 2018 News KGSP Poster Competition Ammar Alqatari, a KAUST Gifted Student Program (KGSP) student who interned with Associate Professor Xin Gao in the summer of 2018, has won first place in the KGSP Poster Competition held on August 28, 2018. His poster, entitled "Convolutional Sequence to Sequence Learning to Improve Nanopore Basecalling Efficiency ", is based on his work with Professor Gao about creating a deep learning model that can accurately and efficiently decode ultra-long DNA sequences from raw Nanopore signals. Watch Ammar talk about his experience as a visiting student in CBRC:
Meshari Alazmi defends his Ph.D. thesis 1 min read · Wed, Oct 24 2018 News machine learning bioinformatics structural biology systems biology Meshari Alazmi, a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, defended his Ph.D. dissertation on October 24, 2018.
Polymers offer a better view 1 min read · Wed, Oct 24 2018 News visual computing Imaging Computer science A window opens for analyzing the distribution of small molecules in biological and medical tissue samples.
KAUST team finds solution to staff transfers at the Saudi Ministry of Health 1 min read · Thu, Oct 18 2018 News company employee transfer system A team of KAUST scientists from the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) division worked to design an enhanced transfer system for the Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH) to help find solutions for employee localization.
Stimulating deeper insights into brain function 1 min read · Thu, Oct 18 2018 News neuroscience statistics Modeling changes in brain activity over time provides deeper insights into learning and behavioral responses.
Aerial Path Planning for Urban Scene Reconstruction: A Continuous Optimization Method and Benchmark 1 min read · Tue, Oct 16 2018 News optimization urban planning Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are ideal capturing devices for high-resolution urban 3D reconstructions using multi-view stereo. Nevertheless, practical considerations such as safety usually mean that access to the scan target is often only available for a short amount of time, especially in urban environments. It, therefore, becomes crucial to perform both view and path planning to minimize flight time while ensuring complete and accurate reconstructions. In this work, we address the challenge of automatic view and path planning for UAV-based aerial imaging with the goal of urban
Award-winning algorithm takes search for habitable planets to the next level 1 min read · Tue, Oct 16 2018 News telescope astronomy NVIDIA PASC singular-value-decomposition-MOAO An international team of scientists, including KAUST high performance computing experts and astronomers from the Paris Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), in collaboration with NVIDIA, is taking the search for habitable planets and observation of first epoch galaxies to the next level.
Mona Alshahrani defends her thesis proposal 1 min read · Tue, Oct 16 2018 News data integration machine learning human bioinformatics Mona Alshahrani, a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Assistant Professor Robert Hoehndorf, defended her thesis proposal on October 10, 2018.
Ph.D. student Michał Mańkowski wins poster award at the 18th Annual American Society of Transplant Surgeons Symposium 1 min read · Mon, Oct 15 2018 News student award ASTS simulation Michał Mańkowski, a Ph.D. student in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) division, won the Poster of Distinction Award at the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) 18th Annual State of the Art Winter Symposium. The event, which was held in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S., from January 11 to 14, also voted Mańkowski's soapbox presentation as the symposium's best solution on how more lives can be saved through transplantation. Mańkowski presented on behalf of Professor Sommer Gentry, his supervisor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Computing solutions for biological problems 1 min read · Sun, Oct 14 2018 News bioinformatics machine learning computational models Xin Gao’s research is building bridges between computer science and biology.
KAUST master’s degree student wins best poster award at Data Science Summer School 1 min read · Thu, Oct 11 2018 Awards News student award Samuel Horváth, a master's degree student in the University's statistics and optimization M.S./Ph.D. program, recently won a best poster award at the second edition of the Data Science Summer School (DS3). The event took place in Paris from June 25 to 29, and is one of the largest global data science summer schools. It was co-organized by the Data Science Initiative of École Polytechnique and DATAIA Institute. The primary goal of DS3 was to provide a series of courses and practical sessions covering the latest advances in the field of data science. Five hundred students, postdoctoral fellows
Ph.D. student represents KAUST and Saudi Arabia at the 2018 Chicago Forum on Global Cities 1 min read · Thu, Oct 11 2018 News KAUST Ph.D. student Nasir Alfaraj was recently selected to represent KAUST and Saudi Arabia at the 2018 Chicago Forum on Global Cities in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. The event, which was held from June 5 to 7, was hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and The Financial Times. It brought together more than 80 speakers from 27 countries to discuss the influence of global cities and how attendees could solve pressing global challenges.
National Infectious Disease Initiative Workshop brings researchers to KAUST 1 min read · Mon, Oct 8 2018 News infectious disease Representatives from the KAUST Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), King Saud University (KSU), Taibah University, National Guard Health Affairs (NGHA) and the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health (MOH) met on October 1 to iron out details of a national initiative to fight infectious diseases.
Nasir Alfaraj represents KAUST and Saudi Arabia at the 2018 Chicago Forum on Global Cities 1 min read · Mon, Oct 8 2018 News Photonics Lab Ph.D. student Nasir Alfaraj was recently selected to represent KAUST and Saudi Arabia at the 2018 Chicago Forum on Global Cities in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
KAUST Ph.D. students win best paper awards at mean-field games conferences 1 min read · Mon, Oct 8 2018 News Dynamic games mean-field games student award By Sonia Turosienski KAUST Ph.D. students David Evangelista and Xianjin Yang, who are supervised by Diogo Gomes, professor of applied mathematics and computational science, won best paper awards at conferences this summer for their work in mean-field game (MFG) theory. Mean-field games model and seek to explain the behavior of rational agents in a competitive environment and have been used in diverse areas of research, including studies on non-renewable resources and mining models; opinion dynamics; price impact and order book modeling; and networks and energy management. Evangelista was
KAUST gets ready for SC18 1 min read · Mon, Oct 8 2018 News supercomputing High Performance Computing For the past 10 years, KAUST has made a strong presence at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC) that takes place in different cities around the U.S. every year. 2018 will mark a special year for KAUST at SC, which will take place in Dallas, Texas, in November, with around 13,000 supercomputing professionals in attendance. The University will have an engaging presence on the exhibition floor and in the seminars, and the technical program of SC18 will be chaired by the Director of the KAUST Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC)
Alumni Focus: Hessa Al-Quwaiee - M.S. '13, Ph.D. '16 in electrical engineering 1 min read · Mon, Oct 8 2018 Spotlight News Hessa Al-Quwaiee's interest in engineering started young, but in the early 2000s when Al-Quwaiee was attending high school, the path to becoming a female engineer in Saudi Arabia was not a commonly taken one.
Congratulations to Luigi for his new position as Assistant Professor of Applied Soil Science at the University of Twente 1 min read · Sun, Oct 7 2018 Spotlight News
Alumni Feature: Majed Alzahrani 1 min read · Sun, Oct 7 2018 News Spotlight data science Working in one of the largest companies in the world is a dream come true for many. For Majed Alzahrani, a former Ph.D. student who worked under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, things couldn't be better. After graduating in 2017, he quickly joined Saudi Aramco as a data scientist in its Drilling Data Science unit.
Mining Red Sea bacteria for industrial potential 1 min read · Thu, Oct 4 2018 News marine science bioprospecting microbiology genomics Genome sequencing of two Red Sea bacteria highlights their potential as industrial workhorses.
Reining in computational complexity 1 min read · Tue, Oct 2 2018 News statistics extreme weather A more efficient approach to modeling spatial data involving thousands of variables keeps computation time in check.
KAUST and KACST join forces to prevent infectious diseases 1 min read · Mon, Oct 1 2018 News The KAUST Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) have collaborated under the umbrella of the National Infectious Disease Initiative to enrich research...
Solving real-world problems 1 min read · Wed, Sep 19 2018 News statistics Bayesian computational statistics healthcare ecology A tool developed by Håvard Rue has transformed data analysis, interpretation and communication. It has been applied broadly: from modeling the spread of infectious diseases to mapping fish stocks.
KAUST Ph.D. student wins best paper award at EMBC ‘18 1 min read · Mon, Sep 17 2018 Awards viscoelastic models Mohamed Abdelwaheb Bahloul, a first-year Ph.D. student in KAUST Associate Professor Taous-Meriem Laleg-Kirati's Estimation Modeling and Analysis (EMAN) research group, received the best paper award for the Africa and Middle East region at the recent 40th International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC '18). Bahloul was one of five finalists selected from each of the EMBS geographical areas (North America, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East and Asia-Pacific). EMBC '18, which was held in Honolulu, Hawaii, from July 17 to 21, is one of the world's
KAUST students win top honors at ICM 2018 1 min read · Sun, Sep 16 2018 Awards magnetism cardiac catheters KAUST Ph.D. students Abdullah S. Almansouri and Hanan Mohammed recently won top honors at the 21st International Conference on Magnetism (ICM 2018), which took place in San Francisco, U.S., from July 15 to 20. Almansouri won the Best Poster Award, while Mohammed won the People's Choice Award in the Magnetism as Art Showcase. The ICM is an international conference series attracting more than 2,000 global attendees, and it continues with a series of meetings that are held every three years around the world.
Shells absorb light from all directions 1 min read · Wed, Sep 12 2018 News Nanoparticles with a shell structure improve the performance of zinc-oxide photodetectors.
Faculty Discuss their Career Journeys and Professional Development 1 min read · Wed, Sep 12 2018 News Professional Development electrical engineering Join our first session with DR. JÜRGEN KOSEL - Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering CEMSE - PI of Sensing, Magnetism and Microsystems Group This session will be followed by a Q&A discussion. Students across all divisions are welcome. Light snacks will be provided for those who are registered. Register via the Student Life Forum by clicking here Date: Wednesday, Sept. 19th Time: 4:30 – 5:30 pm Location: Student Center, Level 4, Fellowship Hall For more information please contact Office of Professional Development - Professional.Development@KAUST.EDU.SA
Plant Wearables and Airdropped Sensors Could Sow Big Data Seeds 1 min read · Wed, Sep 12 2018 News stretchable electronics IoE IoT Stretchable plant wearables and smart tags dropped by drones aim to help give farming a big data makeover. The relatively cheap technologies for mass monitoring of individual plants across large greenhouses or crop fields could get field tests in three countries starting in 2019. The idea came from researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia with expertise in flexible electronics. After talking with colleagues who were cultivating genetically engineered plants in greenhouses, they recognized the need for inexpensive sensors that could be deployed
Paving the way towards 5G wireless communication networks 1 min read · Tue, Sep 11 2018 News Spotlight FD-MIMO transmissin technology Marconi Prize Young Scholar Awards 5th generation cellular mobile phones KAUST Ph.D. student Qurrat-Ul-Ain Nadeem received a 2018 Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award for her work in full-dimension (FD) massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) transmission technology.
Ph.D. student Valerio Mazzone wins best paper award 1 min read · Mon, Sep 10 2018 News photonics photonic crystals Valerio Mazzone, a Ph.D. student in the Primalight group based in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Division (CEMSE), was awarded the best paper award at the 9th International Conference on Metamaterials, Photonic Crystals and Plasmonics (META).
Photoelectrochemical research wins gold and silver in Hong Kong 1 min read · Wed, Sep 5 2018 News student award photoelectrochemistry nanomaterials hydrogen fuel The 2018 NANO Conference, which took place at the City University of Hong Kong in late June, was spearheaded by the International Committee on Nanostructured Materials (ICNM) and is a traditional meeting place for nanomaterials researchers. There, state-of-the-art research and the latest advanced findings in the field are presented. Ph.D. student Hui-Chun Fu and postdoctoral fellow Purushothaman Varadhan, researchers from KAUST Professor Jr-Hau He's lab, presented the findings of their research at the conference, winning two prestigious awards: the Materials Today Rising Star Poster Award
Ninth academic Convocation marks new beginnings and calls for visionary future 1 min read · Wed, Sep 5 2018 News academic convocation students KAUST welcomed a new cohort of master's degree and Ph.D. students as part of the ninth academic Convocation ceremony held on September 4, which marked the start of the academic year. Half of the students came from countries around the world, and over a third were female, arriving at KAUST from some of the best educational institutions globally.
KAUST partners with McLaren Racing on R&D 1 min read · Tue, Sep 4 2018 News McLaren machine learning fuels lubricants mathematics sensors electronics McLaren Racing and KAUST signed a five-year research and development (R&D) agreement focused on extreme performance technology. The partnership aims to advance research in the areas of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), machine learning, fuels and lubricants, advanced mathematics and sensors and electronics. "This partnership underlines our commitment to supporting global STEM advancements," said Jonathan Neale, chief operations officer of McLaren Group. "KAUST is a leading research and education institution in these fields and mirrors our core values. McLaren Racing is part of a world
How extreme weather exacerbates air pollution 1 min read · Tue, Sep 4 2018 News statistics extreme weather air pollution xstat research highlights Simultaneously modeling of air pollutants and weather under extreme conditions highlights the potential for serious health risks.
Alumni Focus: Wail Bamhair (M.S. '10, electrical engineering) 1 min read · Mon, Sep 3 2018 Spotlight nanotechnology electrical engineering energy Wail Khalid Bamhair (M.S. '10, electrical engineering - nanotechnology) hails from Jeddah and is currently the CEO of TAQNIA Energy, the energy arm of Saudi Investment and Development. Bamhair received his master's degree from KAUST in 2010, the year the University's first class of graduating students were awarded their degrees.
KAUST welcomes President Tony Chan 1 min read · Sat, Sep 1 2018 News KAUST President Speaking after his appointment was announced in April, Dr. Chan said the new role was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and he is eager to play a part in the University's next chapter as well as in Saudi Arabia's exciting new era of innovation. Dr. Chan has been a friend of KAUST for more than 10 years, having initially hosted a delegation of the University's founding team in 2008 while he was with the U.S. National Science Foundation. He joined the University's Board of Trustees in 2011, and is most recently a member of the Board's newly established Innovation Committee. "My deep history with
Award-winning algorithm aids observation 1 min read · Mon, Aug 27 2018 News astronomy telescope extreme computing Researchers at the Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC) at KAUST have developed a new algorithm that uses supervised machine learning to control a small high-speed deformable mirror inside the exoplanet imaging camera to compensate for atmospheric turbulence in the Subaru Telescope, which has an 8.2 meter diameter.
Alumni Focus: Ahmed Abdulmajeed Alabdulkarim, M.S. '11 1 min read · Tue, Aug 14 2018 News big data artificial intelligence machine learning Ahmed Abdulmajeed Alabdulkarim earned a master's degree from KAUST in 2011. His research interests are in the field of big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and he is now pursuing his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S. He received his bachelor's degree with honors in computer science from King Saud University, where he graduated at the top of his class. From a young age, Alabdulkarim was passionate about computers. Studying computer science was his drive and motivation to continue his university studies. He explained that he chose KAUST for
CBRC goes to ECCB 2018 1 min read · Thu, Aug 9 2018 News Computational biology Nanopore Sequencing cwDTW algorithm ontology phenotypes SmuDGE The European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) is one of the most important conferences in the field of bioinformatics and computational biology. Held in a different European city annually, this year's conference will take place in the historic city of Athens, Greece on September 8-12, 2018.
Maxat Kulmanov defends his thesis proposal 1 min read · Tue, Jul 31 2018 News bioinformatics artificial intelligence neural network Semantic web machine learning Maxat Kulmanov, a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Assistant Professor Robert Hoehndorf, defended his thesis proposal on July 31, 2018.
The internet of sea things 1 min read · Sun, Jul 29 2018 News wireless communication systems sensors When Atif Shamim, KAUST associate professor of electrical engineering, was approached by colleagues in the University's Red Sea Research Center (RSRC) with the challenge of developing underwater sensing technology for marine animals, he wasn't sure how his expertise could help, since marine animals are under water most of the time. Up until now, his research has focused on Bluetooth for applications on dry land, such as wearable medical devices connected to smartphone applications through Bluetooth communication protocol
Semiconductor Today features "KAUST demonstrates nanowire GRINSCH diode for efficient UV-LED/laser applications" 1 min read · Mon, Jul 23 2018 News "AlGaN-based light-emitting devices are promising ultraviolet light sources to replace the existing UV gas lasers and UV lamps containing toxic substances (mercury). However, the performance of AlGaN-based UV emitters are limited, and in particular high-power UV laser diodes (emitting below 330nm) have not yet been reported. Moreover, the threshold operating voltages of reported UV laser diodes (>330nm) are quite high, surpassing 25V in lasing mode with high series resistance due to poor hole injection efficiency." "These limitations in device performance are attributed to several factors such
Red Sea flushes faster from far-flung volcanoes 1 min read · Sun, Jul 22 2018 News earth science and engineering marine science oceanography Red Sea Volcanic eruptions in Mexico and the Philippines can lead to atmospheric changes that favor the ventilation of deep water in the Red Sea.
Device to circuit to system 1 min read · Wed, Jul 18 2018 News ultra-low power circuit design MEMS next-generation computing The city of the future will be innervated with millions of microscopic sensors. These sensors will need to be virtually invisible, extremely low power and, conversely, extremely powerful from a computing perspective. A team at KAUST is chasing this impossible list of requirements in the form of miniaturized mechanical structures or MEMS.
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowships in Photonics @ CEMSE – call 4 - 2018 1 min read · Tue, Jul 17 2018 News FD-MIMO communications cognitive radio systems MOVPE laser solar hydrogen biophotonics bioimaging 3D printing A group of professors working in the area of photonics at KAUST, most of them with CEMSE Division, offer hosting of outgoing Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowships in their research groups within the EU H2020 COFUND Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme MULTIPLY.
Xiangliang Zhang joins CBRC 1 min read · Sun, Jul 15 2018 News machine intelligence knowledge engineering Computer science Xiangliang Zhang, KAUST associate professor of computer science and principal investigator of the Machine Intelligence & Knowledge Engineering Lab, joined the Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) on July 1, 2018. In CBRC, Xiangliang will work on the problems of modeling biological networks using machine learning models.
Searching for wind for the future 1 min read · Sun, Jul 15 2018 News statistics energy security The first quantification of wind energy in Saudi Arabia points to high wind power potential for many decades to come.
