Andrea Fratalocchi Elected OSA Fellow for Pioneering Innovations 1 min read · Mon, Nov 25 2019 Spotlight News photonics energy harvesting Andrea Fratalocchi, associate professor in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, was recently elected as a Fellow Member of The Optical Society of America (OSA) at the Society’s Board of Directors meeting in September.
Professor Kosel Appointed as Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Sensors Council 1 min read · Mon, Nov 25 2019 Spotlight News sensors transducers Jürgen Kosel, associate professor of electrical engineering in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, has been appointed as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Sensors Council for the period of 2020-2022.
Machine learning models gather momentum 1 min read · Sun, Nov 24 2019 News algorithms machine learning Computer science New methods for training machine learning models are quicker and more accurate than current approaches, previously considered state-of-the-art.
Student Focus: Abdullah Hamdi 1 min read · Thu, Nov 21 2019 Spotlight student focus KAUST Ph.D. student Abdullah Hamdi began his university studies at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where he specialized in electrical engineering. After graduating from KFUPM in 2016, he moved to KAUST for his master's degree ('18) and Ph.D. in electrical engineering, with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning and computer vision. At KAUST, Hamdi is part of Associate Professor Bernard Ghanem's Image and Video Understanding Lab. Ghanem, a member of the University's Visual Computing Center, seeks to teach machines to
Malleswararao Tangi Awarded the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers 1 min read · Wed, Nov 20 2019 News Malleswararao Tangi Receives the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.
CEMSE New Faculty: David Bolin, Associate Professor of Mathematical Statistics 1 min read · Tue, Nov 19 2019 News spatial statistics spatio-temporal modeling David Bolin is an associate professor of mathematical statistics who joined the KAUST Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division earlier this month from the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Gothenburg. Before joining KAUST, Bolin received both his Ph.D. degree in mathematical statistics and M.S.c in engineering mathematics from Lund University, Sweden, in 2012 and 2007, respectively. Upon completing his Ph.D., he spent one year at Umeå University, Sweden, working as a postdoctoral fellow before moving to the Chalmers University of Technology. In 2016, Bolin became an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Gothenburg, where a year later he received the title of Docent in mathematical statistics.
Ronghui Won Oxford Instruments SEM Micrograph Competition! 1 min read · Thu, Nov 14 2019 News Congratulations to Ronghui for winning Oxford Instruments SEM Micrograph Competition.
Magnetic skin ensures the force is with you 1 min read · Tue, Nov 12 2019 News sensors electrical engineering A magnetic skin that is safe and comfortable to wear could open the door to a wide range of wireless, remotely controlled applications.
Nasir Alfaraj's Ph.D. Dissertation Defense 1 min read · Mon, Nov 11 2019 News Study on Deep-Ultraviolet Optoelectronic Devices Enabled by the Hybrid Integration of Next-Generation Semiconductors and Emerging Device Platforms
CEMSE New Faculty: Ahmed Eltawil, Professor, Electrical Engineering 1 min read · Mon, Nov 11 2019 News Signal processing mobile systems low power digital circuit Professor of Electrical Engineering, Ahmed Eltawil, recently joined the KAUST CEMSE Division from the University of California (UCI), Irvine, where he had worked for 14 years prior. At UCI, Eltawil worked in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and was also the founder and director of the university’s Wireless Systems and Circuits Laboratory. As an expert in system integration for wireless systems, he joins KAUST with an established pedigree of university-industry collaboration, and he continues to act as an advisor in the development of wireless systems for leading international companies.
CEMSE New Faculty: Mohamed Elhoseiny, Assistant Professor of Computer Science 1 min read · Thu, Nov 7 2019 News artificial intelligence Computer Vision Prior to joining the KAUST CEMSE Division earlier this year, Mohamed Elhoseiny received his Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University, New Brunswick in 2016, before spending over two years working as a postdoctoral researcher at Facebook in the company’s AI research wing. Elhoseiny joins the Division as an assistant professor of computer science based in the KAUST Visual Computing Center (VCC). He will also act as the PI of the KAUST Computer Vision, Content AI (Vision-CAIR) Research Group. Outside of his duties at KAUST, he is also acting as an artificial intelligence (AI) research consultant for Baidu Research, Silicon Valley AI Lab.
CEMSE New Faculty: Joaquín Ortega Sánchez, Instructional Professor, Statistics 1 min read · Mon, Nov 4 2019 News Stochastic processes Gaussian processes functional data analysis Joaquín Ortega Sánchez is an instructional professor of statistics who joins the KAUST CEMSE Division after spending the last sixteen years working at the Mathematics Research Center (CIMAT) in Guanajuato, Mexico. Born in Venezuela, Ortega completed his postgraduate and graduate studies in London, where he studied mathematics at King’s College London, before obtaining his Ph.D. in Probability Theory across the city at Imperial College London. After his time in the U.K., he returned to his native Venezuela where he worked for over 20 years at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas. Over the course of his career, Ortega’s research work has focused on stochastic processes, specifically Gaussian processes and time series with applications in oceanography and biostatistics. And more recently his work has focused on functional data analysis.
AI reveals nature of RNA-protein interactions 1 min read · Wed, Oct 30 2019 News artificial intelligence Computer science A deep learning tool could help in structure-based drug discovery.
Flexing for success from Saudi Arabia to Silicon Valley 1 min read · Tue, Oct 29 2019 News wearable electronics electrical engineering Asrar Damdam is setting up her own biotech company in Silicon Valley while pursuing a Ph.D. at KAUST
Pitching a winning business idea in Silicon Valley 1 min read · Tue, Oct 29 2019 Awards News Spotlight ultraviolet wavelengths food pathogens UV LED KAUST Ph.D. student Asrar Damdam's business idea wins first place at pitching competition in Silicon Valley.
Baby steps for transparent electronics 1 min read · Sun, Oct 27 2019 News nanomaterials electrical engineering Stretchy, see-through, silver nanowire sheet combines optical transparency with excellent electrical conductivity.
Latifah Al maghrabi's Master's Thesis Defense 1 min read · Thu, Oct 24 2019 News Study of PA-MBE grown III-nitride nanowires for strain engineering optoelectronics, nano-energy harvesting devices and piezotronics.
Shaking up the landslide model 1 min read · Thu, Oct 24 2019 News disaster management Environmental Statistics statistics Areas without earthquake monitoring systems could model the tremors by using data from local landslides.
Chao Shen awarded a 2017 Young Professional Travel Grant from IEEE Photonics Society 1 min read · Wed, Oct 23 2019 News Chao Shen awarded a 2017 Young Professional Travel Grant from IEEE Photonics Society.
Hybrid integration of materials for ultraviolet detection 1 min read · Sun, Oct 20 2019 News Semiconductors are pervasive in consumer electronics and optoelectronics, and the related optical devices are deemed disruptive that Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014 was awarded to the inventors of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which “has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”. While AlInGaN-based lasers and LEDs, and silicon-based photodetectors are currently matured, unconventional usage based on the materials has demonstrated their further potential, including solar-hydrogen generation, indoor-horticulture, and high-speed communication. By combining the optical
Symbol of change for AI development 1 min read · Sun, Oct 20 2019 News artificial intelligence Computer science Bridging the knowledge gap in artificial intelligence requires an embedding function that helps step between different types of "thinking."
Less chat leads to more work for machine learning 1 min read · Wed, Oct 16 2019 News machine learning Computer science Deep analysis of the way information is shared among parallel computations increases efficiency to accelerate machine learning at scale.
NRW’s EUR 1.25M Artificial Intelligence Grant awarded to Dominik L. Michels 1 min read · Tue, Oct 15 2019 News grants Dominik L. Michels, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, and Head of the Computational Sciences Research Group within KAUST's Visual Computing Center, was recently awarded one of the six Artificial Intelligence Grants of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany, for his contributions to the simulation of complex physical environments. The grant, amounting to 1.25 million euros, will fund Michels’ research on algorithmic methods to use synthetic data for training of neural networks in Machine Learning. “Synthetic data are data that were not obtained by direct measurement but were generated by specific algorithms,” Michels explains, “in neural networks, the use of synthetic data is needed whenever the amount of data available is less than required.”
A cool alternative to air conditioning 1 min read · Wed, Oct 9 2019 News energy security electrical engineering An inexpensive passive cooling technology could be used to cool buildings in cities, reducing energy consumption.
KAUST professors receive Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Arab Researchers 1 min read · Sun, Oct 6 2019 Awards Spotlight News uncertainty quantification bayesian inference computational fluids mechanics Mohamed Eddaoudi, KAUST distinguished professor of chemical science and director of the University's Advanced Membrane & Porous Materials Center, recently received the Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Arab Researchers for Renewable Energy, an award presented annually by the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation. Omar Knio, KAUST professor of applied mathematics and computational science, was also honored by the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation this year as a joint recipient of the Shoman Award for Mathematical Modeling with Dr. Shaher Mohammed Ahmad Momani.
3 Faculty Positions in Statistics 2020 at KAUST 1 min read · Tue, Oct 1 2019 News statistics The 3 faculty positions are in the Statistics Program (http://stat.kaust.edu.sa) within the Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering Division. Currently, the Statistics Program has 7 core faculty and 10 affiliated faculty. We are primarily interested in applicants with strong background in one of the following areas: (1) Statistical Data Science and AI, including network data analysis and high-dimensional statistics (https://apply.interfolio.com/69165); (2) Statistical Climatology, with expertise in statistical analysis of climate model output data, in particular regional climate models, and in physical systems (https://apply.interfolio.com/69167); (3) Statistics for Public Health, including smart health data analysis, personalized medicine, and disease mapping (https://apply.interfolio.com/69168).
Expanding the scale of dangerous weather prediction 1 min read · Sun, Sep 29 2019 News Environmental Statistics A more accurate and efficient method of capturing the local factors that lead to extreme rainfall enables better flood prediction across larger regions.
Relishing the ‘McLaren experience’ at the 2019 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix 1 min read · Sun, Sep 29 2019 News student focus sensors Altynay Kaidarova is a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering based in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science & Engineering division.
The NANOVIS team wins the 1st Place in Graph Drawing Contest 2019 1 min read · Thu, Sep 26 2019 News visualization graph drawing The NANOVIS team has won the 1st Place in Graph Drawing Contest 2019 under the category of "Creative Topic #2 Meal Ingredients" on their graph "Worldmap of Food". The contest took place in the 27th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD'19) that was held from September 17 to 20, 2019 in Průhonice/Prague, Czechia. Check the full poster:
Three papers with contributions from the NANOVIS team will be presented at IEEE VIS 1 min read · Wed, Sep 25 2019 News visualization Three papers with contributions from the NANOVIS team will be presented at IEEE VIS 2019 that will be held from 20 to 25 October 2019 in Vancouver, Canada. Multi-Scale Procedural Animations of Microtubule Dynamics Based on Measured Data ScaleTrotter: Illustrative Visual Travels across Negative Scales Data-aware Continuous Colormap Refinement for 2D Scalar Field Visualization IEEE VIS 2019 is the premier forum for advances in visualization for academia, government, and industry. This week-long event brings together researchers and practitioners with a shared interest in visualization.
KAUST Ph.D. student receives environmetrics best poster award 1 min read · Tue, Sep 24 2019 News Spotlight Environmental Statistics Ghulam Qadir, a third-year Ph.D. student in KAUST Associate Professor Ying Sun's Environmental Statistics research group, recently received a best poster award from the Italian Environmetrics Society (GRASPA) and the International Environmetrics Society (TIES) at the GRASPA 2019 conference held from July 15 to 16 in Pescara, Italy.
Honing in on hotspots in spatial data 1 min read · Sun, Sep 15 2019 News statistics Environmental Statistics More accurate detection of hotspot clusters provides new insights into the behavior of air pollution.
KAUST Professor Peter Richtárik wins Distinguished Speaker Award 1 min read · Sun, Sep 15 2019 Awards Spotlight News optimization machine learning big data Peter Richtárik, KAUST professor of computer science, recently received a Distinguished Speaker Award at the Sixth International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT 2019) held in Berlin from August 3 to 8. ICCOPT 2019 was organized by the Mathematical Optimization Society and was hosted this year by the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics.
Marc Genton received an ISI Service Award 2019 1 min read · Sun, Sep 15 2019 Awards Spotlight News statistics visualization computational predictions Marc Genton, Chair and Distinguished Professor of the Statistics Program of KAUST and Head of the Spatio-Temporal Statistics and Data Science Research Group, received an International Statistical Institute (ISI) Service Award 2019 for his efforts and leadership as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Stat. Professor Genton received his award at the Awards Ceremony during the World Statistical Congress (WSC) 2019 held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 18-23 August 2019.
Aditya Prabaswara's Ph.D. Dissertation Defense 1 min read · Thu, Sep 12 2019 News Study of III-nitride Nanowire Growth and Devices on Unconventional Substrates
Database to support infectious disease research 1 min read · Wed, Sep 11 2019 News machine learning artificial intelligence human health Computer science Linking disease pathogens to clinical signs and symptoms through a database could support research into the molecular mechanisms of infectious diseases.
KAUST Assistant Professor Raphaël Huser receives American Statistical Association award 1 min read · Tue, Sep 3 2019 News Statistics of extremes spatio-temporal statistics copulas KAUST Assistant Professor Raphaël Huser recently received the American Statistical Association's (ASA) 2019 Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) Early Investigator Award for his outstanding contributions to environmental statistics. He accepted the award at the 2019 Joint Statistical Meetings held in Denver, Colorado, U.S., from July 27 to August 1.
AI learns complex gene-disease patterns 1 min read · Sun, Sep 1 2019 News health artificial intelligence big data Computer science A deep learning model improves the ability to identify genes potentially involved in disease.
Testing the blind spots in artificial intelligence 1 min read · Thu, Aug 29 2019 News machine learning artificial intelligence visual computing electrical engineering Understanding the situations when artificial intelligence can fail is critical for application of future autonomous vehicles and medical diagnostics.
R-INLA used to accurately predict forest fires in Portugal 1 min read · Wed, Aug 28 2019 News Professors Maria Antónia da Conceição Abrantes Amaral Turkman and Kamil Feridum Turkman, from the University of Lisbon used the INLA methodology and specifically SPDE's (using R-INLA), to do the official risk assessment for forest fire prediction in Portugal for 2018. The prediction s turned out to be very accurate and a new study is on the way for updating the predictions for 2020 with more detailed data.
KAUST Ph.D. student wins Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics award 1 min read · Wed, Aug 21 2019 News Spotlight Stochastic Modeling Quantitative finance Numerical simulation and analysis Chiheb Ben Hammouda, a KAUST Ph.D. student in the University's Stochastic Numerics Research Group, recently won the best poster award at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Conference on Financial Mathematics & Engineering (FM19) held at the University of Toronto from June 4 to 7. His winning poster, titled "Hierarchical adaptive sparse grids and quasi-Monte Carlo for option pricing under the rough Bergomi model," is one of several research projects carried out by Ben Hammouda under the supervision of KAUST Professor Raul Tempone.
Measuring solar stores of the Arabian Peninsula 1 min read · Tue, Aug 20 2019 News meteorology climate science solar energy supercomputing earth science and engineering Mapping variations in sunlight across the Arabian Peninsula reveals a bright future for solar energy in the region.
Statistics plot pollution to inform policy 1 min read · Sun, Aug 18 2019 News Environmental Statistics climate science pollution The spatial variation in different air pollution components helps identify possible targets for pollution control.
KAUST Research Conference 2019: New Trends in Biosensors and Bioelectronics 1 min read · Tue, Aug 6 2019 News bioelectronics Biosensors nanoelectronics The “KAUST Research Conference on New Trends in Biosensors and Bioelectronics” was held in KAUST between the 25th and 27th of February. This yearly event aims to give an overview of the most recent efforts in bioelectronics that tackle the “interface” problem and overcome the limits of the current technologies by generating new materials/architectures/device components. With its truly interdisciplinary nature, this conference will bring scientists from different disciplines together, including Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, Biology, and Material Science, who are at the top of their
KAUST student wins global sensors and measurement systems competition 1 min read · Mon, Aug 5 2019 News sensing platforms prototyping embedded systems KAUST master's degree student José Ilton de Oliveira Filho recently won first place at the second edition of the IEEE International Sensors and Measurement Systems Student Contest (IEEE IS&M-SC). IEEE IS&M-SC is a global competition directed at teams of advanced undergraduates, master's degree and Ph.D. students and seeks to stimulate creative ideas for sensor and measuring systems applications.
A breath of fresh information to help diagnosis 1 min read · Sun, Aug 4 2019 News communication networks wireless networks energy harvesting cognitive radio systems A communications concept could pinpoint a person infected with a deadly, contagious virus in the middle of a crowded airport.
Democratizing electronics one step at a time 1 min read · Thu, Aug 1 2019 News magnetism transducers sensors CMOS nanoelectronics flexible "You would not believe how many amazingly talented people there are in the world, but they often are just not exposed to opportunities," noted Muhammad Mustafa Hussain, KAUST professor of electrical engineering and currently a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is determined to try and change this—one step at a time.
Fatimah Alhawaj Wins the Top Scientific Paper Award of the SRSI Program 1 min read · Tue, Jul 30 2019 News Fatimah Alhawaj, a visiting student in the Photonics Lab from the Saudi Research Science Institute (SRSI), won the Top Scientific Paper Award of the SRSI 2019 program for her paper entitled "Group-III Nitride Micro-Photodetector for High-Speed Visible Light Communication Link".
Flat lenses with a twist! 1 min read · Tue, Jul 30 2019 News optics lenses electrical engineering Overlaying two film layers patterned with a nanoscale array can manipulate the propagation of light to create a powerful ultrathin lens.
ISL has 10+ new visiting students joining this year 1 min read · Tue, Jul 30 2019 News ISL this year is receiving over 10+ students from all around the world. Students range from Montreal, Canada, to Ile-Ife, Nigeria. These visiting students are all supervised by Dr. Tareq AlNaffouri and working on a variety of topics within the Information Systems Lab. These students are a great asset to the lab, and will further develop their research skills through working with Professor AlNaffouri.
