King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Announces Appointments of Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Human Resources

Leadership Team Grows Steadily with Addition of Senior, World-Class Talent

Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (July 31, 2008) – King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) today announced the selection of Mr. Terry A. Leighton as Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, and Mr. Gary Taylor as Vice President of Human Resources. Both will assume their new positions immediately.

Mr. Leighton will provide leadership and general financial management in the areas of financial planning and reporting, budgeting, accounting (including receivables and payables), treasury, and payroll. He will also be responsible for the accounting and investing of KAUST’s free funds. Mr. Taylor will be the chief personnel officer of the University and will work with the president and other senior management to design, develop and implement effective workforce strategies and tactics in support of KAUST’s mission and objectives. He will manage all human resource functions including recruitment and employment services, compensation and job evaluation, benefits, labor and employee relations, relocation, and staff training and development. Both positions will report to the senior vice president of finance and administration.

Upon the appointments, KAUST President-designate Choon Fong Shih commented, “To build a world-class university you need world-class talent – in all areas. This team has an extraordinary responsibility and the capabilities to meet the challenge: to create an infrastructure that will sustain KAUST as an institution for a long time to come."

KAUST Interim President Nadhmi Al-Nasr added, “The Chief Financial Officer and the Vice President of Human Resources are key positions integral to the development of a seamless internal foundation. With Mr. Leighton and Mr. Taylor in place, we are well on our way to filling all necessary roles in time for the opening of KAUST in September of 2009.”

A native Australian, Mr. Leighton has more than 25 years of financial management experience in government and university settings. For the past nine years, Mr. Leighton served as the director of Corporate Finance Services at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, where he led the major strategic components of the University’s finance functions, including budget policy preparation, reporting and compliance, financial planning, and asset and risk management. Previously, he spent 11 years in increasingly responsible positions within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet in Brisbane, where he started as finance officer in the Budget Division, progressively moving to executive director in the Infrastructure, Policy Coordination Division. A Fellow in the Australian Society of Certified Practicing Accountants, Mr. Leighton is a 1986 graduate of Brisbane College of Advanced Education with a Bachelor’s degree in Business.

With 25 years of extensive experience in both the public and private sectors in the field of Human Resources, Mr. Taylor was most recently the executive director of Human Resources for the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he has served in this role since 2005. During his tenure, he held a strategic leadership position reporting to the vice chancellor’s office. Prior to this position, he worked for 16 years as the director of Human Resources and Public Affairs at a commercially managed healthcare company. He has also held positions at Unilever Corporation, as well as Australia’s second largest insurance company. Following his graduation from the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Sciences, Mr. Taylor spent six years in the South African Navy. He also holds diplomas from several continuing education programs including the Institute of Personnel Management, the Industrial Relations Development Program at the University of Stellenbosch Business School in South Africa, and Strategic Human Resources Management from Harvard University in the United States. Accredited as a Master Human Resources Practitioner, he has also contributed to many professional HR journals and spoken on the issues at international industry conferences.

About KAUST

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is being built in Saudi Arabia as an international, graduate-level research university dedicated to inspiring a new age of scientific achievement in the Kingdom, across the region and around the globe. As an independent, merit-based institution, KAUST will enable top researchers from around the globe and across all cultures to work together to solve challenging scientific and technological problems. The KAUST global research and education network will support diverse talents both on its campus and at other premier universities and research institutions through collaborative research agreements, grants, and student scholarship programs. The core campus, located on more than 36 million square meters on the Red Sea at Thuwal, is set to open in September 2009. For more information about KAUST, visit http://www.kaust.edu.sa.