Faculty members and leadership from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) visited King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) on November 25 and 26, 2015 to discuss collaboration between the two universities.

The group was welcomed by the Director of the KAUST Core Laboratories, Dr. Justin Mynar and taken on a tour of the Visualization Lab, the Shaheen supercomputer, the Nanofabrication and Thin Film Core Labs, and the Clean Combustion and Water Desalination Research Centers.

Jean Fréchet, KAUST vice president for research, opened the plenary session by saying that it was time to increase collaboration with in-Kingdom universities, of which KFUPM is a leading example.

“We are two very good universities with very good faculties. What can we do together? We need to look for common ground and then take action. The onus to begin collaboration is on everyone present here today,” said Fréchet.

Information about the programs at the two institutions where collaboration might take place was provided in talks given by KFUPM Professor of Electrical Engineering, Ibrahim M. El-Amin; KAUST Professor of Electrical Engineering, Jeff Shamma; KFUPM Professor of Chemical Engineering and Coordinator of the Center for Modeling and Computer Simulation, Abdullah Shaikh; and KAUST Professor of Applied Mathematics and Computational Science, and Director of the Extreme Computing Research Center, David Keyes. The talks were followed by question and answer sessions.

Opportunities for collaboration in electrical engineering and modeling, and computer simulation were discussed in breakout sessions and presented to the group in a debrief and discussion session.

"The visit by KFUPM faculty and the meetings to discuss areas of potential collaboration produced convergent ideas in electrical engineering and in modeling and simulations. We look forward to determining the best possible opportunities for action-oriented next steps with neighboring faculty members at KFUPM.” said Dr. Moody Altamimi of the Office of Sponsored Research and co-organizer of the event with Dr. Wajih Abu-Al-Saud, director of the Office of KFUPM-KAUST Cooperation at KFUPM.

- By Diane Burgoyne, KAUST News