KAUST celebrates outstanding success at 2025 Geneva Exhibition of Inventions
KAUST proudly congratulates our talented faculty on their exceptional achievements at the prestigious 50th Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions 2025. Demonstrating KAUST’s commitment to impactful innovation, 10 of our faculty were honored for their groundbreaking work, collectively earning an impressive array of gold and silver medals. See below for the full list of awardees and their projects.
This remarkable success across various fields highlights the depth and breadth of research excellence fostered at KAUST. The medals awarded recognize inventions with the potential to make significant contributions to science, industry, and society, solidifying KAUST's reputation as a global hub for cutting-edge technological development.
Among the distinguished honorees, special recognition goes to Professor Dana Alsulaiman. She was awarded the highly coveted International Federation of Inventors' Associations (IFIA) Best Invention Award, a top distinction at the exhibition. This accolade celebrates her outstanding invention, "Bio-MXenes: Biohacking Precision Diagnostics 2D Material-based electrochemical biosensor for enzyme-free microRNA biomarker detection."
Professor Alsulaiman's invention represents a potential paradigm shift in medical diagnostics. Her portable biosensor is engineered to detect specific microRNA cancer biomarkers directly from liquid biopsy samples, offering a noninvasive method for analysis. This technology holds immense promise for creating more accessible, efficient, and transformative strategies for vital cancer screening and patient monitoring worldwide.
"Winning the IFIA Best Invention Award is incredibly rewarding, and it truly highlights the strength of innovation at KAUST. I'm especially proud to share this success with my nine KAUST colleagues who were also awarded for their inventions – congratulations to all! This collective recognition in Geneva underscores the University's role as a hub for groundbreaking research and development,” said Professor Alsulaiman.
Award | Professor | Invention | Description |
Gold Medal | Shehab Ahmed
| Super-Resolution Imaging of Ferromagnetic Tubulars: Deep Neural Network-Based Electromagnetic Inversion
| A multi-frequency data acquisition model, coupled with a novel convolutional recurrent hybrid neural network (HNN), to fully visualize metallic pipelines. Massively parallelized simulations are used to create training data, which is verified by an experimental setup.
|
IFIA Best Invention Award | Dana Alsulaiman | Bio-MXenes: Biohacking Precision Diagnostics 2D Material-based electrochemical biosensor for enzyme-free microRNA biomarker detection
| A portable biosensor for detecting microRNA cancer biomarkers from liquid biopsy offers an accessible and transformative strategy for cancer screening and monitoring
|
Silver Medal | Stefan Arold | Rapid Zika Virus Detection with a locally developed Nanobody Lateral Flow Assay
| A next-generation LFA (lateral flow assay) that uses nanobodies as detection units. Nanobodies can be locally produced from bacteria.
|
Silver Medal | Osman M. Bakr | All-in-One Infrared Imaging Technology for Climate Monitoring
| An innovative multi-band IR imaging system integrating low-cost, scalable colloidal quantum dot (CQD) photodiodes with CMOS technology, enabling simultaneous imaging across NIR, SWIR, MWIR, and LWIR spectra.
|
Gold Medal | Samir Hamdan | From Lab to Market: Revolutionizing Pathogen Detection with KAUST’s IP on PCR-based Diagnostics
| KAUST IP on PCR-based diagnostic technology is manufactured at scale and at a competitive price
|
Gold Medal | Hussein Hoteit
| CO2MinX Carbon Mineralization and Resource Extraction from Basalts
| Reducing emissions in KSA and globally is essential for meeting energy and environmental sustainability targets. Our innovative solution leverages volcanic basalt to permanently remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and extract valuable minerals.
|
Gold Medal | Niveen Khashab
| Algae-Based Plastics: Utilizing Red Sea Algae for the Production of Completely Biodegradable Packaging Materials
| This invention extracts polysaccharides from Red Sea Sargassum to create 100% biodegradable bioplastics, addressing ocean plastic pollution and massive Sargassum blooms with a sustainable solution.
|
Silver Medal | Gilles Lubineau
| Toughened thermoplastic adhesive tape for medical joint support applications
| We propose the advanced tape solution to overcome the limitation of the current tapes by incorporating sacrificial defects at the interface between the adhesive and the carrier
|
Gold Medal | Magdy Mahfouz
| CRISPR-based multiplex detection of human papillomavirus (HPV) variants
| Single-step, patented, thermostable CRISPR-based diagnostics for the multiplex detection of high-risk Human Papillomavirus variants
|
Gold Medal | William L Roberts
| CirCoLi A new paradigm for Li-ion battery recycling
| Faster process, smaller footprint, greener compared to conventional hydrometallurgy.
|