As part of the University's broader innovation and economic
development mission, KAUST is expanding its support and training for
entrepreneurship to meet the growing interest among students and young
people across the Kingdom in innovation, creativity and design. There
are some early signs of success with the incorporation of various new
student-led businesses in Saudi Arabia.
Promoting student entrepreneurship in the kingdom
One of the University's goals is to foster an entrepreneurial
mindset and culture among its students, researchers and the broader
community. In addition to running a large variety of classes, events and
other culture-building activities, KAUST has developed
accelerator programs that support early-stage student startup teams to explore, test and build their business ideas, including the
New Ventures Accelerator, which is open to all teams, and
Hikma, which is specifically designed for teams with IP-based business ideas.
KAUST also provides entrepreneurial teams with coaching, mentoring
and access to the University's extensive network of Saudi and
international partner companies and their network of facilities designed
for creative collision and knowledge-sharing.
"A good startup usually starts with a good vision, which demands
R&D, creativity and hard work. Being at KAUST has enabled us not
only to have the needed resources, but also to be surrounded by talented
and diverse scientists and researchers, moving the wheel of technology
and enabling us to go forward with our startup," said KAUST Ph.D.
student
Ahmad Dehwah
, co-founder of startup Sadeem.
KAUST is currently supporting 14 student startup teams in sectors
ranging from renewable energy, sensor and water desalination
technologies to social entrepreneurship. Fifty percent of these startups
are based on intellectual property developed at KAUST, and one-third
have already incorporated.
These entrepreneurial offerings for student startups at KAUST are
helping to contribute to a rise in entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia and
the region that is reshaping, redefining and helping to diversify the
economy. For example,
a recent HSBC report reveals that the Middle East has one of the highest proportions of millennial entrepreneurs globally.
New innovative startups
KAUST accelerators provide students with strategic advice,
mentorship and outside-the-box perspectives that help them take their
idea to the next level.
For example,
Amal Aboulhassan,
a KAUST Ph.D. student, came up with a testing method and computer
algorithm that significantly improves and lessens the costs for chemical
testing times for solar panels. By attending the
KAUST New Ventures Accelerator,
Aboulhassan was provided with advice on how to create a customer base,
hire key staff and fund a software model, which has now become a new
startup called MaterialSolved.
"Not only does KAUST provide a superior ecosystem of labs and
technical aids, the University also provides an excellent mentorship
team, several funding opportunities, crucial facilities and more," said
Aboulhassan.
Another example is
Sadeem, which recently won first place at the
KAUST Startup Accelerator Showcase. The Sadeem team, consisting of Dehwah,
Mustafa Mousa and
Edward Canepa,
all KAUST Ph.D. students in electrical engineering, along with former
KAUST professor Christian Claudel, have developed a wireless sensor
network that is the world’s first solar-powered urban flood and traffic
monitoring system. Sadeem has been part of the KAUST Entrepreneurship
Center’s Hikma (intellectual property-based) Startup Accelerator
program.
"Sadeem is based on four years of research experience at the KAUST
Distributed Sensing Systems Lab,
and it has been created to address the lack of monitoring systems for
flood and traffic flow monitoring in cities. The company has two patents
issued and one patent pending on sensors and sensing architectures,"
said Mousa.
“The dynamics for a startup are unique in the KAUST environment,
where you have top-class laboratories and resources available and easily
accessible,” Canepa said. “It’s also really exciting to be part of the
generation involved with creating a knowledge-based economy for the
Kingdom.”
CookHub, another social entrepreneurship startup at KAUST, was started by the University's Ph.D. students
Andrew Yip and
Ge Gao and recent Ph.D. graduate and current KAUST postdoctoral fellow
Ronell Sicat.
It is a platform that allows talented cooks in urban areas in
developing countries to prepare quality food at a time-shared kitchen
and fulfill online orders from office workers.