KAUST’s Provost, Fawwaz Ulaby, started things off with a presentation about KAUST and its facilities, and then there was some time for a Q & A. Highlights follow.

In Michigan, where Prof. Ulaby currently works, there are three universities that share a NMR machine purchased for them by the state. Demands for time on this machine are relatively high, and so professors from these schools only get about 30 - 60 minutes on it per month. KAUST will have 6 such machines.

KAUST’s per-student investment is US$3 million.

KAUST hired a professor from Imperial College to oversee the construction of an electron microscope of the highest caliber. Apparently, though, as the project is wrapping up, this particular professor was so excited about this machine that he has requested a position at KAUST that he might be able to make use of it.

In January, we will be taken to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to go to a research symposium and check out the campus, etc. They’ve apparently reserved something like 80% of the Jeddah Hilton for their students during this week-long event. We’ll get a chance to see the campus under construction - that is, to see the more than 30,000 laborers building the 14-square-mile community. We’ll also be going camping in the desert - camels and all!

The director of the NIH (an organization that reportedly distributes about US$30 billion per year in grants for medical research), Elias Zerhouni has announced that he’ll be stepping down as director, and joining KAUST’s board of directors. He gave a speech at the event, and is clearly very well-educated and articulate, and I think he will be able to bring a lot to KAUST.

In addition to giving us generous stipends for everything we could need from travel to books to cost of living to new computers, each of us is assigned to an advisor who will reportedly be guiding through the next ~10 months. This includes advice about which courses to take, but we’ll also be participating in several developmental exercises aimed at developing the students a little more holistically. It will focus on things like cultural awareness, time management, etc. Potentially interesting.

The program looks really fantastic, and the classes so far look pretty interesting. They said they expect about 60% of their Masters students to continue on to their doctoral program, and this is something in which I’d be very interested.