KAUST

KAUST stands for King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, profiled IN THIS WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, you’re not alone, but such a staggering amount of money has been pumped into this new university that much is likely to come of it. They will focus on graduate education in the hard sciences, and of the co-ed variety (unheard of in Saudi Arabia before now). They are also getting a jump-start by buying top undergraduate students from around the world with extremely generous packages. It’s one of those desert “oasis” campuses so common in the Gulf region, and that won’t be some people’s cup of tea (I’ve visited the American universities in Sharjah and Kuwait, and doubt that I could take that lifestyle myself). But with the scale of investment in this project they will certainly expect some important science to be done there. We’ll see. The American University in Cairo has had significant involvement in helping set up KAUST.

The location is the desert, somewhat to the north of Jeddah (the Red Sea port closest to Mecca). [ADDENDUM: My mistake, it’s right on the Red Sea Coast, which isn’t what I’d been told. That certainly makes it nicer.]