CEMSE New Faculty: David Bolin, Associate Professor of Mathematical Statistics 1 min read · Tue, Nov 19 2019 News spatial statistics spatio-temporal modeling David Bolin is an associate professor of mathematical statistics who joined the KAUST Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division earlier this month from the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Gothenburg. Before joining KAUST, Bolin received both his Ph.D. degree in mathematical statistics and M.S.c in engineering mathematics from Lund University, Sweden, in 2012 and 2007, respectively. Upon completing his Ph.D., he spent one year at Umeå University, Sweden, working as a postdoctoral fellow before moving to the Chalmers University of Technology. In 2016, Bolin became an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Gothenburg, where a year later he received the title of Docent in mathematical statistics.
Shaking up the landslide model 1 min read · Thu, Oct 24 2019 News disaster management Environmental Statistics statistics Areas without earthquake monitoring systems could model the tremors by using data from local landslides.
Less chat leads to more work for machine learning 1 min read · Wed, Oct 16 2019 News machine learning Computer science Deep analysis of the way information is shared among parallel computations increases efficiency to accelerate machine learning at scale.
NRW’s EUR 1.25M Artificial Intelligence Grant awarded to Dominik L. Michels 1 min read · Tue, Oct 15 2019 News grants Dominik L. Michels, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, and Head of the Computational Sciences Research Group within KAUST's Visual Computing Center, was recently awarded one of the six Artificial Intelligence Grants of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany, for his contributions to the simulation of complex physical environments. The grant, amounting to 1.25 million euros, will fund Michels’ research on algorithmic methods to use synthetic data for training of neural networks in Machine Learning. “Synthetic data are data that were not obtained by direct measurement but were generated by specific algorithms,” Michels explains, “in neural networks, the use of synthetic data is needed whenever the amount of data available is less than required.”
KAUST professors receive Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Arab Researchers 1 min read · Sun, Oct 6 2019 Awards Spotlight News uncertainty quantification bayesian inference computational fluids mechanics Mohamed Eddaoudi, KAUST distinguished professor of chemical science and director of the University's Advanced Membrane & Porous Materials Center, recently received the Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Arab Researchers for Renewable Energy, an award presented annually by the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation. Omar Knio, KAUST professor of applied mathematics and computational science, was also honored by the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation this year as a joint recipient of the Shoman Award for Mathematical Modeling with Dr. Shaher Mohammed Ahmad Momani.
Expanding the scale of dangerous weather prediction 1 min read · Sun, Sep 29 2019 News Environmental Statistics A more accurate and efficient method of capturing the local factors that lead to extreme rainfall enables better flood prediction across larger regions.
Honing in on hotspots in spatial data 1 min read · Sun, Sep 15 2019 News statistics Environmental Statistics More accurate detection of hotspot clusters provides new insights into the behavior of air pollution.
KAUST Professor Peter Richtárik wins Distinguished Speaker Award 1 min read · Sun, Sep 15 2019 Awards Spotlight News optimization machine learning big data Peter Richtárik, KAUST professor of computer science, recently received a Distinguished Speaker Award at the Sixth International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT 2019) held in Berlin from August 3 to 8. ICCOPT 2019 was organized by the Mathematical Optimization Society and was hosted this year by the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics.
Marc Genton received an ISI Service Award 2019 1 min read · Sun, Sep 15 2019 Awards Spotlight News statistics visualization computational predictions Marc Genton, Chair and Distinguished Professor of the Statistics Program of KAUST and Head of the Spatio-Temporal Statistics and Data Science Research Group, received an International Statistical Institute (ISI) Service Award 2019 for his efforts and leadership as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Stat. Professor Genton received his award at the Awards Ceremony during the World Statistical Congress (WSC) 2019 held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 18-23 August 2019.
Database to support infectious disease research 1 min read · Wed, Sep 11 2019 News machine learning artificial intelligence human health Computer science Linking disease pathogens to clinical signs and symptoms through a database could support research into the molecular mechanisms of infectious diseases.
KAUST Assistant Professor Raphaël Huser receives American Statistical Association award 1 min read · Tue, Sep 3 2019 News Statistics of extremes spatio-temporal statistics copulas KAUST Assistant Professor Raphaël Huser recently received the American Statistical Association's (ASA) 2019 Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) Early Investigator Award for his outstanding contributions to environmental statistics. He accepted the award at the 2019 Joint Statistical Meetings held in Denver, Colorado, U.S., from July 27 to August 1.
KAUST Ph.D. student wins Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics award 1 min read · Wed, Aug 21 2019 News Spotlight Stochastic Modeling Quantitative finance Numerical simulation and analysis Chiheb Ben Hammouda, a KAUST Ph.D. student in the University's Stochastic Numerics Research Group, recently won the best poster award at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Conference on Financial Mathematics & Engineering (FM19) held at the University of Toronto from June 4 to 7. His winning poster, titled "Hierarchical adaptive sparse grids and quasi-Monte Carlo for option pricing under the rough Bergomi model," is one of several research projects carried out by Ben Hammouda under the supervision of KAUST Professor Raul Tempone.
Measuring solar stores of the Arabian Peninsula 1 min read · Tue, Aug 20 2019 News meteorology climate science solar energy supercomputing earth science and engineering Mapping variations in sunlight across the Arabian Peninsula reveals a bright future for solar energy in the region.
A breath of fresh information to help diagnosis 1 min read · Sun, Aug 4 2019 News communication networks wireless networks energy harvesting cognitive radio systems A communications concept could pinpoint a person infected with a deadly, contagious virus in the middle of a crowded airport.
Epilepsy study shows the shape of things to come 1 min read · Sun, Jul 21 2019 News brain science bioscience statistics Pyramidal graphs resulting from statistical analyses of EEG recordings can improve our understanding of epileptic seizures.
Mastering a prickly problem in ferrofluids 1 min read · Sun, Jul 14 2019 News Computer science visual computing nanoelectronics ferrofluids magnetic-field simulations Computer simulation accurately captures the beguiling motion of a liquid magnetic material.
New Book "Decision and Inhibitory Trees and Rules for Decision Tables with Many-valued Decisions" of Professor Moshkov and His Former Students is Published by Springer 1 min read · Tue, Jul 9 2019 News decision trees New book "Decision and Inhibitory Trees and Rules for Decision Tables with Many-valued Decisions" by Fawaz Alsolami, Mohammad Azad, Igor Chikalov, and Mikhail Moshkov is published by Springer
Teamwork pays off at startup Insyab 1 min read · Mon, Jul 8 2019 News robot drones wireless connectivity algorithm Energy-efficient wireless multihop networks Cross-layer protocol design Insyab, a technology startup specializing in smart solutions allowing robots and drones to collaborate on the execution of common tasks, resulted from three years of its founders' dedicated research at KAUST.
Red Sea temperatures to cool in coming decades 1 min read · Sun, Jul 7 2019 News geophysical fluid systems Bayesian Estimation uncertainty quantification Exploring the links between natural climate cycles and the sea-surface temperature of the Red Sea reveals a cooling trend during the next few decades.
Accelerating the grapevine effect 1 min read · Sun, Jul 7 2019 News optimization machine learning big data By looking at classical gossip algorithms from a novel perspective, KAUST Professor Peter Richtarik has found a way to significantly speed up gossip-based information sharing, and in the process, he discovered new applications for this efficient mathematical approach. Gossip involves the sharing of information between individuals in a network and can be applied mathematically in both human social networks and data networks, such as distributed sensors. “A network is a collection of nodes, each connected to other nodes via links,” explains Richtarik. “In social networks, for instance
Simulating Red Sea water exchanges 1 min read · Sun, Jun 23 2019 News oceanography Red Sea earth science and engineering Powerful computer simulations are revealing new insights into water exchanges between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Changing how we predict coral bleaching 1 min read · Tue, Jun 18 2019 News algorithm coral bleaching climate science earth science and engineering A remote sensing algorithm offers better predictions of Red Sea coral bleaching and can be fine tuned for use in other tropical marine ecosystems.
Remote sensing of toxic algal blooms 1 min read · Thu, Jun 13 2019 News Red Sea environment marine science earth science and engineering Algal blooms in the Red Sea can be detected with a new method that accounts for dust storms and aerosols.
Study finds Red Sea may be cooling rather than warming 1 min read · Thu, May 30 2019 News Bayesian Estimation Geophysical Fluid Modeling uncertainty quantification A recent study by a team including KAUST Earth scientists and oceanographers revealed that surface temperatures in the Red Sea may be cooling rather than rising. Analysis of long-term data sets shows that the current high warming rates of the Red Sea appear to be a combined effect of global warming and natural long-duration changes in sea surface temperature. "Our study has revealed a sequence of alternating positive and negative trends in Red Sea surface temperatures. Over the next decades, the trends indicate a cooling phase that may counter the effects of global warming," stated Ibrahim
KAUST Professor David Keyes to chair International Supercomputing Conference 2020 1 min read · Mon, May 20 2019 Spotlight News supercomputing conference David Keyes, KAUST professor of applied mathematics and computational science; director of the University's Extreme Computing Research Center; and senior associate to the President of KAUST, will chair the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) 2020. He will be the first program chair from a Middle Eastern institution, as announced by ISC 2020.
Better racing car design through an industry partnership 1 min read · Sun, May 19 2019 News applied mathematics computational science fluid dynamics aerodynamics The Formula 1 race track is the ultimate testbed for a KAUST researcher's latest work.
Cutting datasets down to size 1 min read · Thu, May 16 2019 News applied mathematics computational science statistics environment A powerful statistical tool could significantly reduce the burden of analyzing very large datasets.
West Africa warms but airborne dust keeps the Red Sea cool 1 min read · Wed, May 15 2019 News climate science climate projections supercomputing earth science and engineering World-class computing facilities at KAUST enable researchers to tackle complex questions in climate science and oceanography.
Taking aim at outliers 1 min read · Sun, May 5 2019 News statistics Environmental Statistics Automatic detection of uncharacteristic data sequences could change the way data is processed and analyzed.
Eddy currents affect flux of salt more than heat 1 min read · Thu, May 2 2019 News earth science and engineering marine science ocean circulation Red Sea Modeling the 3D structure of Red Sea eddies shows how transport of energy and biochemical materials influences circulation patterns in the Red Sea.
Electronics conference gives a positive charge 1 min read · Thu, May 2 2019 News Electronic devices piezoelectric nanosystem Highlighting sustainability and the work of female researchers was a strong focus of the international KAUST-US NSF electronics conference.
Simple statistics can be good enough 1 min read · Tue, Apr 30 2019 News Computer science statistics environment Study of the mismatch between spatial environmental data and a commonly used statistical analysis suggests simpler statistics are sufficient in many cases.
KAUST alumna’s paper recognized by American Statistical Association 1 min read · Tue, Apr 30 2019 Awards News Spotlight data transformations wind emulation and forecasting depth for functional data KAUST alumna Yuan Yan recently received an honorable mention from the American Statistical Association (ASA) for her paper entitled "Vector Autoregressive Models with Spatially Structured Coefficients for Time Series on a Spatial Grid." Yan, who participated in the ASA student paper competition last year, will be officially recognized for her contribution later this year at the association's 2019 Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver, Colorado, U.S., from July 27 to August 1.
KAUST Ph.D. student wins best paper award from American Statistical Association 1 min read · Thu, Apr 25 2019 Awards News Spotlight Statistical computing High Performance Computing KAUST Ph.D. statistics student Jian Cao was recently selected as a best paper award winner by the American Statistical Association (ASA) for his paper entitled "Computing High-Dimensional Normal and Student-t Probabilities with Tile-Low-Rank Quasi-Monte Carlo and Block Reordering." Cao's paper was chosen in an ASA student paper competition under the section on Statistical Computing.
Tiny, fast, accurate technology on the radar 1 min read · Wed, Apr 17 2019 News communications electrical engineering sensors A tiny, portable radar device could allow visually impaired people, or unmanned moving devices, to detect objects in real time.
Clustering helps unlock secrets of the human brain 1 min read · Sun, Mar 31 2019 News statistics brain science environmental science The latest statistical methods from research on complex high-dimensional environmental data also yield powerful tools for interpreting brain activity.
A race against time 1 min read · Thu, Mar 7 2019 News Spotlight Formula 1 algorithm aerodynamics The theme of the University's 2019 Winter Enrichment Program (WEP) was "time." It represented an opportune moment for KAUST to welcome members of the McLaren Group to campus to discuss the recently signed extreme performance research partnership between KAUST and McLaren.
AAAS honors KAUST Professor David Keyes as elected Fellow 1 min read · Thu, Feb 28 2019 Awards Spotlight award KAUST Professor David Keyes has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society. Keyes was honored for fundamental research contributions at the interface of parallel computing and numerical analysis and his service to the mathematical sciences profession. The Fellows, announced on November 27, 2018, were recognized during the week of February 18 at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., where they received an official certificate and the AAAS Fellows' gold and blue rosette pin, the colors of which
Professor Helmut Pottmann Returns to Visual Computing Center 1 min read · Tue, Feb 12 2019 Spotlight News The Visual Computing Center would like to welcome back Professor Helmut Pottmann who recently rejoined the center in October 2018. Helmut Pottmann is a professor of Applied Mathematics and Computational Science (AMCS) at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and Principal Investigator of the Geometry and Computational Design group (GCD). He was the Founding Director of the Geometric Modeling and Scientific Visualization Center, which is now the Visual Computing Center, from April 2009 to December 2013. Professor Pottmann shared these words on returning back to KAUST: "After
KAUST Associate Professor Taous-Meriem Laleg-Kirati finalist at Leadership Excellence for Women Awards & Symposium 1 min read · Wed, Jan 30 2019 Spotlight News modeling numerical analysis Taous-Meriem Laleg-Kirati, KAUST associate professor of electrical engineering in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Division, was selected as one of three finalists in the academic of distinction category at the recent Leadership Excellence for Women Awards & Symposium (LEWAS) in Bahrain.
Lighting the way to the underwater Internet of things 1 min read · Wed, Jan 2 2019 News underwater sensor platform electrical engineering communications An optical system for monitoring underwater sensor positions could enable large networks of devices to be deployed for ocean measurements.
Chasing spatial patterns 1 min read · Sun, Dec 2 2018 News climate science A more accurate way of resolving spatial patterns in weather could lead to better predictions of climate change.
Nanovisualization Research Group is hiring 1 min read · Wed, Nov 21 2018 News visual computing visualization Nanovisualization Research Group is hiring scientific staff on the levels of Research Scientist, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Graduate Student. Follow the links to apply for the respective position: Research Scientist position Postdoctoral Fellow Graduate Student
Next generation algorithm advances machine learning of powerful supercomputers 1 min read · Tue, Nov 13 2018 News supercomputing A multi-disciplinary team of international researchers from KAUST and Japan's National Institute of Informatics (NII) in collaboration with U.S. supercomputer company Cray Inc. successfully implemented a new algorithm to efficiently harness the computational power of the fastest supercomputers in the world. "Software integration is ultimately the icing on the cake for advanced computational projects. Thanks to Cray's support, our algorithms are now deployed on all Cray supercomputers, including KAUST's Shaheen II supercomputer, as well as half of the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world
The Indian summer monsoon keeps the Arabian Peninsula hot and dry 1 min read · Wed, Nov 7 2018 News climate science modeling Modeling shows that the Indian summer monsoon can trigger heatwaves and sandstorms on the Arabian Peninsula.
New stats apps show a virtual reality 1 min read · Mon, Nov 5 2018 News virtual reality statistics Harnessing the power of virtual reality will help to visualize data and improve statistical models.
Making collective sense of brainwaves 1 min read · Wed, Oct 31 2018 News neuroscience data A new statistical tool for collectively analyzing large sets of brainwaves promises to accelerate neurofunctional research.
Solving the grandest of challenges 1 min read · Tue, Oct 30 2018 News energy nuclear fission ITER KAUST Around the world, scientists, researchers and engineers seek to develop sustainable alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels. Some explore the kinetic energy of wind, gravity or water. Others capture excited electrons using photosensitive materials. William Tang, a principal research physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University, wants to power the world using the chemical reaction that stars run on—nuclear fusion—and he believes deep learning is a key.
KAUST team finds solution to staff transfers at the Saudi Ministry of Health 1 min read · Thu, Oct 18 2018 News company employee transfer system A team of KAUST scientists from the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) division worked to design an enhanced transfer system for the Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH) to help find solutions for employee localization.
Stimulating deeper insights into brain function 1 min read · Thu, Oct 18 2018 News neuroscience statistics Modeling changes in brain activity over time provides deeper insights into learning and behavioral responses.
