Taking a big team approach to tackling transportation’s grand carbon challenge.

An inverse mixture-design approach based on machine learning can teach computers to create mixtures from a set of target properties. Developed by KAUST, this could help find high-performance transport fuels that burn efficiently while releasing little carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.

This is the second Grand Challenge and this year's topic was to find a solution that will process / re-refine used vegetable cooking oils into biodegradable lubricants in a cost-effective, commercially viable manner while reducing the impact of lubricants on the global ecosystem.

KAUST recently acknowledged its burgeoning progress in solar energy and sustainable fuel technologies by promoting four prominent PSE faculty to the rank of full professor. Two of the four Professors promoted are from the Clean Combustion Research Center (CCRC): Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Aamir Farooq and Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering Mani Sarathy.

In 2020, Tanmiah Food Company (TFC) together with the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture and Al-Dabbagh Group, launched a grand challenge seeking new uses and processing technologies for the waste generated by their farms. On March 15, the five finalists for the challenge were announced at the MENA Poultry Conference 2022 in Riyadh. They were Insectum and Polymeron from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Proteina from Egypt and the US, Greenfield from South Korea, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University from China.

Alumni Dr. Nimal Naser received the NREL Director's Award for Exceptional Performance for the year 2021. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is one among 17 national laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy, which is operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy.

Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the PSE Division, and Associate Director of the Clean Combustion Research Center, Mani Sarathy, has been awarded for the inaugural 2021 Energy and Fuels Rising Stars.

Zoom Webinar on Behavior of hydrogen in HCCI engines presented by Abdulrahman Magdy, Ph.D. student Supervised by Prof. Mani Sarathy.

CCRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Xiaoyuan Zhang received the 2020 Bernard Lewis Fellowship, established by the Combustion Institute to encourage high-quality research in combustion by young scientists and engineers. Dr. Zhang and 6 other researchers were to be honored during the originally scheduled 38th International Symposium on Combustion in July 2020.

In April, The Combustion Institute (CI) announced KAUST Professors Aamir Farooq and Mani Sarathy received its inaugural Research Excellence Award. Farooq and Sarathy were among a large group of talented international researchers who won the award, and both professors have been CI members for many years.