Speakers

Dr. Abdelkrim Khelif obtained his PhD from University of Lille (France) in 1998. Currently, he is a senior researcher of phononic crystal and acoustic metamaterials at the National Research Center CNRS in France. He has more than 60 journal papers and several invited, and contributed conference and seminar presentations in the field of acoustic metamaterials. He is also the recipient of Bronze medal awards from CNRS for his work in phononic crystal.

Abdul-Hamid Emwas, is a staff scientist at Imaging and Characterization Core Lab, KAUST. Dr. Emwas received a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of New Brunswick, Canada, and his M.Sc. in Biophysical Chemistry, from the University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. He graduated earlier with B.Sc. (Chemistry), from the University of Bir-Zeit, Bir-Zeit, Palestine. His research interest is in developing new NMR and EPR approaches for protein and DNA structural analysis. Currently, Dr. Emwas’ research focus is on developing, optimizing and standardizing novel NMR metabolomics approaches that can be used as a diagnostic and prognostic tool for human diseases.

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Prof. Adnan Abdul-Aziz Gutub is currently affiliated with the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute of the Hajj & Omrah Research within Umm Al Qura University (UQU), Makkah Al-Mukarramah, all Muslims religious Holy City located within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Adnan is ranked as Professor specialized in Computer Engineering within UQU since July 2012. He was an Associate Professor in Computer Engineering previously affiliated with King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He received his Ph.D. degree (2002) in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Oregon State University, USA. He had his BS in Electrical Engineering and MS in Computer Engineering both from KFUPM, Saudi Arabia. Adnan's research interests involved optimizing, modeling, simulating, and synthesizing VLSI hardware for crypto and security computer arithmetic operations. He worked on designing efficient integrated circuits for the Montgomery inverse computation in different finite fields. He has some work in modeling architectures for RSA and elliptic curve crypto operations. His interest in computer security also involved steganography such as simple image based steganography and Arabic text steganography. Adnan has been twice awarded the UK visiting internship for 2 months of summer 2005 and summer 2008, both sponsored by the British Council in Saudi Arabia. The 2005 summer research visit was at Brunel University to collaborate with the Bio-Inspired Intelligent System (BIIS) research group in a project to speed-up a scalable modular inversion hardware architecture. The 2008 visit was at University of Southampton with the Pervasive Systems Centre (PSC) for research related to advanced techniques for Arabic text steganography and data security. Adnan’s research interest in computing and information technology have been broaden to also relate to smart crowd management and intelligent transportation engineering systems because of the involvement in Hajj and Omrah Research at UQU - Makkah. Administratively, Adnan Gutub filled many executive and managerial academic positions at KFUPM as well as UQU. At KFUPM - Dhahran, he had the experience of chairing the Computer Engineering department (COE) for five years until moving to Makkah in 2010. Then, at UQU - Makkah, Adnan Chaired the Information Systems Department at the College of Computer & Information Systems followed by his leadership of the Center of Research Excellence in Hajj and Omrah (HajjCoRE) serving as HajjCoRE director until April2013.

Adrian Hawthorne – Area Coordinator As far back as I can remember I've always loved the sea, and the life in it. In 1996 I was heavily involved in the clean up after the "sea empress" oil disaster, I remember watching BDMLR there and being amazed at their tireless efforts. A couple of years later at a dive show I saw BDMLR, signed up to do the marine mammal medic course and have been a member ever since. I'm now the co-ordinator for Hampshire in the south of England where I've been involved in a number of rescues, along with organising courses and fundraising.

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Ahmed Benali A certified trainer from Toyota University in L.A. USA for Toyota Way courses. A certified trainer from Franklin Covey in USA for the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People courses. A certified trainer from MTa Learning in UK for the 15 courses in MTa experiential learning. Economic sciences graduate from Mohammed V in Morocco. Professional facilitator in Abdul Latif Jameel Continuous Learning Center (since 2008). Regional sales manager for Daihatsu in Abdul Latif Jameel Company (2006-2008).

Ahmed CHEMORI received his MSc and PhD degrees respectively in 2001 and 2005, both in automatic control from the Grenoble Institute of Technology. He has been a Post-doctoral fellow with the Automatic control laboratory of Grenoble in 2006. He is currently a tenured research scientist in Automation and Robotics at the Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics, and Micro-electronics. His research interests include nonlinear, adaptive and predictive control and their applications in humanoid robotics, underactuated systems, parallel robots, and underwater vehicles.

from HPC - Research Computing to Economic Development in Saudi Arabia Current : Computational Scientist at Research Computing at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Previous : as a Sales Development Director at Sun Microsystems, Convex and Kendall Square Research as an HPC Specialist at INRIA as a Geophysicist at Schlumberger and Total Education Post Msc : Specialization, Geophysics and Parallel Computing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mathematical Institute, 24-29 St Giles’, Oxford, OX1 3LB, England http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/townsend)

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Andre Marquis is the Executive Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley. He is a serial entrepreneur with a long record of starting successful technology ventures.

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Basel Al-Naffouri, who hails from Saudi Arabia, graduated from MIT with B.S. and M.S degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. He is currently a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google.

Basel is a Company member at BATS Improv with over 17 years of experience studying, performing and teaching improvised acting. He currently performs with BATS Improv and Secret Improv Society. He has lead workouts with KAUST, BATS Improv School, Google, Aswat, Dubai Improv Festival, and Laban in Beirut, Lebanon.

Benson Muite is a postdoctoral fellow in the numerical mathematics group at KAUST.

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Bill Baxter's passion and enthusiasm for computer graphics began when he started making animations on his family's Apple ][ computer at age 11. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004, with a dissertation on physically based techniques for interactive digital painting. He went on to work for OLM Digital, Inc. in Tokyo, where he researched and developed algorithms to make digital animations easier to create for both artists and non-artists. Bill also spent some time at Microsoft Research, working on digital painting and augmented reality applications. He is currently a software engineer for Google, working in the company's Seattle, Washington office. He is part of the team that created a new version of Google Maps based entirely on the new WebGL API standard.

Bin Li received his PhD degree in Computer Science from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 2009. He is currently a Lecturer and was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Quantum Computation & Intelligent Systems (QCIS), University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia (since 2011). Prior to this, he was a Research Fellow at the Institut TELECOM SudParis, France (2009-2010). Dr Bin Li's research interests include Machine Learning and Data Mining methods and their applications to social media mining, recommender systems, and ubiquitous computing. Website and/or Blog of speaker:https://sites.google.com/site/libin82cn/

BDMLR is a charitable organisation dedicated to the rescue and well being of all marine animals in distress around the UK. It is a network of trained and professional Marine Mammal Medics (MMMs) who respond to call-outs from the general public, HM Coastguard, Police and RSPCA and is the primary marine animal rescue organisation in the UK. Every year, BDMLR trains over 400 volunteer Marine Mammal Medics and has 20 whale rescue pontoons located at strategic points throughout the UK, waiting to help stranded whales and dolphins. Primarily the training is aimed at enlarging the core base of medics in the UK but BDMLR trains volunteer medics worldwide. In 2010 they ran the first marine mammal medic training course in the UAE. Recently BDMLR moved from being a purely rescue organisation and opened a badly needed specialist seal hospital in the remote Scottish highlands. MMMs come from all walks of life and include: teachers, plumbers, executives, managers, retail staff, secretaries, builders, photographers, veterinary surgeons etc. All that is needed is a positive attitude, don't mind being wet and cold (this mostly applies if you are on a rescue in the UK), and are able-bodied. The rest is taught on the Marine Mammal Medic Course. Footage:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA_uwuYl2VU&NR=1. BDMLR try to save the ‘Thames Whale’ in January 2006 – a Northern Bottlenose Whale who stranded in the River Thames. This event was captured on newsreels all over the world and brought the work of BDMLR to the forefront of public knowledge. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8631661.stm (How to rescue a stranded whale) Would you know what to do if you found a whale stranded on a beach? To find out how it's done Nick Higham (BBC News), and volunteers including a chef, a plumber, a man who runs boat trips and a woman who works in IT, encountered a two-ton inflatable whale for a training course on a Kent beach. Talking Nick through the process were the charity's chief executive, Mark Stephens, and vet Iain Cope. “Full Circle” seal rescue videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJGiBPG8q1A is a video showing a rescue in May 2010. Seal rescue has remained a major component of the work of the charity, with BDMLR medics routinely rescuing seals in all seasons. Over the years, many hundreds of seals have been helped, the charity working closely with specialist rehabilitation facilities to ensure their long-term care and eventual return to the wild. In 2004, with the aid of a grant from IFAW, BDMLR set up its own small seal rehabilitation unit near John O'Groats in the far north of Scotland, backed up with a quad bike to rescue seals from remote beaches.

Burhannudin Sutisna studied Chemical Engineering at KAUST and received his MS in December 2010. During his studies at KAUST, he also led an Angklung ensemble group, which has given performances to the KAUST community. From 2011 to 2013, Burhan continued his studies by joining a post-MSc program at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and still practiced his passion of this traditional musical instrument together with the Indonesian community at Eindhoven. Currently, he has joined a PhD program at KAUST.

Dr. Caecilia Charbonnier, PhD, is President and Research Director at artanim, a foundation dedicated to the development and promotion of motion capture. She first obtained a MAS degree in 2006 in Computer Graphics at EPFL and a PhD degree in Computer Science in 2010 at MIRALab - University of Geneva. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Eurographics Medical 1st Prize and the ISAKOS Achilles Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Research Award. Her research interests include motion capture, motion analysis, 3D animation, biomechanics, and real-time performances. Website:http://www.charbonnier.ch

Born in 1973 in France, Cédric Villani studied mathematics in École Normale Supérieure in Paris, from 1992 to 1996, and spent four more years as assistant professor there. In 1998 he defended his PhD on the mathematical theory of the Boltzmann equation. Besides his advisor Pierre­Louis Lions (Paris, France), he was much influenced by Yann Brenier (Nice, France), Eric Carlen (Rutgers, USA) and Michel Ledoux (Toulouse, France). From 2000 to 2010 he was professor at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, and now at the Université de Lyon. He occupied visiting professor positions in Atlanta, Berkeley and Princeton. Since 2009 he is director of the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris; this 80­year old national institute, dedicated to welcoming visiting researchers, is at the very heart of french mathematics. His work has won him many national and international prizes, in particular the Fields Medal, usually regarded as the most prestigious award in mathematics, which was given to him at the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad (India), by the President of India. His book “Theoreme vivant” retraces the genesis of the development of the theorem of Landau damping for which he was awarded the Fields Medal. Since then he has served as a spokesperson for the french mathematical community in media and political circles. His main research interests are in kinetic theory (Boltzmann and Vlasov equations and their variants), and optimal transport and its applications, a field in which he wrote the two reference books: Topics in Optimal Transportation (2003); Optimal Transport, old and new (2008). More generally, he is fond of subjects which combine several (if not all) of the following themes: Evolution partial differential equations Fluid mechanics Statistical mechanics Probability theory Smooth and nonsmooth “metric” Riemannian geometry Functional inequalities with geometric content. He belongs to the editorial boards of Inventiones Mathematicae, the Journal of Functional Analysis (JFA), the Journal of Mathematical Physics (JMP) and the *Journal of Statistical Physics (JSP). He also serves as an administrator for several associations, in particular the pro­European Think­Tank EuropaNova. He is President of the Scientific Board of the panafrican institute AIMS­Senegal.

Christine Hastorf focuses on social life, political change, agricultural production, foodways, and the methodologies that lead to a better understanding of the past through the study of plant-use. She has written on agricultural production, cooking practices and what shifts in these suggest about social relations, gender relations surrounding plant use, the rise of complex society, political change and the symbolic use of plants in the legitimation of authority, fuel use and related symbolism, and plant domestication as part of social identity construction and ritual and social identity. She is particularly interested in wild plant use as compared to domesticates, identifying the stages in plant processing, their participation in social construction, and especially their participation and reflection of the symbolic and the political, in addition to the playing out of the concept of culture in the natural world. http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/users/christine-hastorf

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight and co-founder of BEworks, Timeful, Genie and Shapa.

Daniel was born and grew up in England and moved to Saudi Arabia in September 2013. He recently graduated from University with a degree in Outdoor Studies and his true passion’s lie in everything outdoor based, including climbing, kayaking, skiing, mountain biking and winter mountaineering. He has a background in the gym industry as well as the organization of sporting events, festivals and bespoke décor events.

Daniel Asmar is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the American University of Beirut. Daniel received his Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1993. He later earned his Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2006. Daniel’s research interests are in Robotics and Computer Vision. Specifically, he has interests in visual perception, autonomous robot navigation and mapping, environment representation and recognition, and segmentation methods in Computer Vision. He has several publications in these areas in refereed journals and conference proceedings. Daniel also has working experience in industry in mechanical and industrial design.

Professor Keyes is the director of the Extreme Computing Research Center at KAUST. He earned a BSE in Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences from Princeton University in 1978 and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1984. Prof Keyes works at the interface between parallel computing and the numerical analysis of partial differential equations. Before joining KAUST as a founding dean in 2009, he led DOE scalable solver software projects and taught at Columbia University and Yale.

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Visualization Scientist / 3D Developer at KAUST Core labs

Edrisse is a postdoctoral researcher at Kaust Catalysis Center (KCC). Before joining KAUST he completed his Msc. and Ph.d at University Paris 6 in France.

Pianist Eduardo Regula studied at the Escola Superior de Música in Lisbon, Portugal, where he graduated with a degree in piano performance. He taught a private studio of students at the National Conservatory of Lisbon and took part in numerous concerts and recitals. In July of 2012 he moved to KAUST to teach Performing Arts. He is very active in the KAUST music community. Currently he is working on his masters’ degree thesis entitled, “The Pianist’s Mental Process.”

Prof Di Fabrizio conducts an interdisciplinary activity between physics and biology and nanomedicine that includes basic and applied research in nanotechnology. At KAUST he is dedicated to setting up a new lab for Molecular Sensing and Imaging. His main interests concern the study of material and macro molecules at nanoscale, their structure and function, through novel spectroscopy approaches mediated by nanostructures. In particular the activity includes: nanofabrication of plasmonic devices, optical tweezers based microscopy (applied to biophysics and nanomedicine), Raman spectroscopy for single molecules detection through scanning probe, design and fabrication of microfluidics nano-devices dedicated to cellomics and drug delivery, proteomic, biophotonic and TEM imaging.

My pass through KAUST was one of the most enriching experiences of my entire life, not only by the chance of getting to know middle eastern culture, but for my scientific education that at the end allowed me to dimension the real magnitude of environmental damage caused by humans. For me it was sad to discover that environmental damage caused by human activities has an unstoppable inertia that requires huge international efforts to diminish its effects on world ecosystems, including of course the coral reefs I studied for my research project “In-situ Effects of Eutrophication and Overfishing on Physiology and Bacterial Diversity of the Red Sea Coral Acropora hemprichii”, published in PlosOne, April 2013. I left KAUST with the feeling that it was more than research what needs to be done in order to change our world; I left with the idea that humans need to change many things, including off course the way we conceive, construct and live our life and our cities. From this idea “Sustentar, Soluciones Verdes” was born, a company dedicated to design, execute and maintain Green infrastructure projects for construction sector in Colombia. We believe that in the execution of the products we offer is found the sustainable future of our cities that will positively affect the whole world in the long run. Green roofs, green walls, urban agriculture and bio-landscaping are the products we offer, each with the potential to transform our life and give long lasting benefits to users, building and the environment.

Pyrus was established in 2011 by Natalya Ayers and Fiona Inglis to showcase botanical medium in a gallery or event setting. Former art graduates, Natalya and Fiona have a particular interest in using seasonal, locally grown produce much of which they grow themselves in a historic walled garden in Scotland. Their ethos is to use botanical material in surprising or unexpected forms for thought provoking immersive installations involving future foods and farming and the senses such as scent and touch. For the past eighteen months they have been exploring the potential of edible flowers as a supplementary food source and growing edible plants in small or urban spaces using Kokedama (or suspended string gardens) for the modern, overcrowded population.

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Gavin Parsons – Director and Trustee Gavin joined British Divers Marine Life Rescue when it was still a dedicated group of divers helping seals in the North Sea on the east coast of the UK. He played a key role of seal catcher during a devastating outbreak of seal distemper in the early 1990s and has since been involved in many rescues including whales, dolphins, seals and seabirds. Gavin was made the Area Coordinator for London and after 6 years was asked to become a Director and a Trustee.

Dr. Hany Ramadan is Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the Mathematical and Computer Sciences and Engineering Division at KAUST. He assumed his duties in August 2009. Dr. Ramadan’s work focuses on operating systems, concurrent programming, databases, as well as software and hardware for parallel programming. He has six years of industry experience in building systems software, working for the Microsoft Corporation on the Windows operating system. Dr. Ramadan’s work has been presented at a number of major systems and architecture conferences. These include the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), the ACM Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP), the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) and the IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI). His work has also appeared in the Communications of the ACM (CACM) and the Top Picks award issue of the IEEE journal Micro. Dr. Ramadan is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Dr. Ramadan earned his Ph.D. in Computer Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. He received a master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. Dr. Ramadan holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science from the American University in Cairo.

Hartmut Michel is director at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main. He is a biochemist by education and tries to work out how membrane proteins function. These proteins are responsible for signal reception, specific transport across membranes and biological energy conversion. Michel received the Nobel Prize of Chemistry for the first determination of the atomic structure of a membrane protein in 1988, which was that of a photosynthetic reactions centre. This work elucidated the primary processes of photosynthesis, in particular the pathway of the electrons after the primary photosynthetic charge separation. He is a member of many German and foreign academies.

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Professor Husam N. Alshareef's research focuses on material science and engineering. His research interests are in Emerging Electronics, Energy Harvesting, and Energy Storage. Current projects include development of nanomaterials (particularly oxides) for supercapacitors and Li-ion batteries, thermoelectric power generation, flexible and transparent electronics.

Ingo Potrykus, Emeritus Plant Sciences ETH Zuerich & Chairman Humanitarian Golden Rice Project. ingo@potrykus.ch , www.goldenrice.org Ingo Potrykus Emeritus Professor of Plant Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. ingo@potrykus.ch www.goldenrice.org Career: PhD in Plant Genetics 1968 at Max-Planck-Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Cologne, Germany; Ass. Professor, Institute of Plant Physiology, Stuttgart-Hohenheim 1970-74. Research Group Leader, Max-Planck-Institute for Genetics, Ladenburg-Heidelberg 1974-76; Research Group Leader, Friedrich Miescher-Institute, Basel, Switzerland 1976-86; Full Professor in Plant Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zuerich 1986-99. Science: Contributions to food security in developing countries. Focusing on development and application of genetic engineering technology for and to "food security" crops such as rice (Oryza sativa), wheat (Triticum aestivum), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), and cassava (Manihot esculenta). Focusing on problems areas of disease- and pest resistance, improved food quality, improved yield, improved exploitation of natural resources, and improved bio-safety. Inventor of "Golden Rice" and chairman of Humanitarian Golden Rice Board and Network. Ca 340 publications in peer-reviewed journals; 30 patents. Distinctions: KUMHO (ISPMB) Science International Award in Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology 2000. American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) Leadership in Science Public Service Award 2001. Crop Science of America (CSSA) Klepper Endowment Lectureship 2001, CSSA President’s Award 2002, European Culture Award in Science 2002, Honorary Doctor, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences 2002, University of Freiburg, Germany 2007. “Top100 living contributor to biotechnology”, elected by the peers of the journal “Scientist” in 2005. “The most influential scientist” in the area of Agricultural, Industrial, and Environmental Biotechnology for the decade 1995-2005, elected by the peers of Nature Biotechnology 2006. Cover TIME Magazine July 31, 2000. Elected to Academia Europaea, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences.

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Professor Basset, who has authored more than 450 scientific papers and reports, works to identify the possible relationships between homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis. For that purpose, he developed "surface organometallic chemistry", a new field of chemistry that tries to answer various questions: Are the concepts of the reactivity of molecular chemistry applicable when an organometallic molecule reacts with a surface? Can the structures of molecular surface species be rationalized on the same basis as those of molecular species in solution? Does the reactivity of surface organometallic fragments allow understanding the elementary steps of heterogeneous catalysis? Can we make single site catalysts on a surface? Can we render heterogeneous catalysis a predictable science? Can we anticipate the discovery of new catalytic reactions? This chemistry resulted in the discovery of a number of new catalytic reactions, such as the metathesis of alkanes which transforms any paraffin into its lower and higher homologues, the cleavage of paraffins by methane, the coupling of methane into ethane and hydrogen, the Ziegler-Natta depolymerisation which transforms polyethylene into diesel range gazoline, the transformation of ethylene to propylene, and the removal of traces of arsenic from water.

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Jérome Jeanrenaud, pianist, composer and arranger, studied music at the Haute École de Musique of Lausanne. He has been visible on the Swiss jazz stage since 2007 and has played in great jazz clubs in cities like Munich and Freiburg im Breisgau. He has performed in world class jazz festivals like Montreux, Ascona, Burghausen, Verbier, Cully, Stans and Sion. He has also performed on Swiss and French radio. In 2011 he formed his own jazz orchestra of 12 musicians called “The Dodectet.” Besides the standard jazz repertoire, they perform Mr. Jeanrenaud’s original compositions.

Approximately 30 years experience as a career counselor and job placement specialist. Primary experience working with post secondary students in the USA and UAE.

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Jonathan Fraser Co-founder of Ento - A project to introduce edible insects into the Western diet. 2005-2009 M.Eng., BA Engineering, Cambridge University Engineering Department, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK 2008 Internship, Buro Happold Engineering, London, UK 2009 Design research intern, DCA Design International, Warwick, UK 2010-2012 M.A./M.Sc., Royal College of Art/ Imperial College, Innovation Design Engineering Department, London, UK

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Jorge is the creator of "PHD Comics", the popular comic strip about life (or the lack thereof) in Academia. He is also the co-founder of PHDtv, a video science and discovery outreach collaborative, and a founding board member of Endeavor College Prep, a non-profit school for kids in East L.A. He earned his Ph.D. in Robotics from Stanford University and was an Instructor and Research Associate at Caltech from 2003-2005. He is originally from Panama.

Julia Cable – British Divers Marine Life Rescue Administrator Julia trained as a volunteer Marine Mammal Medic for BDMLR in 1994 and joined the staff at head office in 2009. During office hours Julia takes the greater majority of calls regarding rescues and coordinates the charity’s response via our 2,700 volunteers, liaising with other organisations and veterinary consultants to ensure a speedy and effective response. Outside office hours, coordinators answer take emergency calls, but Julia is always on hand for advice and assistance. Julia is also responsible for our database, course organisation and bookings, merchandise sales and the general running of a very busy office.

Justine Mink, PhD '13 from KAUST in Integrated Nanotechnology

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Kate Frey is a world-class garden designer and consultant, specializing in sustainable, bio- diverse, ecological gardens and landscaping. Her gardens all reflect her concern with the environment, love of nature and life. Kate won the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show in London, receiving gold medals in 2005 and 2007. In 2009 she was invited to participate in the World Garden Competition in Hamamatsu, Japan, and in 2011 she went to Malaysia to participate in a flower show in Putrajaya. Currently she directs and teaches at Sonoma State University’s Sustainable Landscape Program as well as consulting for various wineries and residences around California. In 2009, she and her husband Ben, consulted and worked part time in Saudi Arabia on an organic farm near Riyadh for a Saudi Prince. Kate strives to create gardens that are adapted to and express the locality: its climate, soils and the biodiversity that lives in and migrates through the area. She believes that each garden should have a goal of giving to the environment through compositions of flower filled spaces, shrubs, trees for shade and development of healthy soils- that together provide habitat for insects and birds and are vital, vibrant spaces that express joy to the viewer. Kate Freys website contains many breathtaking photos of the various gardens that she has set up.http://freygardens.com/

Kathryn Furby is a research assistant at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Her research is currently centered on coral population dynamics and environmental monitoring. Previously, she has worked on shark movement, elasmobranch sensory research, public aquarium impacts on conservation, and the biogeochemistry of coral stress. She received her Bachelor's degree in biology from Bennington College in Vermont.

President and CEO of Saudi Aramco Khalid A. Al-Falih took office as president and chief executive officer of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) on January 1, 2009. With 55,000 employees, Saudi Aramco is an integrated global petroleum company and the leading industrial enterprise in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Under Al-Falih’s leadership, the company manages the world's largest proven oil reserves, and is the world’s largest producer exporter of crude oil, a major natural gas producer, and a leading player in the global refining sector. A veteran of Saudi Aramco for his entire career, which spans three decades, Al-Falih has served in key leadership positions across the organization and has driven continued expansion of the company’s business portfolio into new areas of operations. As executive vice president for Operations from 2007 through 2008, he oversaw all of the company’s core operations, including the business lines for Exploration and Producing; Refining, Marketing, and International; Operations Services; and Engineering and Project Management. He has also previously served as the senior vice president of Gas Operations and Industrial Relations, and as president of Petron Corporation, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and the Philippine National Oil Company in which Saudi Aramco held an equity stake. As a leader in the company’s corporate planning team, Al-Falih guided the development of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s first natural gas strategy, and later played the leading role in negotiations with international oil companies engaged in the Kingdom's natural gas initiative. When the company formed its New Business Development organization in 2003, Al-Falih was appointed as its first head. In that role, he led the development of world-scale refining and petrochemical integration projects with leading global chemical enterprises. He has also served as chairman of the South Rub‘ al-Khali joint venture between Shell, Total and Saudi Aramco. Al-Falih was named to the Saudi Aramco Board of Directors in 2004. He also serves on the Saudi Arabian Supreme Council of Petroleum and Mineral Affairs, chaired by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Al-Falih earned his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University in 1982. In 1991, he received his MBA from the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He received an honorary doctorate from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology in May 2011. His membership in professional societies includes the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE), and the Oxford Energy Policy Club. He is a well-known advocate for higher education in Saudi Arabia. Since 2008, he has served as a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). An international, graduate-level research university that opened in 2009, KAUST focuses on research that applies science and technology to resolve global challenges and advance economic and social development. Under Al-Falih’s direction, Saudi Aramco spearheaded construction of the university’s physical campus and organizational development, and for his role in the development of KAUST, he was presented the King Abdulaziz Order of the Excellent Class Award by King Abdullah at KAUST’s inauguration in September 2009. The company continues to support KAUST's economic development mission through partnership in its Industrial Collaboration Program. Al-Falih also continues to oversee Saudi Aramco’s partnerships with KFUPM, where he serves as a member of the university’s International Advisory Board. He is a member of the Asia Business Council and J.P. Morgan International Council. Al-Falih is active in many social programs, and previously served as chairman of the Dammam City Municipal Council. His board memberships in other community-focused organizations include the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation, the Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz Fund for Supporting Small Business Projects for Women, and the Eastern Province Society for the Handicapped.

While still in graduate school, he authored the now popular book "Strategic Applications of Named Reactions in Organic Synthesis" with Dr. Barbara Czakó that is now used in dozens of academic institutions worldwide. In 2007 he co-authored the book "Molecules and Medicine" with Prof. E.J. Corey and Dr. Barbara Czakó. In September 2010, László joined the faculty at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas Texas, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry.

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Lisa Rowland is a San Francisco-based improviser and a member of BATS Improv, and Improv Playhouse of San Francisco. She is also a founding member of Awkward Dinner Party, and was voted Best Actor in the Bay Area in the SF Bay Guardian for 2012. In addition to performing, Lisa has been a teacher of improv for nearly ten years, teaching improv to students of all ages and experience levels. She coaches high school improv teams in the San Francisco Bay Area and is also is a trainer for improv-based workshops for professional teams. She has worked with organizations such as Google, Oracle, Stanford University and Genentech. She's been lucky enough to travel all over the country and the world doing improv, and is pleased to be coming back as a part of WEP 2017 at KAUST.

Luca Passone is a Ph.D. student in Supercomputer simulation and 3D visualisation of near field seismic wave propagation for complex media at KAUST.

Luigi la Marca, percussionist, was born in Naples (Italy) and has been active as a professional musician since 1980. He studied percussion at the Swiss Jazz School in Bern and then at the Musicians’ Institute in Los Angeles (US). His numerous skills allow him to perform various music styles from jazz to Latino and from rock to variety. He has recorded several CD’s and participated in TV shows and radio programs.

Maaz Gazdar is a bilingual English-Arabic speaker, who has spent over twenty years in the Middle East including nine years in Saudi Arabia. He has travelled around the world including to nearly two thirds of all Arab countries. The current presentation is a culmination of his travel and research in Saudi Arabia. Maaz Gazdar is not affiliated with any travel or tourist organizations.

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Makha Diop, Director, African Drumming and Dance ConnectionMakha Diop was born and raised in Senegal, West Africa, where he grew up playing djembe, a traditional African drum, and other percussion instruments. He is a passionate and experienced teacher of the African drumming tradition.As a young man, Makha was a member of the Africa Djembe group, a talented group of drummers based on Goree Island, in Senegal.In 2001, Makha was invited to Hong Kong to perform. He stayed and established the African Drumming and Dance Connection, Hong Kongﾒs only African-owned drumming company. Since 2001, Makha has taught and performed extensively throughout Hong Kong, China and other East Asian countries.

Mamoun Guenach is a Research Engineer with Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs. He received his master from the Ecole Mohamadia d’Ingénieurs in Morocco. Following that, he moved to the faculty of applied sciences at the UCL, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, where he received an M.Ss. degree in electricity and a Ph.D. degree in applied sciences. He served as a post-doctoral researcher in the department of telecommunications and information processing at the Universiteit Gent, prior to joining Alcatel-Lucent.

Working in KAUST since the startup (2009) and actively involved in the community activities.

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Mrs. Marion Guillou Currently President of Agreenium, the French institute in Agrosciences, as well as member of the CGIAR Consortium Board, Marion Guillou has been president and CEO of INRA (French national institute for Agricultural Research) during eight years (2004-2012) with full responsibility over 8500 employees. She carried out the corporate governance and supervision of two subsidiaries: Agriobtention (seed business) and Inra –Transfer (technology transfer). M Guillou is also a member of the international advisory board of IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute), of the IAB of CAAS (China), member of the Global “Bridging Agriculture and Conservation Initiative”, member of the French Academy of Technology and of the French Academy of Agriculture. She has been a member of the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change (www.ccafs.cgiar.org/commission) chaired by Sir John Beddington(2009-2012). She took the lead with British colleagues of the European Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (JPI-FACCE) that was adopted by EU in 2009. She chaired it during the first four years(2009-2013) and it now gathers 21 countries. As a doctor in food sciences, she has contributed to put in place the foresight “Agrimonde” and then the foresight on “Food Systems Sustainability”. She is the author of “The World’s Challenge: feeding 9 billion people”(Ed Quae-2012) and just published a report for the French Government on agro-ecology (June 2013). She is married and mother of 3.

Mark J Post, MD, PhD Department of Physiology, CARIM, Maastricht University, The Netherlands Professor Mark Post is a medical doctor who has had several appointments as assistant professor at Utrecht University, Harvard University, as associate professor at Dartmouth College, and as full professor at Eindhoven University of Technology and Maastricht University. He currently holds the chair of the Physiology Department at Maastricht University. His main research interest is the engineering of tissues for medical applications and for food. The medical applications focus on the construction of blood vessels that can be used as grafts for coronary artery bypass grafting. Tissue engineering for Food has lead to the development of cultured beef from bovine skeletal muscle stem cells in an effort to supplement and perhaps transform the traditional meat production through livestock. Dr. Post co-authored 150 papers in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals and received during his career close to 30 million dollars in funding and awards from different sources including government, charity and industry. In August 2013, he presented the world’s first hamburger from cultured beef.

Mark Searle is an award-winning international serial entrepreneur and instructor. He brings 19 years of experience as co-founder, CEO and COO of a number of early-stage and growth-stage technology startup companies.

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Mary Mitchell, President, The Mitchell Organization Mary M. Mitchell delivers one consistent message: Social, presentation and communications skills are the keys to personal and professional success. This she has done through: nine acclaimed books, published in ten languages; newspaper columns, such as her nationally syndicated newspaper column, “Ms. Demeanor”, as well as her “Nice Matters” column for The Seattle Times; an online column, ”Nice Matters” for Reuters; and online forums, through ivillage.com, In addition to her publishing accomplishments, Ms. Mitchell is an experienced, professional on-camera and live radio personality. She was co-host of “Nice Matters”, a weekly commentary on manners broadcast by the Comcast network for two years, as well as three hour-long programs about business and social etiquette for major PBS affiliates. She has appeared numerous times on the major network morning shows. Ms. Mitchell has also brought her message and skills to the public as a speaker and keynoter. Working with select professionals, and backed by vast international and multimedia experience, Ms. Mitchell has developed customized programs to improve the internal and external human relations of many organizations. Her clients have realized greater productivity, smoother functioning and better bottom-line results. She has also developed and successfully delivered workshops aimed at scientists. In every venue, she has been a passionate teacher and refreshing guide to achieving better relations, greater satisfaction and more success in personal and professional life.

I graduated from KAUST as part of the founding class with an MSc in Computer Science, since leaving KAUST I have started working for the JNCC (Joint Nature Conservation Committee) in the UK as a software developer. The JNCC is a public body which advises the UK government and devolved administrations on UK-wide and international nature conservation. I work on a number of projects such as the Biodiversity Action Recording System (http://ukbars.defra.gov.uk/) and I am technical lead on the National Biodiversity Network Gateway https://data.nbn.org.uk) which allows researchers and the general public to access species observation records of all animal and plant life throughout the UK.

Mehmet Tütüncü is the chairman of (SOTA) Research Centre for Turkish and Arabic world in Netherlands. This research centre researches the crossroads and sections between Turkish and Arabic world and especially the Ottoman empires Arab provinces. He is the editor of Turkish Islamic Inscriptions series of the research Centre. He works currently works on Ottomans in the Mediterranean (North Africa) and Arabian Peninsula as well as the Ottoman Heritage in the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. e-mail: m.tutuncu@quicknet.nl

Mike received a Zoology degree from the University of Arkansas in 2001. He then attended James Cook University in Australia to pursue graduate studies in coral reef ecology, specializing in life history and ecology of butterflyfishes. He was awarded the PhD in 2007. Mike accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he focused on larval connectivity in coral reef fishes. During his time in Woods Hole, Mike began working in the Red Sea in 2008 in partnership with a new university in Saudi Arabia - the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Mike joined KAUST in July 2009 as a founding faculty member in the Red Sea Research Center. Mike has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and 8 book chapters, and he has co-edited two books. His research focuses on advancing general understanding of Red Sea coral reefs and more broadly making contributions to movement ecology, which is a critical aspect of developing conservation plans in the marine environment. He is particularly interested in connectivity questions ranging from larval dispersal to large distance migrations of adult fishes.

Michael McKinnon studied painting at the Royal College of Art in London where in 1968 he formed the 'Continuum' group with Robert Janz and Dante Leonelli. His paintings and sculptures have been widely exhibited in Europe and in the United States. He began to work in documentary film in 1978. McKinnon Films is a production company founded in 1987 by Michael McKinnon to produce cultural, scientific, and natural history documentaries. Of some 70 films produced, encompasing 40 countries, most have been on Middle Eastern, African and Asian themes. Honours received include Emmy awards for Tides of War and Kuwait's Killing Tide, New York Film Festival 'Gold Medal' for Nile, River of Gods, Wildscreen 'Panda', Jackson Hole 'Best Limited Series' and I.Ci.Mar Film Festival 'Gold Medallion' for Arabia, Sand, Sea and Sky

Dorothy Schiff Professor of Genomics; Professor of Biology; Dean for Science Ph.D. 1993 (Botany/Global Policy), University of Georgia; M.A. 1986(Chemistry), Columbia; B.S. 1985 (Chemistry), University of the Philippines.

Michael Young is an American geneticist who contributed to the discovery of molecular mechanisms that regulate circadian rhythm, the 24-hour period of biological activity in humans, and other organisms. He was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Young received his PhD in genetics in 1975 from UT Austin. Following a postdoc in biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine, he was appointed assistant professor at Rockefeller University. He was named professor and later, he was appointed the university’s vice president for academic affairs and Richard & Jeanne Fisher Professor.

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Mohammad El Ramly Assistant prof. of computer sciences at the Faculty of Computers and Information, Cairo University. Professor Mohammad El Ramly is currently a visiting professor at KAUST. He has a B.Sc. of Computer Engineering and a M.Sc. of Operations Research from Cairo Uni., Egypt. I did my Ph.D. in Computer Sciences at University of Alberta, Canada, in 2003. Before Cairo University, I held academic jobs at Uni. of Leicester and the Open University, UK and E-Learning Uni, Egypt.

Muhammad Al-Jahsh is a graduate of the Al-Azhar University. He has extensive experience in teaching Arabic as a second Language. Mr. Muhammad has been giving the Arabic Course for beginners every year since the beginning of WEP. He is a well-known teacher for learners of Arabic as a second language in previous schools in USA, UAE and Egypt.

Muppala Reddy earned his PhD in Plant Stress Physiology from Gujarat University, India. Worked in CSIR, New Delhi, India, for 25 years as a scientist in different capacities and joined KAUST in 2009 as director of Greenhouses. From 1997-2000 worked as visiting scientist in Center for Environmental Stress physiology, Purdue University, USA. He has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed international journals. Awardee of Daimler Chrysler Environmental Leadership (Germany). Research focus: Utilization of coastal saline soils, semi-arid lands and seawater for sustainable agriculture.

Mustafa Mousa is a PhD Candidate at King Abdulla University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He received his BS degree in Control and Instrumentation Systems Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), in 2010 with first honors. He received his MS degree from the department of Electrical Engineering (KAUST) in 2011. His research interests include estimation of distributed parameter systems, and wireless sensor networks.

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Pyrus was established in 2011 by Natalya Ayers and Fiona Inglis to showcase botanical medium in a gallery or event setting. Former art graduates, Natalya and Fiona have a particular interest in using seasonal, locally grown produce much of which they grow themselves in a historic walled garden in Scotland. Their ethos is to use botanical material in surprising or unexpected forms for thought provoking immersive installations involving future foods and farming and the senses such as scent and touch. For the past eighteen months they have been exploring the potential of edible flowers as a supplementary food source and growing edible plants in small or urban spaces using Kokedama (or suspended string gardens) for the modern, overcrowded population.

Dr. Smith’s research over the past ten years has been in computational cultural heritage and archaeology. Prior to his appointment at KAUST, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), University of California, San Diego (UCSD) (2011-2013). He played a critical role in developing novel software and hardware applications for archaeology and cultural heritage through Calit2’s Center of Interdisciplinary Science of Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3). Dr. Smith has extensive archaeological field experience as a supervisor and excavation director in Southern Jordan. He is also the co-director of the Lowlands to Highlands Edom Project in Southern Jordan. This project’s main focus is to understand the social, historical, and ceramic interconnections between the Iron Age Lowlands (Faynan), the highlands (Showbak area) of Edom and neighboring regions. Currently, Dr. Smith is a research scientist at GMSV Center where he is spearheading the merger of archaeology with computer science, scientific visualization, computer vision, and virtual reality. He has also begun archaeological research in KSA focusing on the ancient civilizations that were neighbors and trade partners with Ancient Edom and the later Nabatean Empire.

Racquets Manager in charge of the Racketlon. LTA Licensed Level 4 Tennis Coach HND Sports Coaching with Sports Development UKCC Level 1 Squash Coach Nick has had great success in his 8 months being at Kaust in growing tennis participation and improving tennis playing standards. He has a diverse coaching programme that caters for all ages and standards. The popular social and competitive tournaments in all the racquets sports are also popular and well attended.

Dr Nick Hale Post-Doctoral Research Assistant, OCCAM Non-Stipendiary Lecturer, St Hugh's College, Oxford Tutor, Merton College, Oxford My current research interests are in adaptive spectral methods for numerical solutions of PDEs. These methods combine complex analysis, barycentric interpolation, and conformal mapping. This topic was central to my Oxford DPhil thesis, and I am continuing this working during my Post-Doc in OCCAM. I am heavily involved in the open-source Chebfun project, and was a lead developer of version 3. Since the release of version 4 I have been part-funded by The MathWorks as the director of the project. Chebfun is a software system written in object-oriented MATLAB, which extends familiar powerful methods of numerical computation to continuous or piecewise-continuous functions. One of its key aims is to provide a link between symbolic and numeric computing. You can find out more at www.chebfun.org I also have an interest in the application of conformal mapping to quadrature methods, and the computation of certain matrix functions by complex contour integrals. I completed by DPhil at St Hugh's College, in 2009, and currently hold a non-stipendiary lectureship teaching 2nd year Complex Analysis and Numerical Analysis. A copy of my CV can be found here, and my contact details in the link above.

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Nina V. Fedoroff received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Rockefeller University, and has served on the faculties of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the Johns Hopkins University and the Pennsylvania State University, where she was the Director of the Biotechnology Institute and the founding Director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. She is the Willaman Professor of the Life Sciences and an Evan Pugh Professor at Penn State, as well as a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute and Distinguished Visiting Professor of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. Fedoroff has published two books and more than 130 papers in scientific journals. Among her awards is a 2006 National Medal of Science, the highest honor awarded to US scientists. She is also a member of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fedoroff served as the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State and to the Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2007 to 2010. She is President-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Pianist and composer Orazio Sciortino hails from Siracusa (Sicily), Italy. He studied with Boris Petrushansky, Michel Dalberto and Louis Lortie at the International Piano Academy of Imola, receiving highest honors upon graduation. Mr. Sciortino also completed his composition studies with Fabio Vacchi at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. As a concert performer, both as a solo recitalist and a soloist with orchestra, he has appeared in renowned concert halls, among them the La Scala Theatre in Milan, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Teatro Politeama in Palermo, the Greek Theatre in Syracuse (Sicily), and Salle Molière in Lyon (France). He has also performed in many festivals throughout the world, among them the Serate Musicali di Milano at Teatro Dal Verme, the Bonn Beethovenfest, the New York Barge Music Festival, I Cameristi della Scala, the Beijing Modern Music Festival, the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano, and the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival (Canada). Mr. Sciortino’s works have been published by Ricordi and Carisch and performed in Italy and internationally. He has made numerous radio and television recordings, and for the labels Dynamic, La Bottega Discantica, and Limen Music. Currently he records for the Sony Classical label. He has collaborated with the publishing houses Mazzotta and Skira on projects linked to the relationship between music and the visual arts as well as offering lecture-concerts on how to listen to music. Mr. Sciortino lives in Milan.

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Patrick Perrier, bass guitarist and double bassist, was born into a family of musicians. He studied the double bass at the Swiss Jazz School in Bern, but he also plays the bass guitar (electric and acoustic) and performs a wide range of musical styles, such as jazz, funk, rock and pop. In 2012 he recorded a CD with Patrick Moraz at the keyboard. Mr. Perrier teaches at École de Jazz et Musique Actuelle in Valais and at the Conservatoire de Montreux, the Swiss city that hosts the world-famous jazz festival.

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Dr. Pedro J. J. Alvarez is the George R. Brown Professor of Engineering and the chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University. He previously taught at the University of Iowa, where he also served as Associate Director for the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing and as Honorary Consul for Nicaragua. Dr. Alvarez received the B. Eng. Degree in Civil Engineering from McGill University and MS and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan. Prof. Alvarez’s research focuses on environmental sustainability through bioremediation of contaminated aquifers, fate and transport of toxic chemicals, water footprint of biofuels, microbial-plant interactions, water treatment and reuse, and environmental implications and applications of nanotechnology. Dr. Alvarez is the 2012 Clarke Prize Recipient, a Diplomat of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers, and a Fellow of AAAS, ASCE, IWA, WEF and the Leopold Leadership Foundation. Past honors include President of AEESP, the Malcolm Pirnie-AEESP Frontiers in Research Award, the WEF McKee Medal for Groundwater Protection, the SERDP cleanup project of the year award, the Button of the City of Valencia, the Collegiate Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Iowa; the Alejo Zuloaga Medal from the Universidad de Carabobo, Venezuela; a Career Award from the National Science Foundation; a Rackham Fellowship, and various best paper awards with his students. Dr. Alvarez currently serves on the EPA’s Science Advisory Board and the editorial board of Environmental Science and Technology. Additionally, he serves as honorary professor at Nankai and Kunming Universities in China and as adjunct professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Florianopolis, Brazil.

Peter S. Fiske, Ph.D., is author of "To Boldly to: A Practical Career Guide for Scientists" and its second edition: "Put Your Science to Work: A Take-Charge Career Guide for Scientists" both published by AGU. From 1997 to 2000 he was the co-author of the biweekly column Tooling Up on AAAS's Career website NextWave (www.nextwave.com). From 2006-2009 he wrote a monthly column on career development and entrepreneurship called Opportunities on the AAAS career website (www.ScienceCareers.org). He also writes occasional articles on careers and career strategy for scientists for Nature Magazine. He has organized and lead panel discussions and workshops on alternative careers and career development for scientists at national and international meetings, universities, and national laboratories. He has been featured on NPR's Talk of the Nation - Science Friday. Fiske received his Ph.D. in Geological and Environmental Sciences 1994 from Stanford University and an MBA from U.C. Berkeley in 2002. In 1996 Fiske was awarded a White House Fellowship and served one year in the Clinton Administration as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Special Projects. Fiske is the author of 22 technical articles, a former member of the technical staff of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and currently Chief Executive Officer of PAX Water Technologies, Inc. in Richmond, CA.

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Quincy Russel is Co-Writer and Co-Director at Mona Lisa Production, France. He has a broad experience in documentary films and is author of the book "Profession Reporter d'Images" (in France). Having succeeded photography at the College of Art and Design of Plymouth (UK) in 1985, he has since been a freelance film maker/writer. His goals are to share a better understanding of the world we live in today, through high quality television documentaries.

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Regina Saisi is a San Francisco-based actor and improviser.  She has taught at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, UC Santa Cruz and KAUST in Saudi Arabia and has performed internationally in Belgium, Holland, Italy, Finland, France, Sweden, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. She is guest artist at TAM HS, teaching and directing for over 20 years.

Regina is a pioneer in the development of long-form improv and is a founding member of the improvisational theatre companies True Fiction Magazine, Pulp Playhouse, Improv Playhouse of San Francisco. As current Company member of BATS Improv she has served as Dean of the BATS School and Artistic Director.

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Rob Farber is a recognized expert in highly parallel programming with emphasis that code is portable, scalable and independent of architecture. He is currently Chief Scientist for his consulting company that has a variety of research grants plus contracts with large technology companies (including NVIDIA, Intel and AMD). He has been a scientist at US national laboratories including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and on-staff as a visiting scientist at international institutions such as the Irish Center for High end Computation. As an entrepreneur, he has co-founded two successful companies and performed as consultant to fortune 100 companies. Rob also served on the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute and authored “CUDA Application Design and Development”, with the follow-up book in development. As an author/teacher, Rob has 100+ peer reviewed scientific publications. His freely available teaching codes have ran on two of the largest computer systems currently available: the Xeon Phi based Stampede system at UT Austin (2.2 PF/s using 3,000 nodes), and the Nvidia Kepler based Titan system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory(13 PF/s using 16,384 nodes).

Dr Sajid Ahmed received the M. Sc in Communication Engineering from the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology, UK in 2002 and PhD in Digital Signal Processing at the King’s College London and Cardiff University, UK in 2005. Presently, he is working as a Research Scientist in the Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division of KAUST. He has been a Research Fellow at the Queen's University Belfast, UK and University of Edinburgh, UK. His graduate and postdoctoral research has focused on the areas of array signal processing with applications to communications and radar. He is a Senior member of IEEE and a recipient of contribution award from the University of Edinburgh/Defense, Science, and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) of the Ministry of Defence, UK, for his exceptional research in the field of MIMO radar.

Dr. Samar Aseeri is a Computational Scientist at KAUST Supercomputing Lab. Before joining KAUST in 2010, she received her training on supercomputing at IBM in New York. She obtained both her Masters and PhD in Applied Mathematics from Umm Al-Qura University in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Her current research interests focus on Fast Fourier Transform library benchmarks. Along with providing support to Shaheen users at KAUST, she is also involved with various research projects with the Extreme Computing Research Center.

General Director of Culture and Media and the official speaker for the City of Jeddah

General Director of Culture and Media and the official speaker for the City of Jeddah.

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Sevag Babikian is an instructor at the mechanical engineering department in the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He graduated with a Bachelor of engineering in mechanical engineering from AUB, pursued a master’s degree in mechatronics and robotics, with research involved in the gait generation of under-actuated robotic systems. Sevag’s personal projects and work experience cover interactive mechatronic and industrial robotic systems. His interests lie in development of automated systems and heis currently working on the design of robotic systems for the Lebanese and regional industrial sectors.

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Sherif El-Khamisy received his Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in 2005 and was offered the professorial title from the UK in 2012. He subsequently led an initiative to establish the Genome Center at Zewail City. El-Khamisy employs a combination of mammalian and non-mammalian systems, yeast genetics, molecular, cellular, biochemical, and whole animal approaches to unravel the mechanisms of repairing oxidative and protein-linked DNA breaks, and determine their impact on human health. His work has resulted in widely cited publications including papers in Cell, Nature, and Nature sister journals. El-Khamisy’s work was the first to report that defects in repairing faults in one strand of DNA can lead to neurodegeneration. He and his colleagues discovered a novel human enzyme in 2009. Driven by his initial training as a pharmacist, El-Khamisy is leading initiatives to translate these findings to the clinic. In recognition of his achievements, El-Khamisy has been selected as a Fellow of the British Higher Education Academy and serves on the editorial board of reputable journals. He is the recipient of the Egyptian National Award in Medical Sciences and the prestigious Fellowship Award from the Wellcome Trust, UK.

Simon Pampena, the Australian Numeracy Ambassador, combines the ideas of mathematics with the craft of stand up comedy to communicate the true nature of maths – mind-blowing fun! He is a regular on Australian television, Discovery International and Youtube channels BBC Headsqueeze and Numberphile. On top of this he has written, produced and performed in 10 maths comedy shows for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Darwin Arts Festival, Adelaide Fringe and the Edinburgh International Science Festival. Seeing one of Simon's comedy shows is to experience maths his way - a rocket-pack strapped full of maths enthusiasm!

DOB: 1980 Electrical & Computer Engineer Master Degree Student @ KAU Working in Saudi Electricity company. Learned Arabic Calligraphy from his teacher Ibrahim Al Arrafi. Studied and practiced Arabic calligraphy for more than 17 years. Taken the certificate of Proficiency (Al Egazah) in Arabic Calligraphy from Mr. Al Arrafi. Taken the First position in kingdom competition. Participated in many local and international exhibitions. Co founder of Hrofiat.com (a website for Arabic Calligraphy tools and courses)

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Staffan Landin was born in 1975 on the island of Gotland, and grew up in Klintehamn, a small community on the west island. After high school, applied to Uppsala and Social Science. Then studied to be a journalist in Sundsvall. In 2001 started working for the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP Nordic Office in Copenhagen. stayed there until 2005.

ylvain Chagué, MSc, is Technology Director at artanim, the biggest motion capture center in Switzerland. He obtained an engineer diploma from the "Ecole des Mines of Saint-Etienne" (France), as well as a master of research in image processing. His research interests include 3D animation, motion tracking in video sequences, face tracking and recognition, as well as VFX. He also produced several short movies and documentaries. Website:http://www.artanim.ch/en/team.php

My name is Tang, I am a French painter, 41 years old, living in Lyon. Born in the countryside in the South of France and being in love with nature, trees and branches slowly appeared in my work as they had always enriched my daily routine and helped build my imagination. What fascinates me with a tree is that it is the ideal object, a true witness of time, as the arm of a clock that changes constantly. It changes from a somber architecture in winter to an explosion of a multitude of greens and flowers in the spring with a welcoming umbrella protecting with its fresh shadows during the summer, and fireworks of warm and rusted colours in the fall. All enthused by these abstract feelings, it is after two years in Japan between 2009 and 2011 that trees have definitively invaded my studio. In Japan I discovered the peculiar man-tree relationship in parks and gardens, the art of contemplation and the interest of the entire people for this mute but expressive companion. My EDA pieces, which means branches in Japanese, are a tribute to this period of my life. Website links for further info:http://tangworks.blogspot.com/

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Tembine Hamidou is with KAUST SRI Center for Uncertainty Quantification in Computational Science and Engineering. He obtained his Master degree from Ecole Polytechnique (Palaiseau, France) and his Ph.D. from University of Avignon. His current research interests include learning, evolution and games. He was the recipient of 5 best paper awards and has co-authored two books. Website and/or Blog of a speaker:http://tembine.com/

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Thanh-Tâm LÊ Director, Climate-KIC Positions held 2010-2012 Director of the Graduate School, École Polytechnique 2006-2012 ParisTech representative, IDEA League Operational Board • IDEA League is a European strategic alliance: Imperial College (until 2012), TU Delft, ETH Zürich, RWTH Aachen, ParisTech, Chalmers 2005-2010 Dean of Master’s Programmes, École Polytechnique 2002-2005 Dean, SUPAERO 2001-2008 Lecturer (associate professor), Department of Applied Mathematics, SUPAERO Degrees & awards Ph.D. in Mathematics, Université Paris 7 Denis-Diderot DEA (Master’s Degree) in Pure Mathematics, Univ. Paris-Sud 11 / ENS / EP Ingénieur de l’École Polytechnique (interdisciplinary Master’s degree) 2nd Prize (violin), Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris Laureate of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation (as a violin concertist) Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques Honorary Member, Association SUPAERO

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Tim has improvised since 1988 with many San Francisco and international groups, including BATS Improv, True Fiction Magazine, Awkward Dinner Party, and with the acclaimed troupe 3 For All.

In 2009, he founded Improv Playhouse of San Francisco. Tim has also appeared in numerous plays in the San Francisco Bay Area, and received critical acclaim for his leading roles in the improvised feature films, Suckerfish and Security. With Stephen Kearin, Tim co-wrote, and originated the role of Dirk Manly in, An Evening with Dirk & Blaine.

Nationally, Tim has performed and taught improvisation at the American Conservatory Theatre, BATS Improv, Stanford University, and many other venues (Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Austin, Louisville, Atlanta, etc.). Internationally, he has performed and taught at numerous festivals and/or as an invited guest artist in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Beijing, Beirut, Belgium, Berlin, Bucharest, Dubai, Hamburg, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Mallorca, Oslo, Paris, Saudi Arabia, Shanghai, Stockholm, and more.

Tim has consulted with numerous groups both nationally and internationally in their formation of improvisation groups and also the development of new improvisation formats.

Tom K. Woo, Professor of Chemistry and Canada Research Chair Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation Department of Chemistry
University of Ottawa Canada Tom Woo is a full Professor of Chemistry at the University of Ottawa, Canada and has over 120 publications in top ranked journals, including work published in the journal Science on the computer simulation of anti-wear materials in automobile engines (2005) and post-combustion CO2 scrubbing materials for cleaner fossil fuel energy (2010). He has received numerous awards and currently holds a Canada Research Chair in “Catalyst Modeling and Computational Chemistry”. He is currently an associate editor of the Journal of Molecular Catalysis A where he handles all computer modeling contributions and is the Associate Director of the University of Ottawa’s internationally recognized Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation.

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After 2 years in Economic Sciences, 10 years in show business as an artist, musical producer for radio and TV, Vincent found and managed a Production and Post-production company named Riff International Production from 1985 to 2007. He produced clips, titles, programs for Museums, documentaries and a science and technology magazine called “C’est Pas Sorcier” 26’, broadcast 5 days a week on France 3 for 18 years. For 12 years, he’s been a member of “Association Science & Television” (40 independent French producers of science documentaries) and General Delegate of Pariscience, international science film festival in Paris for 9 years. Pariscience have had 55 screenings and debates with scientists and Producers and directors for 10.000 people of whom 3.500 were children. He is a specialist of science documentaries and film festivals from inside and outside Europe (Vedere la Scienza Milano, ASO Olomouc Czech Republic, Cinéglobes at Cern Geneva, Energy film festival Lausanne, European Science TV and New Media Festival Dublin, "360° Contemporary Science Film Festival" in Polytechnic Museum in Moscow (Russia).

Holding MSc Computer Science - University of Hertfordshire, Unix/Linux Research System Specialist whom worked in IT industry more than 10+ years. He worked for the following companies in Saudi Arabia market: KAUST (current), Red Hat, Saudi Aramco, Etihad Atheeb WiMax Telecom (GO),IBM/SBM, King Abdulaziz University, and ICC Solutions. Specialties: Software Engineering, Open Source fan, Linux/Unix: Administration, Monitoring, HPC, Clustering, High Availability, Desktop, Virtualization, Scripting languages, Storage, Security,Technology Entrepreneur, and Engineering leadership.

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WEP team

Wolfgang Hanninger, saxophonist and clarinetist, was born in Germany. In 2008 he finished his studies in classical clarinet at the Musikhochschule in Munich and moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, to study jazz saxophone. Mr. Hanninger's stage performances vary from big band and classical orchestra to jazz quintet and duo engagements, mostly in festivals and jazz clubs in Europe.

University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) Yan Liang is a scientific illustrator and animator. To him, science is beautiful and full of wonders, especially at the small scale that cannot be seen by the naked eye. After receiving his doctoral degree in materials science from the University of Minnesota in 2011, he started a career where he combines his scientific knowledge and artistic skills to visualize the beauty of science. Yan has worked with over 30 research groups in the world, including groups from Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Stanford, and Caltech. His works have been published on covers of many scientific journals including Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Chemical Biology, PNAS, Nano Letters, Trends in Biotechnology, and Advanced Materials. Website and/or Blog: http://www.l2molecule.com Links to online videos: http://vimeo.com/l2xy2

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