KU Times | Issue 7

March/April 2020 Edition

Khalifa University’s Response to Covid-19 Coronavirus: An Epidemiologist’s Insight from Khalifa University How Research into Violent Crime Can Help Understand the Spread of Disease YFEL Members Complete First Online Lecture on Leadership

Khalifa University Wins Award for Highest Number of Filed Patents in UAE, as EBTIC Wins ‘Most Inventive Innovation Center’ Award

Khalifa University’s Novel MEMS Gyroscope and Magnetometer to Help AVs Navigate Rocky Terrain in Space

Recognitions at Abu Dhabi Awards for Intellectual Property during TIP 2020 Summit Validate Khalifa University’s Status in Driving Technology Innovations

To help vehicles navigate their way around the solar system, Dr. Daniel Choi is leading a team to develop a novel micro-electromechanical system gyroscope and magnetometer for a miniaturized space attitude control system 1 KU TIMES

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Contents

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Khalifa University Responding to Covid-19 with Emergency Ventilators

Khalifa University Awarded AED7 Million Ministry of Education Research Grant

Ku VIrtual Libraries Committed to Supporting Student and Research 24/7

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Khalifa University’s Library Services is fully equipped to support our educators and students during this time.

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Khalifa University Wins Research Grants Totaling over AED21 Million in ADEK’s AARE 2019 Cycle

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Khalifa University’s Response to Covid-19

As Covid-19 continues to spread around the world and disrupt lives, Khalifa University has responded swiftly, taking significant actions as required to protect the health and wellbeing of its diverse community of students, faculty and staff, and to ensure service continuity and support systems available during the epidemic.

Higher education has been particularly affected

by Covid-19. Since the beginning of March, many universities around the world, including all universities in the UK and the UAE, have closed campuses and moved courses online – a move that has never been seen on this large a scale before in history.

The UAE reported its first case of Covid-19 on 29 January. After deliberate consideration, the Ministry of Education decided to close schools from 1 March.

Within a week, over 390 KU faculty members and staff received training on how to deliver instruction online. On 8 March, all 670 courses began online as scheduled. Since then, faculty and students have demonstrated a strong commitment to the new mode of teaching and learning, with an average of around 92% of students reported facing minor or no issues with distance learning during the week of March 22nd, coupled with around 88% of students, on average, rating their distance learning experience as Excellent, Very Good and Good, during the same week.

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MY CAMPUS, MY COMMUNITY

Safety First https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_nA742aqto&t=7s As an educational institution, Khalifa University’s primary goal is to empower the lives of its students with knowledge, which rests on its ability to ensure their health and wellbeing. Khalifa University must prioritize the safety of its students, faculty and staff, in order to deliver on its founding goal of building the human capital required to support Abu Dhabi’s transformation into a knowledge-economy.

sanitizers, tissues, and disposable facemasks. Buildings and offices were disinfected multiple times a day. Quarantine facilities for students and faculty who had returned to the UAE after travelling were set up, and required for 14-day self-isolation periods. Special assistance was also provided to students studying abroad and international students on campus.

That is why, after the outbreak of Covid-19, Khalifa University took immediate actions to deliver the University’s emergency operations plans, which are in line with the UAE government’s Public Health Center. These plans emphasize preventive actions for students and staff, including actions individuals can take, such as staying home, appropriately covering coughs and sneezes, cleaning frequently touched surfaces, and washing hands often.

Students who resided in university accommodations were asked to return to their homes, and the University continues to comply with the UAE’s “Stay Home” orders.

A process was established immediately to communicate information to faculty, staff and students on KU’s infectious disease outbreak response plans and the latest Covid-19 information in order to reduce fear, anxiety, rumors, and misunderstanding among the community. The University’s clinics prepared for Covid-19 in line with the Health Authority Protocols, and extra supplies were provided to staff, hand

In other efforts required to take precautions to ensure the health and well-being of its students, faculty and staff, on 2 April, Khalifa University underwent a serious effort to clean and disinfect the places and spaces used on a daily basis by the KU community. In line with the directive issued by the Abu Dhabi Executive Council Executive Committee encouraging all entities to sanitize and disinfect their respective places of businesses and occupations, the university is increasing its cleaning and disinfecting processes across its campuses. The services are being provided by a professional, ISO-certified facilities management company.

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Creating a Distance Learning Ecosystem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XBIeWwAoJg Even during these unprecedented circumstances, teaching and learning must not be undermined. When Khalifa University shifted its courses online, this virtual mode of teaching and learning became the University’s primary form of educating its students, and it will continue to be the primary means of education until further notice.

That is why the University has taken it upon itself to ensure that online courses are delivered with the same quality as its traditional, in-person classes.

To achieve this, KU has created an online learning ecosystem, comprised of four interconnecting layers: • The first layer is the KU Community itself – the faculty, instructors, students, researchers and staff, whose positive attitude and willingness to adapt to new circumstances creates the foundation on which the other layers rest.

• The second layer is the Leaning Management System (LMS), which allows faculty to manage their courses, upload their learning materials, and facilitate discussions with students. Tests and quizzes can also be administered and feedback from faculty provided to students.

• The third layer includes the virtual classrooms.

Recognizing that its faculty have different needs and preferences according to required learning outcomes, Khalifa University is the only higher education institution in the UAE to offer three virtual classroom platforms, including Big Blue Button, MS Teams and Black Board Connect.

• The fourth layer is a collection of content development and management tools that provide faculty with the resources needed to develop their lessons to be delivered in either a synchronous or asynchronous teaching method.

Observations made through the Learning Management System have revealed that interactions between faculty and students have been quite high. Students’ satisfaction

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with the courses was also measured and found to be considerably high. During the week of 22 March, around 88% of students rated their distance learning experience as Excellent, Very Good and Good.

The online learning ecosystem KU has developed is proving to be very effective and creating a rich teaching and learning experience for faculty and students.

Extending Support to Students & Faculty Ensuring students’ mental and psychological wellbeing, as well their physical wellbeing, is not just a best practice, it’s an absolute necessity during the coronavirus crisis. As previously mentioned, students form part of the foundational layer of KU’s distance learning ecosystem, and as such, they must be well supported.

As such, Khalifa University has ensured continuity of its mental health services, by offering remote counseling, and has encouraged students to call the Student Council if feeling overwhelmed, depressed, or anxious.

KU is offering other important support services, such as virtual tutoring and a number of online development courses for its students, including leadership courses and courses on managing stress and achieving positive thinking.

While the KU Library is providing a number of services – available 24 hours a day, seven days a week – to support students and researchers through its collection of e-services offerings. The Library provides the KU community with more than 60 electronic databases that contain thousands of full-text journals; thousands of Ebooks; and full-text journal access to any journal.

Librarians are available to answer any reference questions online, and they are hosting workshops virtually to improve research skills and enhance students’ understanding of how to use the library’s many resources.

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Distance Learning Training for Faculty

Khalifa University has also been providing distance learning training to its faculty. The faculty development workshops are providing the training, resources, and support needed to ensure that the mandatory distance learning is delivered with the same expectations for quality teaching that Khalifa University provides through its traditional, face-toface classes.

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Responding to Covid-19 with Research In response to a call for industry, government and academic sectors to mobilize efforts to mitigate and manage the spread of the novel coronavirus and to create new technologies and solutions that will bolster the world’s ability to deal with future pandemics, Khalifa University established a Covid-19 Research and Development (R&D) Task Force.

The Task Force is mandated to oversee several initiatives including coordination of the University’s cross-sector stakeholder R&D engagements and development of an R&D program that leverages the university’s established research strengths for addressing the UAE’s priority R&D areas for Covid-19.

These include epidemiology, diagnostics and medical devices, digital tools for modeling and predicting disease spread and digital tools for mitigation and resiliency measures.

Dr Steve Griffiths, Senior Vice-President, Research and Development, Khalifa University, said: “From the start, Khalifa University’s response has been focused and coordinated to ensure that its resources are used efficiently to contribute science and engineeringbased solutions to efforts aimed at quickly bringing the outbreak under control. The university’s measures will place its strongest research assets and ideas at the front lines in the global fight against coronavirus.

Through mobilizing its R&D resources in response to Covid-19, Khalifa University is setting the perfect role for academic institutions in the region.”

Under the Covid-19 R&D program, Khalifa University has launched four projects focused on epidemiology, six projects focused on diagnostics and medical devices, and three projects focused on digital tools

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for understanding, mitigating and providing resiliency against disease spread. While six projects were developed as focused programs, each led by two faculty experts, seven additional projects have been awarded as part of an open call for proposals across Khalifa University. These research projects were selected based on their technical merit, innovation, ability to deliver results within six months and alignment with the Covid-19 science and technology needs.

The projects harness the University’s core research strengths, particularly in the area of healthcare. Over the past few years, Khalifa University has established research capabilities in healthcare by launching two of the region’s leading healthcare research centers – the Healthcare Engineering Innovation Center (HEIC) and the Biotechnology Center (BTC) – in addition to establishing a College of Medicine and Health Science (CMHS).

The two research centers along with CMHS bring in-depth scientific expertise in a range of medical disciplines. They specifically provide expertise in biomedical technologies, genomics, bioinformatics and functional biology. Each center possesses state-of-theart research facilities that are being used to advance the development of solutions for Covid-19.

Consequently, researchers at HEIC have already completed the development of an emergency ventilator prototype designed with affordable, easily accessible materials and 3D printing to meet the growing regional and global ventilator caused by Covid-19. Researchers from the BTC are leveraging the center’s genomic analysis capabilities to validate the sensitivity of commercially available polymerase chain reaction (PCR) Covid-19 medical test kits.

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For digital tools, Khalifa University’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Systems Institute, which was launched in July 2019, brings together the university’s robotics, AI, data science, telecommunications and semiconductor hardware capabilities under a single umbrella to accelerate research. Through this Institute, Khalifa University is exploring the most efficient and effective ways to gather a broad spectrum of data related to Covid-19 and then use data analysis, particularly AI, and data modeling to harness actionable insights.

At the same time, a cross-disciplinary team has already developed an open-source epidemiological model that can help decision makers visualize the impact of different mitigation interventions, such as universal social isolation or selective isolation of the elderly. Another research team is in the process of developing a mobile app to collect data from the smartphones of Covid-19 patients to identify whether they are at high risk of severe medical complications from the virus. With these initiatives, Khalifa University researchers continue to demonstrate the essential role of such projects in tackling the pandemic.

Taking on social responsibilities Universities have the resources, collection of skills and experts, and unique position to make indispensable contributions to this fight against Covid-19. But to do so effectively requires collaboration with other higher education institutions.

For this reason, Khalifa University participated in the ‘Online Forum on Universities’ Responses to Covid-19,’ a forum organized by Tsinghua University in collaboration with the Asian Universities Alliance (AUA), and exchanged best-practices with other leading universities on the measures taken to address the coronavirus crises, and opportunities to strengthen research collaboration in areas relevant to Covid-19. KU has also joined the XPRIZE

Pandemic Alliance, a global coalition combining the power of collaboration, competition, shared innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, data, and radical thinking, to accelerate solutions that can be applied to Covid-19 and future pandemics.

As a member of the Alliance, which includes some of the world’s leading academic institutions businesses, government agencies, and nonprofit foundations, Khalifa University will contribute to Joint Action Meetings that bring together alliance members to collectively address priority areas for fighting Covid-19.

Khalifa University will provide expertise, data, and other resources needed for advancing the work of the Alliance. Thus, the membership is expected to further enhance the reach and impact of Khalifa University’s current Covid-19 efforts.

These unprecedented times, which call for social distancing and call on a strong communication infrastructure and networks to allow the country’s educational institutions to offer teaching online, highlight the critical role being played by Ankabut, the UAE’s national research and education network, which is managed by Khalifa University. Ankabut is ensuring reliable operations for all schools and universities in the UAE, in areas such as distant learning, library services, and research computing.

In the face of this unprecedented global challenge, universities like KU can offer their communities a beacon of hope. Endowed with the broadest and deepest scientific expertise and best quality research facilities in the country, and united in its goal to educate and empower the world’s future leaders, and research innovative solutions to humanity’s most pressing challenges, Khalifa University has an important responsibility to promote confidence and hope among its community, and bring solutions to the world.

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Coronavirus: An Epidemiologist’s Insight from Khalifa University Dr. Juan Acuna, Associate Professor of Epidemiology & Population Health at Khalifa University, Provides an Overview of Coronavirus. He Explains Why the Virus Spreads Quickly, and Offers Important Precautionary Tips to Prevent it from Spreading Further KU TIMES 10

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What is Coronavirus?

There are numerous coronaviruses (CoV) out there, some are the cause of many mild common cold cases in humans every year, and some cause diseases in animals. (Rarely does an animal CoV transmit to humans.)

Seven coronaviruses are known to cause disease in humans, and four of these are the culprits behind the common cold. Coronaviruses 229E and OC43 cause the common cold with their catchy names, while NL63 and HUK1 are also associated with colds. The new kid on the block, SARS-Cov2, is a novel coronavirus identified as the cause of coronavirus disease 2019, named Covid-19, that began in Wuhan, China in late 2019, and has since spread worldwide.

SARS-CoV2 is one of the three coronaviruses that cause much more severe respiratory infections in humans and have caused major outbreaks of pneumonia in the 21st century. MERS-CoV was identified as the cause of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) that rocked the Middle East in 2012, while SARS-CoV2 was identified in 2002 as the cause of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

The coronaviruses are spherical viruses containing a single strand of RNA with an envelope of glycoproteins that produce the corona (crown) effect in electron microphotographs, hence the name: coronavirus.

They produce frequent, mild respiratory infections in humans, but once infected, the subject develops an immunity that will typically last a few years.

Fortunately, humans are very good at developing immunity towards coronaviruses. This means, once you get it, you won’t get it again‌ unless it mutates.

Occasionally, these viruses may produce a more severe form of disease such as SARS and MERS. Covid-19 was first reported in Wuhan, but has since spread extensively in China and now worldwide.

But the virus does not have legs or wings, and therefore does not have mobility on its own; it must be transmitted by sneezing or coughing (respiratory aerial transmission) or by direct contact between people.

While seasonal flu has a mortality rate of 0.1 percent, Covid-19 has a mortality rate of 1 to 2 percent. So this new disease has a ten to twenty times higher mortality rate, which is important. Seasonal flu kills 30,000 people every year in the US alone, because it infects millions of people every year. Covid-19 has killed about 4,000 people up to today, with a bit more than 110,000 people infected. If we let it infect the same number of people as the common cold, it would kill many more because the death rate proportion is much higher than that of the seasonal flu, which is why Covid-19 has raised such a high level of concern.

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Why has Covid-19 spread so rapidly?

Covid-19 took the world by surprise; we were unprepared and no one is immune to the new virus. If we would have been able to prepare, there would probably have been no pandemic.

A pandemic happens when something that is easy to transmit, and for which there is no preparedness or immunity, spreads rapidly. In this case, global panic is coming from the type of virus this one is, and the fact that we have no information as to any treatments or vaccines, as of yet.

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Our lack of information, however, is understandable. Prior to this outbreak, nobody was studying this new virus, because it is impossible to prepare for one particular new mutation of a virus. Even with limitless resources and funds, it would be impossible to prepare for each and every possible mutation of a virus, because each and every mutation could cause a different next disease. It is impossible to predict.

Even the seasonal flu vaccine each year is a guess as to which strain will become the most widespread—a very educated and carefully predicted guess, but still a guess. You would have to spend hundreds of years on this process to be able to model every single possibility.

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That’s why we had no knowledge about Covid-19, and the lack of knowledge has been the most important reason for the rapid spread, panic and reaction.

Khalifa University supports research into epidemiological behavior, diagnosis of, and prevention against viruses like coronavirus. But the reality is that nobody was doing anything specific on immunization and treatment because the new behavior (product of the new mutation) was completely unexpected.

Will the spread of Covid-19 slow down?

Containment is literally in our hands! Containing and preventing the spread of Covid-19 can be achieved by sneezing or coughing into a tissue or your sleeve rather than into the open, by being far away from those that are ill (no contact), and by avoiding physical contact with ill people or with surfaces that may be contaminated. Additionally, to help prevent transmission and contain the outbreak, quarantine and isolation measures are being applied to limit the local, regional, and global spread of Covid-19.

The previous versions of novel coronavirus were very, very nasty. SARS and MERS had high mortality rates and swept through populations causing real concern.

That this Covid-19 comes from a novel coronavirus is worrying. But, after carefully observing the cases that have occurred, we have gained knowledge and built some expectations of what could happen, which helps considerably in our efforts to tackle this virus. We’re already seeing a plateau in the curves of new cases, especially in China. China is not seeing as many new cases as in the weeks before, because every susceptible person either has it or is isolated from the sick people—or they’re immune by now.

Khalifa University’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health is working in support of the health authorities in the UAE, including the Ministry of Health, to put the lid back on the coronavirus box.

We support the UAE’s efforts aimed at reducing and avoiding public gatherings, which help to prevent the disease from entering new places, and slow the

spread of the disease across the country.

Most importantly, however, we advocate for increased awareness and preparedness among authorities and the general public. It’s vital that people have accurate information about the virus, that measures are in place for public health protection, and health recommendations are promoted and made easily accessible. We need to guide people to appropriate sources of information that is adequate, truthful and unprocessed by untrusted media outlets.

What you can do to stay protected from Covid-19?

Wash your hands regularly and attentively and make sure you cough or sneeze into a tissue or your sleeve.

Clean frequently all surfaces, especially those that many people touch. Try to avoid contact with other people where and when possible and don’t touch surfaces that may be contaminated. And stop touching your face! But most importantly, don’t panic.

Most of the information currently available points towards caution and containment and to the management of those ill, so there’s no need to panic buy or hoard anything. Instead, follow the advice and directives issued by the people working to keep the public safe and understand that the aim is to prevent more people from getting coronavirus.

Hopefully, these measures will stop you from getting the disease, but you may have to sacrifice a holiday or attending an event. We will all be affected by Covid-19, but we want to be impacted as little as possible.

The silver lining to any worldwide disease outbreak is the sudden interest in pursuing a career in medicine and public health. Many people go into medicine for altruistic reasons: they want to help cure a disease or look after others. We’re expecting an uptick in applications to our medical programs and we’re looking forward to welcoming a new generation of students inspired by the fight against this and any future pandemic.

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Khalifa University Responding to Covid-19 with Emergency Ventilators

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRvOKuwGXks&t=1s

A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY TEAM IN THE UAE HAS DEVELOPED AN AFFORDABLE, SIMPLE, AND EASY-TO-MANUFACTURE VENTILATOR PROTOTYPE. THE PROTOTYPE VENTILATORS COULD SERVE AS A STOP-GAP MEASURE, GIVING DOCTORS PRECIOUS TIME UNTIL AN ADVANCED VENTILATOR BECOMES AVAILABLE. Researchers at Khalifa University’s Healthcare Engineering Innovation Center (HEIC) are stepping up to serve in the UAE’s project to develop emergency ventilators. The researchers have developed a working prototype and are now engineering the production plant to be able to produce the ventilators at scale to meet rising local and global demands.

tract infection with a cough and sore throat, it can enter the lower respiratory tract, where it damages the lung’s alveoli, flooding them with inflammatory cells and fluid. This makes it harder for oxygen to travel from the lungs to the bloodstream, reducing the oxygen available to the organs that depend on it.

The team, led by Dr. Cesare Stefanini, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of HEIC, is working in response to the global need for increased ventilator manufacturing capacity due to Covid-19. Though Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, often begins as an upper respiratory

Acute respiratory distress syndrome is the term for the rapid and extensive lung damage that occurs from a severe case of pneumonia. If a patient’s lungs are so compromised that they can’t get enough oxygen, a ventilator is used to provide more oxygen to the body.

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“Procuring new ventilators at the required scale represents quite the challenge,” explained Dr. Stefanini. “This is due not only to the required expenditure, but also due to massive demand on a global scale in a pandemic situation.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 80 percent of people with Covid-19 recover without needing hospital treatment, but one person in six becomes seriously ill and can develop pneumonia, which may require ventilator treatment. As the pandemic continues, thousands of ventilators are needed around the world, and developing them quickly has the potential to save lives.

“One of the consequences for the healthcare system is the potential shortage of ventilators,” explained Dr. Stefanini. “The number of intensive care beds and mechanical ventilators in hospitals is a fraction of what may be needed in the coming weeks as the situation develops worldwide.”

“Our plan needs to be very aggressive,” said Dr. Stefanini.

“We aim to develop a working prototype in less than two weeks, alongside designing a mass production unit. We have all the theoretical and design expertise in our team especially in the prototyping phase.”

KU’s interdisciplinary team of engineers and experts are now working to establish the requirements for a production facility in Abu Dhabi. Thanks to the timely measures undertaken by the UAE government, a theoretical worse-case scenario is unlikely, but the establishment of a domestic production ability for emergency ventilators is a reasonable and well-motivated safety measure.

Innovative designs and technologies are undergoing intense research to quickly produce ventilator parts, as well as masks and other essential equipment. The KU team is focusing on low-cost, rapid production using 3D printing and easily accessed materials.

Within the next two weeks, the team aims to have the plan for the production plant finalized and the first units ready to go to support the UAE’s fight against Covid-19.

“Khalifa University is leading this project but it’s a collaborative effort from health services,” explained Dr. Stefanini. “We’re coordinating an effort with many governmental bodies and the country is pulling together to optimize efforts and save lives. We’re all reacting very quickly and tackling this crisis as one UAE team.”

This project is a manifestation of the UAE government’s clear and undeterred commitment to conservatively prepare for all possible scenarios to ensure healthcare for all its residents and citizens, says Professor Ashraf Alzaabi, Professor Ashraf Alzaabi, Head of the Respiratory Division at Zayed Military Hospital in Abu Dhabi, who tested the prototype.

“It would be great to see this multi-disciplinary effort between the healthcare, engineering, and manufacturing sectors become a seed for future biomedical enterprises in the UAE. This crisis has highlighted the critical importance of maintaining a high-degree of self-reliance for essential needs.

It has also highlighted the capacity of our talented citizens and expatriate residents.”

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Khalifa University Develops New Mathematical Model that Can Help Decision Makers Plan Effective Interventions to Reduce Impact of Coronavirus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80mOTLA_a60

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Infectious diseases, especially when new and highly contagious, have the potential to be devastating.

Predicting how the disease will spread and how many fatalities it will cause is crucial for societal and healthcare planning and forecasting of resource needs, and for evaluating the impact any intervention would have.

A team of researchers from Khalifa University, led by Dr. Jorge RodrĂ­guez, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, has developed a model of the Covid-19 disease impact on a population to provide a stepping stone for non-experts and policymakers to understand what to expect as the disease spreads. An article with the model and results has already been published in preprint form in MedRxiv.

They designed the model to be open source, making it available to anyone who wants to plug in the parameters. The model is available here: https:// envbioprom.shinyapps.io/Covid19_Model_KU/

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“We aimed to develop a model that was meaningful but not complex, that could be updated as more data becomes available, and used as a potential tool to inform public health policy and impact mitigation strategies,” said Dr. Rodríguez.

Nations around the world are responding to the Covid-19 pandemic with varying intensity. While some enforce universal social isolation, such as Italy, others, such as the United Kingdom, are selectively isolating the elderly.

The interdisciplinary KU team, comprising Dr. Rodríguez, Dr.Juan Acuña, Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Dr. Mauricio Paton, Postdoc in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Research Engineer Dr. Joao Uratnai, applied these interventions to their model to determine the most effective way to slow the spread of the disease. They also evaluated the use of personal protective equipment, including face masks, and the increase in availability of critical care beds.

“We used data available from the Covid-19 outbreak as of early 2020,” explained Dr. Rodríguez. “Our results are intended to be interpreted qualitatively and serve as a demonstration of the model’s potential if applied with higher confidence parameter values.

“Our preliminary results indicate that universal social isolation measures may be effective in reducing total fatalities, but only if they are strict and the average number of daily social interactions is reduced to very low numbers. Interestingly, selective isolation of only the age groups most vulnerable to the disease appears almost as effective in reducing total fatalities but at a much lower economic impact. Most importantly, our results indicate that ending isolation measures too soon appears to render the previous isolation measures useless as the fatality rate eventually reaches nearly the same result as when nothing is done.”

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Using mathematical modelling to understand the potential spread of disease has a long history. With an increasing amount of available data, epidemiological models have improved drastically over the years, providing a more comprehensive understanding of recent outbreaks of diseases, such as Ebola and Zika.

community without any kind of migration. The researchers consider that the model best described a big city with ample use of public transportation. They then applied a number of static and dynamic interventions to the model’s parameters to simulate what would happen to the number of people in each disease stage.

However, epidemiological models have serious limitations in their predictive capabilities.

“A static intervention is a sustained action over a parameter, such as asking people to stay home to reduce contact between individuals,” explained Dr. Rodríguez.

“In outbreaks, aside from the immediate management of needs and resources, how long we have to wait before we can return to normal becomes of great concern. We also evaluated dynamic interventions, specifically in terms of the ending of social isolation measures once different threshold values of the fatality rate are reached. Doing this allows us to see how long an intervention needs to last, which is of great interest to governments and local authorities who need to decide when to relax an intervention.”

“The Covid-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented attention to the limitations of traditional modelling approaches,” explained Dr. Rodriguez. “Modelling uses a combination of the best available data from historical events and datasets, various estimations, and assumptions. Then, data about these parameters is computed with statistical tools to develop an epidemic model.”

Dr. Rodríguez brings a unique chemical engineering perspective to overcome some of the limitations faced by traditional epidemiological-based models.

“Population balance models are widely used in chemical engineering to describe the evolution of a population of particles, as they change from one chemical state to another. We realized that these models can describe a process in a way that could be used to predict and hypothesise when data deviates from model predictions.”

The KU researchers developed a model that describes individuals in a population by infection stage and age group. The population is defined as a close, well-mixed community with no migrations, as any country with closed borders would be.

The KU model is based on individuals transitioning between infection stages and segregated by age group.

Each individual belongs, in addition to their age group (which they never leave), to only one of the possible states corresponding to the stages of infection, be that healthy, asymptomatic, symptomatic, hospitalised or recovered, among others. The individuals form a close

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Given the complexity and the expected short and longterm impacts that such public health interventions should have when dealing with disease outbreaks and pandemics, sufficiently complex but user-friendly modelling tools need to be developed. The KU research team has played their part in creating a model that can provide researchers, public health authorities, and the general public with useful information to act in moments of widespread uncertainty. They stress the importance of access to up-todate data and the need to continually develop the model with more accurate data to offer meaningful solutions to the pandemic.

A key outcome of the model is to improve synergies between academia, policy makers, and the public, as Dr. Rodríguez explained: “Effective communication between healthcare and public health systems and science hubs is considered one of the bigger challenges in both health sciences and public health. We need to not only take effective measures, but do so in a timely manner.

This requires strategies for data sharing, generation of information and knowledge, and the timely dissemination of such knowledge for effective implementation.”

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Khalifa University Contributes to Collaborative University-Led Initiative to Combat Covid-19

Khalifa University was one of 14 universities from around the world who participated in the Online Forum on Universities’ Responses to Covid-19 – a forum organized by Tsinghua University in collaboration with the Asian Universities Alliance (AUA), headed by Dr. Qui Yong, President of Tsinghua University.

The forum invited leaders of the 14 member universities to share the best practices, policies, and measures their respective university has taken towards combating the Covid-19 pandemic and safeguarding its communities.

Within the context of the unprecedented situation caused by Covid-19 – more than 165 countries have implemented nationwide school closures and many universities have moved

courses online – the University leaders discussed how universities can work globally and act collaboratively to address the immense shared challenges posed by the Coronavirus pandemic.

The online forum served as a great opportunity for University leaders to share their experiences of transitioning from traditional classroom-based delivery of education to online platforms, and to examine the prospects for the growth of global online education. The forum also acted as a platform to discuss and exchange ideas on how higher education institutions can work together to strengthen research collaboration in areas relevant to Covid-19.

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Dr. Arif Al-Hammadi, Executive Vice President of Khalifa University, presented a brief about the measures and actions Khalifa University has executed over the past several weeks to combat the Covid-19 outbreak. He described the gradual and incremental course of action the university has taken to ensure the health and safety of the university community, while maintaining operations, strengthening related health and scientific research, and delivering quality teaching and learning with the minimum amount of disruption.

KU’s Center for Teaching and Learning provided distance training workshops to over 390 faculty and staff members during the week of March 1st. Then, Khalifa University shifted all 670 of its courses online on March 8th. It is delivering instruction online using a variety of distance learning platforms, including Big Blue Button, MS Teams and Black Board Connect. It is also offering a number of content management and development tools to allow faculty to deliver lessons via an asynchronous method.

Thanks to the concerted efforts of Ankabut and KU’s IT Department, an average of around 92% of students reported facing minor or no issues with distance learning, during the week of March 22nd, coupled with around 88% of students, on average, rating their distance learning experience as Excellent, Very Good and Good, during the same week.

Public-Private Partnerships and Their Role in Managing and Preparing for Emerging Infectious Diseases: Portraying Covid-19 and the Future

In lockstep with its efforts to shift classes online, Khalifa University is also safeguarding its community by reducing the number of staff on campus, providing guidelines around social distancing, and ensuring that work from home resources were ready and accessible.

COLLABORATION BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ENTITIES IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER TO A WORLD BATTLING A PANDEMIC AND TO HELPING TO PREVENT FUTURE GLOBAL HEALTH CATASTROPHES.

Khalifa University has also ramped up research aimed at aiding efforts to detect and prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Researchers across KU are conducting sensitivity testing for medical devices, and developing computer models to detect the spread of Covid-19 and helping to create emergency ventilators.

While governments have struggled to respond to Covid-19, scientists and researchers are making the most of expediated resources to tackle the virus. In only a few weeks, dozens of partnerships have formed to combat the coronavirus, but for these to succeed, understanding the complexities of public-private partnerships becomes crucial.

Khalifa University’s participation in the online forum initiated by Tsinghua University dovetails with its other ongoing collaborations – Khalifa University has over 200 partnerships with academia, public and private organizations.

It is committed to pursuing meaningful collaborations that address today’s most pressing challenges, while creating a robust environment for knowledge sharing and bringing mutual benefit to all parties involved.

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A collaborative research team featuring Dr. Vijay Pereira, Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Khalifa University, has published an article in the Academy of Management Perspectives journal to examine how a multi-stakeholder strategic partnership approach can help avoid a catastrophe caused by emerging infectious diseases.

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“The extent and impact of neglected diseases has been well documented in the public health and medical science literature,” explained Dr. Pereira. “However, from a strategic management and organizational perspective, there is a gap in understanding the complex relationships that underpin Product Development Partnerships – a type of partnership formed to develop pharmaceutical solutions for low and middle income countries.”

“Notwithstanding the increasing formation of PPPs in general and PDPs in particular, and their significance in the global health system, there is a gap in the strategic management and organizational literature on the phenomenon,” explained Dr. Pereira. “We agree that PDPs are a critical mechanism to address the deficiency of necessary drugs for many diseases, particularly the ones that affect the poorest countries the most.

Dr. Pereira co-authored the article with Dr. Yama Temouri, also of Khalifa University, Dr. Swetketu Patnaik of Anglia Ruskin University, and Dr. Kamel Mellahi of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce.

“We wanted to identify the importance of PDPs in the development of new drugs for emerging infectious diseases and also identify the key stakeholders, their relationships and levels of dependencies through the resource dependency lens. We found complex interrelationships between various stakeholders and discovered that power, trust, and governance are key challenges in this area.”

“The evolving pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus is an illustration of the lack of effective drugs leading to catastrophic consequences,” said Dr. Pereira. “Additionally, the World Health Organization identifies antimicrobial resistance as one of the greatest threats to global health.

The resistance to existing classes of antibiotics, combined with greater incidences of emerging infectious diseases, necessitates the need for faster development of new and effective drugs.”

Developing new medications is a collaborative effort involving a wide range of actors and stakeholders. Publicprivate partnerships (PPPs) are considered crucial in addressing the challenges associated with medical research, and although they are hardly a new phenomenon, these arrangements have gained momentum since the 1993 call from the World Health Assembly to mobilize and encourage support from various partners to address global health challenges.

The collaborative relationships mostly include governmental agencies and intragovernmental organizations (such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) as public actors, and university and research institutes, commercial pharmaceutical companies and professionals as private actors. While Product Development Partnership (PDPs) are formed to create new medicines, ‘pre-competitive PPPs’ are formed to generate novel scientific concepts and infrastructure by pooling complementary expertise and knowledge, and sharing the rewards.

A significant number of PDPs emerged in the late 1990s in response to a growing concern over the lack of new drugs for so-called neglected diseases­—those diseases that predominantly affect people in low and medium income countries. Many pharmaceutical companies had gradually disengaged from developing new drugs for tropical diseases by the 1980s, primarily due to the lack of any health insurance system and the reduced ability of the users in these countries to afford and pay for the medications.

“As a direct result, between 1975 and 1999, only 13 new drugs were developed for neglected diseases, and almost all these new drugs were essentially either combinations or extensions of existing drugs,” explained Dr. Pereira.

The first two PDPs­—the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and the Medicines for Malaria Venture—were established in the late 1990s, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank.

Since then, PDPs have transformed the R&D landscape for neglected diseases. More than 300 organizations from private and public sectors are currently engaged in the development of a combined pipeline of 374 drugs and vaccines for 23 neglected diseases.

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“We’re now seeing the rapid formation of PDPs to develop new vaccines for the novel coronavirus,” added Dr. Pereira. “In this context, PDPs function as ‘system integrators’ in the sense that they facilitate the development of new drugs by bringing together the expertise of different stakeholders in the broader health innovation ecosystem. They work towards generating funds from key funders and tap into the knowledge base of partners from academic, public and private sector organizations and various international agencies to leverage each other’s strengths towards a common goal.

“The coronavirus pandemic puts new urgency on understanding the complexities of public-private partnerships so these critical collaborations can operate at peak efficiency.”

For these partnerships to succeed, the interrelated partners need to trust each other. Funders must trust the staff to find the right scientific and operational partners without micromanaging simply because they are providing the funds. Sharing the power in the relationship can also help PDP staff and governing boards function better.

The team now plans additional research in the area of shared risk, such as the current Covid-19 situation, where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have invested in PDPs and factories, with a hope that only two of these may succeed in the required 18-month period.

“In the current global health crisis, risk taking needs to increase,” said Dr. Pereira. “The question now is how should parties be rewarded for their diligent efforts on treatments or vaccines if they fail? This is to be expected in any scientific exploration, but pandemics mean delays need to be avoided. The need for treatments and vaccines to be affordable places another burden on these partnerships that are already complex.”

Most importantly, the research team hope their findings highlight the need for better worldwide preparedness in the future.

“We can’t wait and go from one disaster to the next.”

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Going Contactless: Using Radar to Detect Human Vital Signs In these unprecedented times, healthcare innovations designed to manage and reduce the spread of infectious diseases like Covid-19 are paramount. Researchers at the Khalifa University System on Chip Center (SOCC) recently published a paper on using radar to detect human vital signs without contact. While their initial motivation was focused on removing the need for wires and electrodes to better manage patient health, it has since evolved to finding applications of this new technology to help limit the spread of Covid-19.

“Our proposed novel radar-based vital sign detection system has great potential in monitoring crowds or groups of passengers from a distance,” explained Dr. Baker Mohammad, Associate Professor of Electronic Engineering and SOCC Center Director. “We have demonstrated the technology using the SOCC lab equipment and we’re now working on integrating this solution for use in a general setting.”

Continuous monitoring of vital signs plays a crucial role in early detection and even prediction of conditions that may affect the wellbeing of the patient. Conventional clinical methods of detecting these signs require the use of contact sensors, which may not be practical for long duration monitoring and less convenient for repeated measurements. Outside a clinical setting, for example on public transport or in building lobbies, it’s plausible to track body temperature in a relatively simple, low cost manner, but for heart rate monitoring, it would be impossible to attach electrodes to each subject.

“The four major vital signs are body temperature, heart rate, breath rate, and blood pressure,” explained Dr. Mohammad. “They provide almost a complete picture of individuals’ body vital functions and help to assess their general physical health. Any abnormality to the standard cardio-pulmonary rates, heart rate, breath rate and blood pressure, may indicate a sign of physical or mental stress.”

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THIS BLOCK OF 160GHZ RADAR (LNA, PA, MIXER) DESIGN AT 22NM TECHNOLOGY AND WILL BE USED FOR FUTURE RADAR-BASED VITAL SIGN DETECTORS Early symptoms for Covid-19 include shortness of breath, fever, and coughing.

Detection and monitoring of breath rate and heart rate usually require complex systems involving sensors and computers that are physically connected.

Dr. Mohammad and his team investigated the use of radars to measure these vital signs from a distance.

“Doppler Continuous-Wave (CW) radars have been used for cardio-respiratory signal sensing since 1975,” said Dr. Mohammad. “Since then, a lot of research activities have been undertaken to improve performance. Multi-target vital sign detection is possible using Doppler radars. However, real-world application of vital signs detection radars are not without difficulties.”

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CW radars face numerous challenges during the detection of heart and respiration rates. Some of these technical challenges can be mitigated by increasing the complexity and power consumption of the radars, and with more sophisticated signal processing techniques, but some are more simple problems, but with difficult solutions. No matter how powerful the tool, it can’t stop a patient moving around.

“During the acquisition of the vital signs, the subject may move body parts like hands and legs, or even their entire body,” explained Dr. Mohammad. “These unwanted body movements are called random body movements, and the signals reflected by these are stronger than those from the vital signals, which corrupts the data. Mitigating this is therefore a major challenge.”

Another difficulty to overcome is the issue of one vital signal drowning out another.

“The ability of the radar to detect a precise and accurate heart signal is challenging,” said Dr. Mohammad. “The frequency of the human heartbeat lies close to that of the respiration, but since the heartbeat signal is much smaller in

amplitude compared to the respiration signal, it can easily be corrupted by the harmonics of the latter. Therefore, adequate measures are needed to recover the heartbeat signals.”

To demonstrate the potential of Doppler radars in vital signs detection, the research team conducted a proof-of-concept experiment. They found that even though radars show promising results in detecting human cardio-respiratory rates, the issues of random body movements and separating heartrate from breath rate remain bottleneck problems that need to be solved before this system can become widespread.

“Future work needs to focus on vital sign radars to allow their proliferation in the consumer market,” said Dr.Mohammad.

“This research will include more accurate mechanisms for mitigating issues like random body movements and reducing the computational loads for vital signs acquisitions. However, Doppler radars show promising results and have great potential.”

In situations where slowing the spread of disease like Covid-19 is crucial, being able to quickly and easily monitor vital signs could allow life to continue more normally. If everyone in an area could be assessed for healthy vital signs, anyone showing symptoms could be much more easily identified and isolated from the healthy population. The early symptoms of Covid-19 are similar to those of the seasonal flu, so technologies such as radar techniques could be helpful far beyond the current situation.

“To further improve the contactless vital signs detection accuracy, the SOCC team is currently working on implementing the radar at millimetre-wave frequencies,” added Dr. Mohammad. “One project focuses on designing a frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar at 160 GHz with 10 GHz bandwidth. Moving to higher frequencies enables higher heart rate detection accuracy since the Doppler resolution is proportional to the carrier frequency.

Furthermore, the FMCW radar has the capability to detect the vital signs of multiple subjects located at different ranges with a resolution of about 1.5 cm.

“This feature could help monitor, for example, the vital signs of students in a classroom or passengers in airplanes.

Moreover, the FMCW radar system will be compact with small size and low power consumption thanks to the use of the 22 nm SOI CMOS technology from GlobalFoundries. The maximum power emitted is 10 dBm, which falls far below the average power emitted by a smart phone. Therefore, the vital signs radar is completely safe for human body tissue.”

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How Research into Violent Crime Can Help Understand the Spread of Disease

At first glance, violent crime and the novel coronavirus may not seem related. However, the spatial statistic methods used in a paper by Dr. Jorge Zubelli, Chair and Professor of Mathematics at Khalifa University, that studies violent crime in a metropolitan area, can be applied to the current global health situation.

“Although our paper is not about the coronavirus, it is related to the use of spatial statistical methods to address another type of disease: crime and violence,” explained Dr. Zubelli. “For our case study, we used statistical inference techniques to analyze gun shootings in highly populated areas, with the ultimate goal of predicting hot spots and addressing them with law enforcement or social measures. The characterization of the stochastic behavior is crucial for that which we do in our research using a database of shootings from collective information gathered through a mobile application.”

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crime have a contagion-like behaviour, similar to that observed in seismology, where the occurrence of an earthquake increases the risk of aftershocks.”

The outbreak of disease can also be modelled by point process modelling.

Each new case of Covid-19, for example, would be a time and space random event. It is modelled by a stochastic variable and temporary hotspots would be communities seeing high transmission rates.

Understanding how and why these areas become hotspots can help to understand which measures to apply and when, all with the aim of slowing or stopping the spread of disease.

‘Stochastic’ implies the presence of an uncertain or random process; in Dr.Zubelli’s case study, this would be the time and space occurrences of gun crime. In epidemiological contexts, this would be the time and location of infection cases.

“Crime, like many socioeconomic and environmental processes such as forest fires, earthquakes or disease outbreaks, takes the form of events occurring irregularly in space and time,” explained Dr. Zubelli. “Spatial and spatiotemporal point processes, which govern the location of a random number of events in a continuous domain, can be used to analyze this type of data. Point process modelling has been increasingly applied during the last decade to analyze a wide variety of crimes, including homicide and violent crime.”

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Point process modelling of crime data mainly focuses on the detection and forecasting of hotspots; geographic locations of high crime concentration in comparison with the distribution of crime across the whole region of interest. A chronic hotspot is characterized by high crime volume over several years while temporary hotspots last just days or weeks and may be caused by contagion-like processes. An area plagued by gang warfare would be a chronic hotspot, while an area affected by looting following an event would be a temporary hotspot.

“Hotspot maps can be improved by incorporating covariates, such as landscape or demographic risk factors, or even social media information,” explained Dr. Zubelli.

“We observed that some types of

Characterizing hotspots can also indicate which strategies to take, whether to reduce crime or to prevent the spread of disease.

“Chronic or long-term hotspots are characterized by high crime volume over several years, and need problemoriented policing strategies that focus on the root causes of crime,” explained Dr. Zubelli. “Temporary or short-term hotspots can be reduced through a temporary increase of police presence in the affected area.”

To apply this strategy to public health and epidemiology, one response to a chronic disease hotspot could be implementing lifestyle changes such as encouraging exercise or smoking cessation, while a temporary hotspot could be treated with an increase in healthcare staff or vaccinations.

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Faculty Contributing Coronavirus Insights through Live, Virtual Lectures

MANY KU FACULTY HAVE VOLUNTEERED THEIR TIME TO HELP PROMOTE AWARENESS ABOUT CORONAVIRUS TO THE KU COMMUNITY AND THE WIDER UAE.

DR. JUAN ACUNA, Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Assistant Dean for Research, and Associate Professor of Genetics and Epidemiology, shared his expert knowledge about the coronavirus pandemic, highlighting what people need to know, why the virus is spreading so quickly, and how to respond to the crisis calmly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-lmu6eRsjo

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DR. DAVID SHEEHAN, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, described the virus’ biomolecules, and discussed how we can use that information to target treatments and prevention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-lmu6eRsjo

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DR. HABIBA ALSAFAR, Associate Professor of Genetics and Microbiology and Director of the Biotechnology Center (BTC), delivered a lecture in Arabic on the genome of the virus that causes Covid-19: SARS-CoV-2 and how our immune system responds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2vcu-8rc0g

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DR. CESARE STEFANINI, Director of the Healthcare Engineering Innovation Center and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, explained how the novel coronavirus affects the respiratory systems and how ventilators assist high-risk patients. He also discussed a collaborative project he is leading to develop emergency ventilators to support hospitals in the region.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkXlj73A4hE

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DR. PETER CORRIDON, Director of the Pre-Medicine Bridge Program and Assistant Professor of Immunology and Physiology, explains how the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can get into the body, how it can attack the respiratory system, and how it also targets other vital organs. The video was published on KU’s social media platforms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fozGbEjbPVY&t=11s

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DR. JORGE RODRIGUEZ, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, discussed how the open source population model he has created with a research team from KU will help decision makers understand the impacts that different interventions will have as Covid-19 spreads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfq4oC4S3do

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KU’s Research Response Shared at DSMC Virtual Boardroom Working Group

Khalifa University’s research response to the Covid-19 outbreak was presented on Wednesday, 22 April by Dr. Steve Griffiths, SVP for R&D at Khalifa University, during the Defense Services Marketing Council (DSMC) Virtual Boardroom Working Group meeting.

During his presentation, titled “How Khalifa University Can Engage with your Organization During and After the Covid-19 Crisis”, Dr. Griffiths explained how KU has established an R&D Task Force to coordinate KU’s R&D efforts on Covid-19 and an R&D program to identify near-term opportunities to support the UAE’s Covid-19 response and develop solutions to address immediate impacts on society.

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MSc and PhD Students Defending their Theses Virtually KU STUDENTS PROVE THAT A GLOBAL PANDEMIC CAN’T STOP THEM FROM RECEIVING THEIR DEGREES.

Student and faculty, achievements, campus activities, & student activities

SDP Success for Students Aiming to Make Shipping Transparent and Secure A senior design project from students in Khalifa University’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is seeing huge success with real commercial application after winning two prestigious competitions. Senior students Abduraouf Hassan, Omar Al Mansoori and Omar Al Khoori developed a blockchain-powered smart container, called ‘CryptoCargo’, to provide real-time insights and increased transparency throughout the shipment process. Dr. Khaled Salah was their faculty advisor.

CryptoCargo was announced among the 15 winning projects in Zayed University’s Undergraduate Research Conference on Applied Computing 2020 from a total of 168 submitted. It also saw success in Dell Technologies’ Envision the Future Competition, shortlisted among the top 25 projects in the MENA region from a total of 227 projects submitted. CryptoCargo has reached the final stages of the Dell Technologies Competition and the team are looking forward to the next round.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcP-tFCTH_Q

“The CyrptoCargo project tackles the problems stakeholders encounter when damage is caused to their shipments,” explained Hassan. “Our blockchain-powered smart container aims to provide an enhanced supply chain management experience by offering real-time insights and increased transparency throughout the shipment process.”

As a shipment moves through its journey, it is susceptible to damage caused by extreme temperature ranges, humidity levels, light conditions, or passing through radiative environments. For shipments needing a temperature-controlled

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supply chain, housing sensitive items such as medical products, chemicals, radiative materials, meat or dairy products, for example, it is even more important to ensure the safeguarding and wellbeing of the cargo’s integrity. By continuously monitoring various metrics, stakeholders can be immediately alerted in case any abnormalities are detected. More importantly, all the data collected needs to be securely stored and made available at all times to the user, in a transparent format that eliminates any attempt at collusion, mistrust or data tampering between the involved parties.

“The CryptoCargo container is designed to monitor, track, alert, and securely store data readings pertaining to temperature conditions, container integrity, and position tracking,” explained Hassan. “Refined data is pushed to an always available cloud

server, while violations are stored on the blockchain. Users can then access their shipment status from the frontend decentralised apps.

“The real-time monitoring of the shipment paves the way for more efficient shipments and reduces the likelihood of fraud.

Storing violations on the blockchain’s immutable ledges provides an irrefutable guarantee of shipment quality, hence ensuring the integrity and resiliency of the data stored. It uncovers the truth of a shipment’s status, eliminates any possibilities of collusion to alter a shipment’s data, and diminishes any possible disputes between stakeholders.”

CryptoCargo is a unique and promising solution that showcases how the Internet of Things, the Cloud, and Blockchain technologies can work in harmony to solve real life challenges.

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Students Participate in Virtual Problem Solving Workshop Khalifa University students from the “Leading with Passion and Knowledge” course received certificates after participating in an online workshop offered by the Continuing Education Centre at Emirates College for Advanced Education (CEC- ECAE), and organized by KU’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and Student Success Department (SSD) on Monday, 13 April. During the workshop, students explored the complexity of problem-solving using the IDEA model to better understand and resolve issues in an effective and engaging manner.

The IDEA model includes identifying the problem, developing solutions, executing a plan and then assessing your results.

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Graduate Students Graduate from 10 - Week Course ‘Teaching Certificate for Teaching Assistants’

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) held a virtual graduation ceremony on 14 April for its first cohort of graduate students enrolled in a 10-week Teaching Certificate for Teaching Assistants (TAs) Course. 26 MSc and PhD students as well as a few Postdocs completed the course this semester.

Dr. Ahmed Al Shoaibi, SVP of Academic and Student Services, congratulated the students on their achievement and for enhancing their teaching skills. He also shared his appreciation to the faculty for their efforts to help the graduate students improve their teaching practices in order to better meet the needs of students. Dr. Yousof Al Hammadi, Dean of Graduate Studies, also attended the ceremony and gave encouraging remarks to the graduates. The graduates presented their final teaching projects, ranging from an Online Teaching Guidelines for TAs, a KU Tech Times with Computer Tips and Tricks digital newsletter, and creative projects intended to improve the online learning of students across several STEM related subjects. The graduates also talked about their experiences going through the modules and reflected on the specific teaching pedagogy theories and practices they learned to facilitate students’ learning experience.

The CTL intends to offer the Teaching Certificate for Teaching Assistants (TAs) Course every semester to newly admitted graduate students.

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YFEL Members Complete First Online Lecture on Leadership

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Khalifa University Lecturer Dr. Kevin Garvey successfully conducted an online workshop, titled “Leadership: The Self, with Others, in Business and Innovation,” to 27 students and international members of KU’s Young Future Energy Leaders (YFEL) program. The YFEL program is KU’s flagship outreach program in the field of sustainability. Congratulations to all YFEL members who completed the course!

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KU Hosts Virtual Seminar on Understanding History with Special Guest Speaker Author Rehan Khan

Despite the social isolation measures that are keeping students off campus and safe at home, Khalifa University has not slowed down its efforts to keep students engaged in extracurricular activities.

We hosted a virtual seminar on 15 April 2020, with renowned author Rehan Khan – who has authored the historic fiction novel “A Tudor Turk” and the fantasy series “Last of the Tasburai” and “Scream of the Tasburai” – titled “What Makes Great (Hi)story” for the KU community. Khan discussed the important role of understanding history and how he uses history in his novels.

The seminar was offered as a way to engage students in a virtual extracurricular space to support their distance learning, enhance their academic experience, and positively impact their learning and development.

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KU Students Showcase Their Culinary Skills in Home Cooking Challenge

Being in quarantine can take a toll on us and keeping busy can help take our minds off stress and worry. To make the most of social distancing, the University Campus Life and Student Life departments organized the “Taste Budz Healthy Cooking Challenge,� a home cooking competition for KU students to promote healthy eating while we are all in quarantine.

Students were encouraged to come up with their own recipes that incorporate healthy and nutritious ingredients.

Participants submitted 10-minute videos of themselves showing the entire preparation process of their dishes with clear and complete instructions. The dishes were judged by representatives from the Campus Life and Student Life teams based on creativity, preparation, and of course, presentation and plating.

Dhalia Hassan, a BSc Biomedical Engineering student, beat all the other aspiring chefs and won first place for her Zero Carb Pasta dish. Syed Sajil, a PhD student of Material Science & Engineering, came in second place with his Dahi Murgh (Chicken Yogurt) dish. The winners each received Amazon e-gift cards.

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KU’s Library Supporting Distance Learning Success

Ku VIrtual Libraries Committed to Supporting Student and Research 24/7

Khalifa University’s Library Services is fully equipped to support our educators and students during this time. Our library’s online services and resources are available 24/7 and online workshops and events are also on hand to make distance learning easier for everyone.

Check out the KU Library’s Bookends Newsletter here: https://library.ku.ac.ae/c. php?g=1019821&p=7387539&preview=240e6856af96e292567e4d4c2aeb8068 KU Library also launched a redesigned website in April (https://library.ku.ac.ae/lib). While the content is the same as the old design, we want to make sure that everyone can find the content that they need. The OneSearch function is still very near the top of the page. The Quick Links and AskUs functions have moved down the page. All of the library’s most important services and resources are available via the menu, immediately below the banner image.

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Hamad Eissa Abdullah Al Marzooqi, a BSc Biomedical Engineering student at Khalifa University, was one of the winners of "The Fifty-Year Challenge", a competition launched in February 2020 as part of the UAE Innovation Month celebrations to encourage individuals to contribute in designing the future and enriching life in the UAE. The Challenge, organized by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Center for Government Innovation (MBRCGI), called on all UAE citizens and residents to come up with innovative and practical solutions focused on four areas— zero accidents, zero carbon emissions, zero child obesity, and zero plastic waste—that will help form a safer and more sustainable way of life in the UAE in the next 50 years.

Student’s Road Safety Solution Among the Winners of “The Fifty-Year Challenge”

Around 400 ideas were submitted and a panel of experts chose 92 finalists to present their innovations. The projects were judged based on their feasibility, novelty, replicability, and impact and the panel was able to recognize 13 inventions that encapsulated these. MBRCGI will support these inventions and they will be tested, developed, and used in practical and real-life situations in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Police, the Center for Public Health of the Abu Dhabi Department of Health, and the Emirates Nature Association in cooperation with the World Wide Fund Nature.

The 13 innovators were honored during the closing ceremony of the UAE Innovation Month 2020 that was held at the Burj Khalifa on 27 February 2020. Among the innovators honored was KU’s Hamad Eissa Abdullah Al Marzooqi, whose Hands on the Steering (HONS) device was one of the winners in the Zero Accident category.

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A simple device that could save lives One of the main causes of road accidents in the UAE is negligence or not paying attention to the road while driving. To help lessen traffic accidents, Hamad thought of a simple and practical solution that can be used in all types of vehicles. The Hands on the Steering (HONS) device he developed is a small apparatus that can be easily installed in cars and provides steering control in the event that the driver lets go of the steering wheel while driving.

The HONS device consists of sensors for both the right and left hand programmed to let out a warning sound every time the driver takes their hand off the steering wheel for more than 5 seconds. If the driver ignores the warning or does not put their hand back on the steering wheel, the device sends out a command to the car engine to gradually reduce the speed of the car according to the speed limit of the road, which is determined by GPS. To keep the driver safe, the car speed is reduced in increments so that the vehicle does not abruptly slow down.

Hamad’s road safety solution has also been recognized in other exhibitions and competitions.

The project won the People’s Choice award at the Innovators 2020 Competition, which was part of the Abu Dhabi Science Festival 2020. The HONS also won third place in the Best Innovation for Investment category at the Future Pioneers Awards 2019. It was one of the distinguished projects during the Dubai Maker Faire 2019 and was one of the finalists in the Seeds of the Future Competition organized by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Huawei.

There have been other technologies that try to minimize traffic accidents, but what sets Hamad’s HONS device apart is its simplicity. Other devices require complex technology and may not be compatible with all vehicles but the HONS device is easy to install and use, proving that something simple can make a great difference.

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International Women’s Day 2020: Celebrating KU’s Female Researchers ON THE OCCASION OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2020, KHALIFA UNIVERSITY CELEBRATED ALL OF ITS BRILLIANT FEMALE FACULTY, RESEARCHERS AND STAFF. WOMEN AT KHALIFA UNIVERSITY ARE MAKING TREMENDOUS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE COUNTRY’S SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT. KU WILL CONTINUE TO INCREASE THE NUMBER OF FEMALE STEM ROLE MODELS IN THE UAE, AND WILL ACTIVELY SUPPORT ITS TALENTED AND DIVERSE FEMALE FACULTY AND RESEARCHERS.

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Dr. Amal Al Ghaferi, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Dr. AlGhaferi specializes in the field of carbon nanotube and graphene applications, with a current focus on synthesizing and fabricating nanomaterials, investigating and characterizing nanomaterial properties, and integrating and implementing nanomaterials in sensors and water desalination fields. Dr. AlGhaferi’s research team at KU has successfully grown vertically aligned graphene nanosheets on pieces of germanium, a type of semiconducting material, for the first time in the world.

The uniquely designed graphene nanosheets produce an enhanced electric field at the structure’s tip. It is this feature that makes the 3D graphene structure particularly useful for lab-on-chip applications. Dr.Al Ghaferi is the first female Emirati to obtain a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering, and she is considered to be a role model to other young female students in UAE.

Dr. Maryam Rashed AlShehhi, Assistant Professor of Civil Infrastructure and Environmental Engineering, Khalifa University In 2016, Dr. AlShehhi became the first UAE national to get a PhD in Earth Observation and Ocean Color Remote Sensing. She went on to do her postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, where she created in-depth models of the Arabian Gulf using numerical and theoretical frameworks supported by field and satellite data.

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Dr. Elena Fantino, Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Khalifa University Dr. Fantino leads research in astrodynamics and celestial mechanics, with a focus on orbit design. She holds a remarkable record of participation in space mission activities, with experience in attitude determination, data processing, trajectory design, mission engineering, payload concept design and operations, terrestrial gravity field modelling, spacecraft configuration design.

Dr. Habiba AlSafar, Director the Center for Biotechnology and Associate Professor of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Khalifa University Dr. Alsafar is an Emirati research scholar whose primary research interest lies in constructing the genomic structures of individuals of Arab descent to identify genomic segments that carry genes that predispose to diseases. Dr. Alsafar was one of the outstanding Arab women scientists to win the International L’OrÊal-UNESCO Fellowship for Women in Science. She was also awarded the UAE first honor model from His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum for being one of the pioneers in her field. Dr. Alsafar is a member of UAE science Council since 2016 and in 2019 she was selected as a member at Dubai Future Council on Health & Wellbeing. She recently led a team of researchers in the first-ever whole genome sequencing of two UAE nationals.

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Dr. Lourdes Vega, Director of the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and H2 (RICH Center), and Professor of Chemical Engineering, Khalifa University Dr. Vega is an internationally recognized and leading authority in the area of molecular thermodynamics, clean energy and sustainability. She leads research in the development of new refrigerants, catalytic and adsorbent materials, water treatment technologies, advanced methods for removing contaminants, and CO2 capture and utilization. In 2019, Prof. Vega was granted a golden visa as the UAE recognized and celebrated its talented and influential scientists and intellectuals. She also won the Mohammed Bin Rashid Medal for Scientific Excellence in February 2020 for her research work, which has resulted in the publication of over 200 academic papers, 6 books, and 5 industrial patents under exploitation.

Dr. Linda Zou, Professor of Civil Infrastructure and Environmental Engineering, Khalifa University Dr. Zou is an expert in water treatment and nanotechnology, and leads a ground-breaking research project using nanotechnology to develop cloud seeding materials, which was awarded by the inaugural USD 1.5 million UAE Research Program on Rain Enhancement Science for 2016-2018.

She is also the recipient of the UK-Gulf Institutional Links 2016 grants awarded by British Council for 2017-2019. In 2019, she was one of the scientists granted a Golden Visa for her scientific contributions to the UAE.

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Dr. Sabina Semez, Professor of Genetics and Molecular Biology, Khalifa University Dr. Semez is leading research in the field of precision medicine in Type 2 diabetes treatment. She is focusing on the role of personalized medicine in detecting disease risk, preventing disease onset, and optimizing treatment for a patient, as well as in identifying potential new biomarkers for precise diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes in other populations.

Dr. Kyriaki Polychronopoulou, Director of the Center for Catalysis and Separations and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Khalifa University Dr. Polychronopoulou leads research in the development of catalysts and adsorbents for hydrocarbon reactions and gas separation processes. She also focuses on porous materials for hydrogen storage and carbon dioxide capture. Dr. Polychronopoulou is a recipient of the 2018 Khalifa University Teaching Excellence Award, the 2018 Khalifa University Commencement for Research, and the 2015 KU Faculty Excellence Award for Outstanding Research.

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Dr. Kinda Khalaf, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Biomedical Engineering, Khalifa University Dr. Khalaf leads research in the areas of orthopedic biomechanics, computational biomechanics, and biomedical devices and biomaterials.

She is studying innovative methods and assistive technologies to assess and rehabilitate patients following a stroke.

Dr. Khalaf has co-established an interdisciplinary education research group at Khalifa University focusing on implementing curricular innovative pedagogies and the design of quantitative assessment instruments in engineering education. She is currently the secretary of the UAE branch of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (IEEE, EMBS), a founding member of the IEEE education chapter in the UAE (IEEE EDUCON).

Khadeeja Khaled Aljaberi, BSc in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science student, Khalifa University Aljaberi won first place in the Student Poster Competition at the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Imaging Systems and Techniques for her poster that describes experiments on near-field microwave imaging probes.

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Halima Alnaqbi, PhD candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Khalifa University Alnaqbi is characterizing the MHC ancestral Haplotype of Arabian origin, a resource for the identification of disease genes and improving histocompatibility matching for organ transplantation in the UAE population.

Her study is the first to define the frequency of genes which encode the human leukocyte antigen in the Arab population. These genes are important genetic markers that can improve the matching process for transplantation as well as develop opportunities for disease associations.

Lilas Alrahis, PhD Student, Khalifa University Lilas Alrahis won Best Paper Award at the Applied Research Competition – MENA Region, one of nine competitions held in association with the New York University’s Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) 2019, which took place from 6-8 November 2019.

Her winning paper addresses a key security issue arising out of the shifting microelectronics supply chain landscape.

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Baddreya Al Shehhi, PhD Student, Khalifa University Al Shehhi was lead author on a paper accepted into the IEEE Nanotechnology Council’s 14th Nanotechnology Materials & Devices Conference (NMDC).

The paper reveals how silver nanoparticles layered on an ultrathin sheet of graphene, creates an enhanced localized electric field that produces a larger current between the semiconductor and the metal. The work has a significant fundamental research focus but with clear potential application.

Photo credit: The National

Aryam Ahmed, BSc in Mechanical Engineering Student, Khalifa University Ahmed was one of the winners of the Pitch@ Palace initiative that seeks to encourage Emirati entrepreneurship and is backed by UK’s The Duke of York. She developed a suit designed to keep outdoor workers cool.

KU students Aryam Ahmed (right) and Latifa Al Seiari with the cooling suit they invented.

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Khalifa University Hosts Workshop on Training Best Practices for the Nuclear Industry

Khalifa University hosted a Workshop on the Best Practices in Nuclear Training and Education Approaches led by Khalifa University Assistant Professor Saeed Al Ameri and Virginia Commonwealth University Assistant Professor Braden Goddard on 17–19 February 2020.

As peaceful nuclear power and technology is developed in the Middle East region, it is important to know the best practices when it comes to human capital development.

The event was attended by industry representatives, regulators, and academics from the UAE and Egypt, two of the leading nuclear countries in the region. Participants of the event have taken the material they have gained from the workshop and have started implementing it in their own training and education program to help produce the best nuclear employees.

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Students Enjoy Games, Music, and Crafts at KU’s Winter Night

It was a night of fun activities and bonding for Khalifa University students as the University hosted a Winter Night event at the Main Campus outdoor area on 18 February 2020.

The student-led event was organized by the Aventure Club in collaboration with the other student clubs, namely the Jjang Club, Literature Club, Music and Art Club, Japanese Club, Intellectual & Electronic Sports Club, and Debate Club.

The participating clubs prepared activities for the attendees such as traditional Japanese and Korean games, arts and crafts, and film showings. The event also had a night bazaar where students were able to exhibit and even sell items that they made themselves.

Some of the items displayed were calligraphy work, paintings, natural soaps, and jewelry.

The night was also full of entertainment. The Music and Arts Club performed a series of musical performances and a live painting show, while the Literature Club organized a reading of Arabic poetry. A few students showcased their talents by singing and playing instruments such as the piano and guitar.

The KU Winter Night was a nice respite for the students to relax and socialize and a great way to get to know more about the different clubs at KU.

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Young Future Energy Leaders Present Solar Panel Solutions to Expo 2020 Team Eighteen Young Future Energy Leaders (YFELs) had the privilege of attending a behind the scenes look at Expo 2020 Dubai in March. During their visit, they participated in a Case Study Competition, where they offered solutions that would allow the solar panels being installed for Expo 2020 to remain in place once the 6-month Expo is finished. The YFELs shared their innovative ideas through 5-minute presentations, and received feedback directly from the Expo 2020 team on the spot.

The Case Study Competition is an essential part of the YFEL program as it challenges members to use their analytical, problem-solving and management skills and present their thoughts effectively as a leader. In addition to expanding their perspectives, the case study competition helps them learn how to implement practical and applied training concepts in real-life situations.

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HSS Faculty Represent Khalifa University at Prestigious Events in India

Khalifa University Opens Bloomberg Lab Khalifa University has launched its first Bloomberg Finance Lab on 11 February 2020. In November 2019, KU was one of 10 universities in the UAE to win the service grant to be part of the Bloomberg Terminal Initiative. The terminals will allow students and professors access to Bloomberg terminals where they will be able to get live data on a global scale. In addition to its research potential, students and professors will also be able to get certification in the use of the terminal via online courses. There are three certifications available, Bloomberg Market Concept, Portfolio Management, and Terminal Management. The certification is recognized globally in both academia and the industry.

This initiative is the first of its kind for Khalifa University and promotes additional needs in Finance and Economics. The expansive database will be useful to all subject matters as it provides industry and country data for all major companies in the world.

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Department of Humanities and Social Sciences faculty Dr. Vijay Pereira, Associate Professor of International Business, and Dr. Glenn Muschert, Professor of Sociology, recently participated in several high-profile events in India.

On 2–4 January 2020, they participated in the Indian Academy of Management Conference (INDAM 2020) at the Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli. Dr. Pereira presented two papers and was part of the panel on ‘Global Outlook of Indian Industries @75’. He also participated in the Meet the Editors session representing the Scopus Q1 ranked Journal of Business Research published by Elsevier.

Dr. Muschert, on the other hand, was part of the panel on ‘Policy, Populism and Global Value Chains: Implications for India’.

Dr. Muschert and Dr. Pereira were also International Delegates at the International Conclave on Globalizing Indian Thought hosted by the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode from 16–18 January 2020.

Dr.Pereira presented a paper on research-led evidence for emerging markets. He also served as a representative of the UAE as faculty of Khalifa University, and the UK, his home country. Dr. Muschert, also represented the UAE as faculty of Khalifa University and the USA, which is his home country. Guests of the conference included Honorable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, who delivered the inaugural address and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who delivered the keynote address.

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The last event Dr. Muschert and Dr.Pereira attended was the Roundtable Conference on Advanced in ICT in the Healthcare Sector where they were International Business and Sociological delegates.

The event was hosted by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad from 18–19 January 2020. The roundtable consisted of 20 leaders from the Indian healthcare sector, which included doctors, IT professionals, entrepreneurs, and academics. The event was an opportunity for the delegates to strategize on the best way to effectively digitize and deploy improvements to the healthcare system in India.

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KU Professors Win Best Paper Award at the Academy of International Business 2020 Conference

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Dr. Glenn Muschert, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Dr. Dimitrios Reppas, Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, received the Best Paper Award for their paper “Mobile Money Systems as Avant-Garde in the Digital Transition of Financial Relations.” The award was presented at the Academy of International Business (AIB) 2020 held last 6–9 January 2020 in Nairobi, Kenya. The event was a joint conference of AIB Africa Chapter and Northeast USA Chapter hosted by the Chandaria School of Business at the United States International University – Africa (USIU-A). In their paper, Dr. Muschert and Dr. Reppas discussed Mobile Money, an electronic form of currency that has become popular particularly in developing countries over the last decade.

They summarized the main findings from empirical literature regarding the positive economic and social impacts of deploying Mobile Money platforms such as their potential to reconfigure and transform pre-existing financial practices, include the unbanked segments of the populations into formal economic relations, and provide self-reliance and security to local communities. Our research also clarified the types of data required to conduct more reliable empirical research and therefore enhance cooperation among the parties involved in deploying and studying the effects of Mobile Money systems, including the academic community, policy makers/ regulators, central banks, telecommunication companies, and entrepreneurs.

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IICS Professor Presents Research Findings at Harvard University’s Annual HPAIR Conference

Brendon J. Cannon, Assistant Professor, Institute of International and Civil Security (IICS) was invited to Harvard University’s Harvard College Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) annual conference from February 14-17, 2020 in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Cannon was invited on account of his previous research and publications on the topic of the Indo-Pacific strategies of various states such as Japan, India, and the United States, and their security and economic interactions with the Arabian Gulf and Western Indian Ocean region.

He presented some of the findings of his current and ongoing research at a panel discussion titled “Framing the Narrative: Defining the Indo-Pacific.”

KU Math Professor Serves as Editor of Special Issue on Quantum Technology Dr. Faisal Shah Khan, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, served as an editor of a special issue of the Technology Analysis & Strategic Management Journal titled “Quantum Innovation and Technology Management: Current Challenges and Future Perspectives.” The special issue focuses on the broad aspects of innovation and technology development, transfer, and commercialization in the area of quantum information and computation and include topics such as (1) Artificial intelligence and machine learning in the era of quantum technology; (2) The impact of quantum computing on business process; (3) Quantum information processing, cybersecurity, and implications for businesses; (4) Quantum technology dissemination and relevant case studies; (5) Quantum technology challenges and opportunities in different industries; and (6) Ethics in quantum technology setting, best practices, and policy.

Dr. Khan is one of the lead researchers of the Quantum Computing Research Group (QCRG) at Khalifa University, a multi-disciplinary research effort into the theory and practical development of quantum computers and their innovative technological applications. He is also a visiting researcher at the Quantum Computing Institute of Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee, USA. 59 KU TIMES

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Khalifa University Wins Senior Design Competition Organized by IEOM Society International

A paper by senior students from the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Khalifa University has won first place in the IEOM Capstone Student Design Project Competition that was part of the 2020 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM).

The team was represented by Maha Al Dhaheri, Mariam Ramadan, Afra Al Mheiri, and Maryam Al Shehhi, and was supervised by Dr. Mecit Can Emre Simsekler, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Dr. Saed Amer, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Their paper, titled “Improving Patient Discharge Process,” showcases their design project, which aims to improve the patient discharge process for an inpatient clinic of a local hospital in Abu Dhabi. Leveraging industrial and systems engineering principles, the students proposed a simulation-based approach to streamline the patient discharge process and consequently improve the patients’ experience.

The IEOM Society International is a non-profit organization that provides academics, researchers, scientists, and practitioners a platform and forum to exchange ideas and provide insights on the latest developments and advancements in the fields of Industrial Engineering and Operations Management.

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Khalifa University Awarded AED7 Million Ministry of Education Research Grant A Khalifa University research proposal has been selected to be awarded the 2019 UAE Ministry of Education Collaborative Research Program Grant (CRPG2019) program.

The proposal, titled “Evaluation of Using Accident Tolerant Fuel Concepts in APR1400,” was one of four proposals selected from a total of 238 proposals submitted to the grant program. The KU researchers will receive approximately AED7 million across three years to pursue research aimed at demonstrating the superior performance of new advanced nuclear fuel in commercial nuclear power plants. Such advanced nuclear fuels that can help get more power out of nuclear power plants safely and reliably, could be a significant boost to the UAE’s goal of meeting growing energy demand sustainably.

A team of six faculty members from KU will carry out the research. The

team includes Dr. Saeed Al Ameri, Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Dr. Ahmed Al Kaabi, Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Dr. Yongsun Yi, Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Dr. Daniel Choi, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Imran Afgan, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr.Andreas Schiffer, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

The team will also include 11 PhD students; all of the nuclear engineers will be UAE Nationals.

The collaborative team will include external members from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and The University of Manchester.

The aim of the CRPG grant is to build research teams of scale, focusing on an integrated research

program capable of applying scientific excellence to the advancement of knowledge for the benefit of the UAE. The grant encourages researchers to pursue original and ambitious research questions.

Research projects considered for the CRPG must prove to have relevance to at least one of the UAE Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy focus areas. The KU project falls under the focus area of Solar and Alternative Energy Technology Systems.

The other three 2019 grant winners were Dr. Ioannis Manikas from the University of Wollongong in Dubai for a project in the category of Food Security; Dr. Bassam Ali from UAE University for a project in Health Information Technology and Bioinformatics; and Dr.Mohamed Ahmed M. Salim Alhammadi, also from UAE University, for a project under Education Innovation and Technology 61 KU TIMES

RESEARCH CENTER UPDATES

DSO Center Faculty Visits Greece to Foster Ties with Key Transport Research Center

In early February, Dr. Maher Maalouf, Dr. Andrei Sleptchenko, and Dr. Andreas Henschel of Khalifa University’s Digital Supply Chain and Operations Management (DSO) Center visited the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT). The HIT is part of the Center for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), a non-profit organization and one of the leading research centers in Greece. CERTH reports directly to the General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Greek Ministry of Development and Investments and is also listed among the top 20 EU research institutions that have the highest participation in competitive research grants.

The KU delegation was welcomed by HIT Director Dr. Evangelos Bekiaris and HIT Deputy Director and Research Director for Infrastructure, Networks, Mobility, and Logistics Dr. Georgia Aifadopoulou. They also met with Aristos Halatsis (Project Manager), Josep Maria Salanova Grau (Researcher), Elpida Xenou (Logistics Expert/ Project Manager), Ioanis Malidis (Researcher), and Pavlos Spanidis (Software Engineer).

HIT’s key research areas focus on clean vehicle technologies, road safety, and employability of transport sector professionals. During the visit, the KU delegation toured the facilities and discussed potential collaborations between KU and HIT such as joint project proposals, research visits, and exchange of data and technologies. The collaborations are expected to be mutually beneficial and will strengthen DSOs breadth and depth of expertise.

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

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Highlights of the latest important announcements, strategic initiatives, new partnerships, and VIP visits

FROM THE NEWSROOM

Ankabut Fully Prepared to Ensure Continuity of Distant Learning Capabilities and Network Services to Higher Education Institutions and K12 Community in UAE ANKABUT’S SERVICES TO ENSURE RELIABLE OPERATIONS IN AREAS INCLUDING LIBRARY SERVICES, RESEARCH COMPUTING AND INDIVIDUAL ACCESSIBILITY OF APPLICATIONS

Ankabut – the Emirates Advanced National Research and Education Network – today announced that it is fully geared up and prepared to ensure continuity of distant learning capabilities and smooth running of all network services related to higher education and K12 sector in the UAE and the region. Managed

by Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Ankabut is jointly funded by the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA) through the ICT Fund.

abilities, we firmly believe that all educational institutions in the UAE can seek our full support in their day-to-day or special operations, related to academic or research works.”

Ankabut’s Data Center resilience guarantees quality performance and protection without interruption, and provides privileges including customized solutions, security, and core business focus, reduced downtime and 24/7 operations.

Ankabut offers several services and applications that can remain the core strength of any academic institution in the UAE. This includes learning management system, library management system, video communication platform cyber-security services and software-defined datacenter.

It provides dedicated, unconstrained network connectivity for research and educational institutions, catering to niche institutional demands throughout the country. Currently, it connects 34 higher education institutions with overseas educational networks around the world.

Fahem Al-Nuaimi, Chief Executive Officer, Ankabut, said: “Ankabut’s cloud-based and managed services will ensure continuity with our secure, resilient 24/7 support under all circumstances. As a key provider of education-related network services, our priority will be to ensure reliable operations in areas such as distant learning, library services, research computing and individual accessibility of applications. With the strength of our already proven

Ankabut’s reliable, dynamic and secure cloud solution, Mozoon, supports education and research and development in the UAE, while enhancing academic experience by hosting vendor solutions. The software defined data center (SDDC), Mozoon is offered as ‘Infrastructure As A Service’ (IaaS), providing users more flexibility and control, in addition to being cost-effective, and can be tapped for big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

Khalifa University Wins Award for Highest Number of Filed Patents in UAE, as EBTIC Wins ‘Most Inventive Innovation Center’ Award RECOGNITIONS AT ABU DHABI AWARDS FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DURING TIP 2020 SUMMIT VALIDATE KHALIFA UNIVERSITY’S STATUS IN DRIVING TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

Khalifa University of Science and Technology has won two top recognitions at the Abu Dhabi Awards for Intellectual Property, validating once again its status as a pioneering researchintensive higher education institution, driving innovation in new technologies.

Khalifa University was presented with the ‘Top University with Filed Patents’ award that was received by Dr Steve Griffiths, Senior Vice-President, Research and Development, Khalifa University. Moreover, Khalifa University’s Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC) sponsored by the UAE Telecom Regulatory Authority’s ICT Fund, received the ‘Most Inventive Innovation Center’ award that was received by Dr Nawaf I. Almoosa, Acting Director, EBTIC and Assistant Professor, Khalifa University. The awards were presented during the Technology Innovation Pioneers (TIP) 2020 Summit organized by the Department of Economic Development – Abu Dhabi in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy.

Khalifa University currently has a total of 167 issued patents, which is considered the highest number among universities in the UAE. The University has also 228 filed patent applications, resulting from 417 invention disclosures. EBTIC, a Khalifa University research and innovation center focused on systems and technologies for the Next Generation Networks (NGNs) and NGN-enabled ICT applications and services, was awarded in recognition of its leadership in IP generation, specifically the volume and quality of patents and its contribution to the UAE’s status in innovation globally. EBTIC alone currently has 40 issued patents with over 60 pending patent applications.

Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice-President, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, said: “The two awards – ‘Top University with Filed Patents’ and the ‘Most Inventive Research Center’ for our research center EBTIC – place us among the top league of well-established universities that contribute to creating intellectual capital. Our research thrust in the UAE’s strategic sectors, world-class faculty experts, and cutting-edge laboratory facilities have together helped us to achieve these recognitions. We believe these awards will further strengthen our resolve to consistently contribute not only to the creation of IP but also in capacity building, thus facilitating the country’s knowledge-economy transformation.”

At the TIP 2020 Summit, Dr Steve Griffiths joined a panel of experts to share his perspectives on ‘The Next Big Thing: DeepTech’ and MENA’s Cleantech start-ups: Growing the ecosystem to solve environmental challenges’. Dr. Nawaf Al Moosa offered his views on ‘IP from Ideation to Implementation’, while Dr. Daniel Choi, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, spoke about ‘How Universities Can Support Innovation’.

Currently, Khalifa University has 19 research centers and 228 laboratories housing state-of-the-art equipment to investigate a broad range of science and engineering subjects.

The research-intensive university’s focus sectors include clean and renewable energy, hydrocarbon exploration and production, water and environment, health, aerospace, and supply chain and logistics.

Research in these sectors is enhanced by the research platforms of robotics, AI and data science, information and communication technologies, advanced materials and manufacturing.

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Khalifa University Grants Intellectual Property License to Emirati Startup PATENTED TECHNOLOGY INVENTED IN BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING RESEARCH LABORATORY HELPS DEVELOPMENT OF NOVEL DEVICE FOR PREGNANT MOTHERS TO MONITOR BABY’S CARDIAC ACTIVITY

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Khalifa University of Science and Technology has announced the licensing of its patented technology to a startup floated by an alumnus Emirati entrepreneur with a faculty member.

The intellectual property (IP) technology license was granted recently, marking a significant milestone in the university’s innovation journey. The home-based monitoring device, called by the Emirati startup ‘Twinkle Heart’, helps pregnant mothers to monitor fetal heart-beat and the baby’s cardiac activity.

FROM THE NEWSROOM

The technology behind the product was developed

by Dr Ahsan Khandoker, Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering, and licensed to Advanced Research Projects, the start-up established by Biomedical Engineering graduate Saeed Alteneiji, and was incubated at Khalifa Innovation Centre (KIC).

Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice-President, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, said: “Khalifa University’s comprehensive role includes not only education, but also providing a successful and integrated academic journey in areas that serve the UAE’s strategic sectors. This enables graduate studies and innovations at our state-of-the-art research centers, while facilitating the creation of start-ups and commercialization of patented technology with products targeting these sectors.”

Al Hammadi added, “This is a key milestone for Khalifa University towards successful commercialization of a technology developed at our own research laboratory. It is also critical for the university to grant intellectual and patent rights to a startup led by an Emirati entrepreneur. We will continue to further exploit the commercial potentials of our IP and patent portfolios and contribute to the innovation ecosystem.”

Twinkle Heart comprises four fetal phonocardiogram (FPCG) sensors held on the maternal abdomen by a square fabric harness and elastic belts, making it easier for pregnant women to simply listen to their baby’s heartbeat and feel reassured.

Dr Khandoker said: “It is rewarding to see this piece of my research work can further be progressed by a local start-up into a market product that can benefit the public. The uniqueness of this non-invasive device is the ease of use so it should be accessible to any pregnant mother to determine the well-being of her baby. The successful IP licensing to Advanced

Research Projects is a reflection of the University vision for having impactful research.”

The portable, low-cost, safe, and easy-to-use fetal screening device for use at home or pregnancy clinics by mobile phone and cheap sensors was originally planned to help medical doctors and midwives. The research results have already been demonstrated through several collaborating hospitals in the UAE and overseas.

Alteneiji said: “ARP’s IP license with Khalifa University is vital for my startup. We will be executing a development plan in 2020 to transfer the IP from the prototype stage to a commercialized product. A marketing plan is already on the way to create awareness for the device, and our team of experts in marketing, engineering, and technology are closely working towards developing the final product. We are grateful to Khalifa University, especially Dr Al Hammadi as well as the Technology Management and Innovation and the Legal offices for their effort and extended support.”

Beyond its home-based application, the device’s portability makes it an ideal solution for health workers in remote areas. Alteneiji’s company Advanced Research Projects has a subsidiary MARP, established early this year, which will be responsible for this product.

Khalifa University currently has over 140 issued patents, with around 360 pending patent applications and more than 400 invention disclosures, while remaining a leading contributor to the country’s patents portfolio.

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

Khalifa University Wins Research Grants Totaling over AED21 Million in ADEK’s AARE 2019 Cycle

The number of project proposals and the total grants received this time has far exceeded the University’s performance in the AARE 2017 cycle, when Khalifa University won a total of 18 AARE awards with research grants totaling AED5 million.

Khalifa University of Science and Technology has once again demonstrated its status as a premier research-intensive institution focusing on the UAE’s strategic sectors by winning nearly half of all the research grants awarded under the 2019 Abu Dhabi Award for Research Excellence (AARE).

The AARE is a competitive funding program for outstanding research proposals in targeted areas within Abu Dhabi. The targeted sectors of strategic importance to Abu Dhabi for the 2019 cycle of research grants include ‘Aerospace’, ‘Energy, ‘Environment’, ‘Health, Food and Agriculture’, ‘Information and communication Technology (ICT)’, ‘Manufacturing’, ‘Education and Social Sciences’.

Khalifa University received a total of 23 out of 48 awards, with an overall value of more than AED 21 million. The AARE marked its fourth round of funding this year.

Of the 23 selected proposals from Khalifa University, 17 were from the College of Engineering, five were from the College of Arts and Sciences, and one from the College of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive VicePresident, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, said: “We have once again validated our status as a pioneering research-intensive university that is focused on the UAE’s strategic sectors, contributing the country’s drive towards becoming a knowledge-based economy. This remarkable performance would not have been possible without the expertise of our worldclass faculty, which we believe will firmly keep us on the path of scientific exploration, while developing and training talented students.”

Research funded by the AARE program is expected to advance scientific and technological development within the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, as well as develop meaningful partnerships between Abu Dhabi scientists and leading academic and industrial collaborators, both nationally and worldwide.

With a total of 19 research centers focusing on the strategic economic sectors of the UAE, Khalifa University leads in pioneering innovation in hydrocarbon exploration and production, clean and renewable energy, water and environment, healthcare, aerospace, supply chain and logistics, artificial intelligence, robotics and data science, information and communication technologies (ICT) and advanced materials and manufacturing.

Khalifa University currently has over 140 issued patents, with around 360 patent applications pending and more than 400 invention disclosures.

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

Khalifa University Launches 4+1 Accelerated Master of Science Programs, Encouraging Students at All Levels to Go for Higher Studies PROGRAM ENABLES EXCEPTIONAL STUDENTS TO JUMP-START GRADUATE EDUCATION AND INTEGRATING AND ALIGNING DIFFERENT EDUCATIONAL LEVELS

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Khalifa University of Science and Technology has announced the launch of 4+1 Accelerated Master of Science Programs to enable exceptional senior undergraduate students in the College of Engineering to start their Master’s studies even while pursuing their undergraduate education.

Through the Accelerated MSc program option, a highly motivated student, with the help of her/his academic advisor, can finish undergraduate and Master’s degrees within a nominal period of five-years. The accelerated program targets students for whom a Master’s degree will provide the necessary preparation to achieve career goals, or for pursuing a doctorate degree.

In parallel, the accelerated program also reflects Khalifa University’s efforts towards accelerating, integrating, and aligning different educational levels, by allowing outstanding high school students to take Bachelor-level courses for credit, and brilliant Bachelor’s students to take Master’s level courses for credit. This is expected to bridge the gap between educational levels, providing an opportunity for exceptional students to obtain their degrees in a shorter duration.

FROM THE NEWSROOM

Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice-President, Khalifa University, said: “The accelerated Master’s program at Khalifa University enables excellent students to jumpstart graduate education with significant advantages such as saving on time, and lower expenses. Through this program, Khalifa University facilitates students right from the high-school and undergraduate levels, to continue learning right up to their Master’s, either to be eligible to join a workplace or continue their journey towards a PhD. We believe this program will encourage eligible students enthusiastic about pursuing their advanced degrees by offering them a fast-track option.”

In order to be eligible for the Accelerated MSc program, a student must have a minimum cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 3.7 (equivalent to A-), out of 4 with a minimum of 90 credits of undergraduate study. A conditional admission may be granted, if an application is made during the student’s junior year of undergraduate study. However, the student must meet all the Master’s admission requirements, including finishing the Bachelor’s degree, before being granted full admissions to the program.

A student can register for up to six credits of Master’s level courses that can be used towards the elective courses during the undergraduate program. A Master’s-level course taken during the senior year of undergraduate studies will count towards the accelerated Master’s program courses requirement, provided the student achieves a minimum of B-grade in that course.

Through its three colleges—the College of Engineering, College of Arts and Sciences, and the College of Medicine and Health Sciences—Khalifa University currently offers 16 bachelors and 17 Master’s degree programs, in addition to three doctoral degree (PhD) programs with 12 Concentrations.

Khalifa University has three research institutes—Masdar Institute, Petroleum Institute, and the AI Institute, in addition to 19 core research centers exploring sectors ranging from artificial intelligence and robotics to clean energy, hydrocarbons and aerospace, as well as challenges of critical importance to the UAE’s knowledge economy transformation. The University has a strong IP portfolio—a total of 167 issued patents—the highest among universities in the UAE, as well as 228 filed patent applications, resulting from 417 invention disclosures.

SEMINARS

Physics Professor to Host a Microscopy & Microanalysis 2020 Symposium in August 2020 The Microscopy & Microanalysis (M&M) 2020 Conference is the biggest event in the field of Microscopy and this year it will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 2–6 August 2020. KU’s Dr. Dalaver H. Anjum, Assistant Professor of Physics, will be one of the hosts of the symposium in “Bridging the Fundamental Electron Dose Gap for Observing Atom Processes in Complex Materials in their Native States,” which is part of the M&M 2020 Conference.

The symposium focuses on devising new strategies to manipulate electron beams in advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) instruments for carrying out a nanoscale analysis of next-generation materials in their native state. New strategies are urgently needed because electron beams can alter the structure of materials if the electron dose is above the materials’ threshold level.

Low-dose frame averaging, cryoTEM, electron detectors, and primary electron energies are a few examples of the parameters that are manipulated to devise new analysis strategies. Their applications cover various advanced materials including two-dimensional, biological, metalorganic framework, and zeolites. Overall, the message from the symposium is that these days, TEM techniques (both cryoTEM and room temperature TEM) have become an indispensable tool for exploring the science and technology of next-generation materials.

Dr. Anjum will also be presenting his work in two other M&M 2020 symposia, including “Advances in Electron Microscopy to Characterize Materials Embedded in Devices” and “Crystallography at the Nanoscale and MicroED with Electrons and X-rays.” The two papers he will be presenting will be about transmission microscopy analysis of semiconductors and metallic materials that have solar cell and aerospace applications.

73 KU TIMES

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Expert insights from KU’s worldclass faculty

Khalifa University Contributes Chapter on Role of Technology Transfer in Accelerating Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Arab World Universities

Dr. Sami Bashir, Director of Technology Management and Innovation at Khalifa University, has contributed a chapter on the role of technology transfer in Arab universities in a new book titled Higher Education in the Arab World: Building a Culture of Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

The 17-chapter book is being published by Springer, one of the leading international science and technology publishers, and will be available in bookstores in May. According to the book’s synopsis (as published on Springer’s website here), “it offers the first major account of innovation and entrepreneurship in the Arab higher-education sector. It provides an overview of the current situation and advances reasons for the under-performance of Arab universities in international ranking tables. It offers specific proposals for upgrading curricula and assessment procedures and suggestions for providing an environment that fosters innovation and entrepreneurial behavior.”

The book’s editors include Dr. Adnan Badran, Chancellor of the University of Petra, Dr. Elias Baydoun, Professor of Biology at American University of Beirut, and Dr. John Hillman, Advisor to the Arab Academy of Sciences and Former

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Director and Chief Executive of the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI). They identified the need to improve technology transfer capabilities in Arab universities as an important way to build the region’s knowledge economy and accelerate innovation and an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

As the Director of KU’s Technology Management & Innovation Office, Dr. Bashir was invited to contribute the chapter titled “Imperatives to Achieve a Successful Technology-Transfer Model: A Perspective from the Arab World.”

In it, Dr. Bashir acknowledges the increasing emphasis the Arab world is placing on the need to transform university research outputs into technologies that can benefit society. He discusses the importance of identifying an effective technology-transfer model, as intellectual property can be pivotal to building open innovation, industry/university research partnerships and collaboration that can support the development of innovations throughout the Arab world, which he describes as diverse.

“Universities in the Arab world operate differently, but they face some common challenges in developing a working technology-transfer model and innovation ecosystem,” Dr. Bashir explained.

“Challenges such as intellectual-property laws,

policies, and progressive research partnerships are addressed, and I tried to offer recommendations on how these challenges can be addressed.

Dr. Bashir presents a few case studies to demonstrate the different and effective technologytransfer models that have been adopted in the Arab world, including Khalifa University’s tech-transfer model.

“Khalifa University has a clear technology transfer and innovation strategy focusing on maximizing the benefit of our diversified patent portfolio through innovation and licensing to our industry partners or startups. As KU, we are already considered as one of the top universities in UAE in terms of patents number, but most importantly, leading best practices in university technology transfer and innovation,” Dr.Bashir shared. Khalifa University recently licensed two of its patented technologies to Emirati startups ‘Advanced Research Projects’ and ‘Beyond Energy Biofuels.’

Dr. Bashir has made a striking case that technology transfer should be made as a priority, and creating successful technology transfer models that can be adopted by universities across the Arab world will significantly bolster the region’s innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems.

75 KU TIMES

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Prayer and Altruistic Desire as Predictors of Happiness

Dr. Michael Babula, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Khalifa University, will be presenting his work on prayer and altruistic desire as predictors of happiness in a virtual seminar for the International Psychological Associations Conference and Trends (InPact) 2020.

In a comparative study of four countries, Dr. Babula investigated the positive mental health benefits of prayer versus using religion for altruistic purposes.

“With the significant rise of psychological disorders worldwide, psychologists are searching for a toolkit that would help create psychological immunity to mental illness,” explained Dr. Babula. “My research suggests that societies which value collectivism, such as Turkey and India, glean mental health benefits in that prayer significantly predicts happiness.”

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

“People throughout history have turned to religious activities in seeking happiness. Two emerging themes in the literature is that prayer and altruism may predict happiness.”

One prior study reported that people who were ‘otherfocused’ as opposed to ‘self-focused’ during meditation had lower depressive symptoms, maladaptive guilt, anxiety, and empathetic distress. Another found that loving-kindness meditation—a technique to show feelings of warmth and caring for the self and others—produced greater positive emotions which predicted greater life satisfaction and lower depressive symptoms.

Dr. Babula’s work investigated whether prayer or the desire for altruistic action would predict greater levels of happiness. He selected four countries to compare: the United States, Thailand, India, and Turkey. These countries were selected in an attempt to explore possible differences based on representations of the world’s major religions.

“Although the USA has separation of church and state, the USA sample contains participants from across the religious spectrum,” explained Dr. Babula. “The other countries under investigation have religious majorities: Buddhism in Thailand, Hinduism in India, and Islam in Turkey.”

A comparative analysis of data from wave six of the World Values Survey—a global network of social scientists studying changing values and their impact on social and political life—was used to evaluate the hypothesis.

Participants in the analysis were asked how often they prayed, whether they would say they were happy, and whether they thought the basic meaning of religion was to follow religious norms or to do good to other people.

The data from the surveys conducted found that prayer significantly predicts greater happiness in India and Turkey, and the desire to use religion to do good for others also significantly predicted happiness for respondents in India. The use of religion to do good for others did not significantly predict happiness for the other countries under investigation.

One assumption is that the sense of collectivism and importance shown towards others in India and Turkey effects levels of happiness.

“In other words, people in collectivist cultures who value strong social bonds are more inclined to pray for others such as their family or members of the community rather than for the self, increasing wellbeing and positive emotions,” explained Dr. Babula.

Collectivism provides some insight as to why prayer in India and Turkey predicted happiness compared with the USA, which values individualism. However, Thailand is a collectivist culture where the majority of the population follows Buddhism, but in Thailand, prayer did not significantly predict happiness. Researchers have previously noticed that while more Thai youth pray, there has been a shift away from the belief in ‘the law of Karma that influences the consequences of one’s deeds.’

While collectivism strengthens in India, its untethering in Thailand might be one reason why prayer is not a predictor of happiness, although more data is required.

“It appears that attitudes to use religion to do good for other people was not a predictor of happiness, except for in India, but the size effect was rather weak for that country,” said Dr. Babula. “Of course, I am undertaking follow-up research to this study by examining actual altruistic action as part of a larger study. I strongly suspect that while attitudes do not always reflect behaviour, those engaged in altruistic activities are likely to obtain mental health benefits.”

“I have been studying altruism and pro-social behaviour for much of my career. Currently, I’m undertaking a funded research project to investigate the relationship between altruism, resiliency, and happiness. These are critically important topics, especially during the current Covid-19 crisis, where it will be a top priority for social scientists worldwide to try to help people avoid dips in subjective wellbeing.”

Dr. Babula’s research will also become a chapter in the current volume of Psychological Applications and Trends, to be published later this year.

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Prolific Professors 01

02

03

04

TITLE

Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution from Organic Semiconductor Heterojunction Nanoparticles

JOURNAL

Nature Materials

KU AUTHOR

Dr. Dalaver H. Anjum, Assistant Professor of Physics

LINK

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-019-0591-1

TITLE

Efficient Screening for Ternary Molecular Ionic Cocrystals Using a Complementary Mechanosynthesis and Computational Structure Prediction Approach

JOURNAL

Chemistry—A European Journal

KU AUTHORS

Abeer F. Shunnar, Lab Specialist; Dr. Bhausaheb Dhokale, Postdoctoral Fellow; Dr. Hector H. Hernandez, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering; and Dr. Sharmarke Mohamed, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

LINK

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/chem.201904672

TITLE

The Clinical Potential of Thiol Redox Proteomics

JOURNAL

Journal: Expert Reviews of Proteomics

KU AUTHOR

Dr. David Sheehan, Professor of Biochemistry

LINK

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14789450.2020.1704260

TITLE

External Corrosion Detection of Oil Pipelines Using Fiber Optics

JOURNAL

Sensors

KU AUTHOR

Dr. Paul Rostron, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

LINK

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/3/684

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05

06

TITLE

Human Vital Signs Detection Methods and Potential Using Radars: A Review

JOURNAL

Sensors

KU AUTHORS

Dr. Baker Mohammad, Mamady Kebe, Dr. Rida Gadhafi, Dr. Mihai Sanduleanu, Dr. Hani Saleh, and Dr. Mahmoud Al-Qutayri

LINK

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/5/1454

TITLE

A Blockchain-Based Approach for the Creation of Digital Twins

JOURNAL

IEEE Access

KU AUTHORS

Haya Hasan, Dr. Khaled Salah, Dr. Raja Jayaraman, Dr. Mohammed Omar, and Dr. Ibrar Yaqoob

LINK

07

08

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9001017

TITLE

Catalytic activation of peroxymonosulfate using CeVO4 for phenol degradation: An insight into the reaction pathway

JOURNAL

Applied Catalysis B: Environmental

KU AUTHORS

Israa Othman, Dr. Jerina Hisham Zain, Dr. Mohammad Abu Haija, and Dr. Fawzi Banat

LINK

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0926337320300163

TITLE

Countrywide optimization of natural gas supply chain: From wells to Consumers

JOURNAL

Energy

KU AUTHORS

Satyadileep Dara, Haytham Abdulqader, Dr. Yasser Al Wahedi, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Dr. Abdallah S. Berrouk, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering

LINK

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544220302322?via%3Dihub

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

09

10

11

12

TITLE

An Experimental and Numerical Study of Low Salinity Effects on the Oil Recovery of Carbonate Rocks Combining Spontaneous Imbibition, Centrifuge Method and Coreflooding Experiments

JOURNAL

Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

KU AUTHOR

Dr. Felix Feldmann, Research Staff, ADRIC Research Laboratories

LINK

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092041052030139X

TITLE

Resolving Dirac Electrons with Broadband High-resolution NMR

JOURNAL

Nature Communications

KU AUTHORS

Dr. Yasser Alwahedi, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Dr. Saeed Alhassan, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering

LINK

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14838-4

TITLE

Preferences in Quantum Games

JOURNAL

ScienceDirect

KU AUTHORS

Dr. Simon Phoenix, Associate Professor of Physics; Dr. Faisal Shah Khan, Assistant Professor of Mathematics; and Dr. Berihu Teklu Gebrehiwot, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

LINK

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960120300980

TITLE

Energy Storage Systems Applications in Mexican Power System

NEWSLETTER

IEEE Smart Grid

KU AUTHORS

Dr. Ameena Saad Al-Sumaiti, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

LINK

https://smartgrid.ieee.org/newsletters/april-2020/energy-storage-systems-applications-in-mexicanpower-system

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13

14

15

16

TITLE

Highly ordered mesoporous flower-like NiO nanoparticles: Synthesis, characterization and photocatalytic performance.

JOURNAL

New Journal of Chemistry, 44, 3402-3411

KU AUTHORS

Dr. Mohammad Abu Haija, Assistant Professor

LINK

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/nj/c9nj04955j#!divAbstract

TITLE

Laccases and peroxidases: The smart, greener and futuristic biocatalytic tools to mitigate recalcitrant emerging pollutants.

JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

KU AUTHORS

Dr. Syed Salman Ashraf, Associate Dean for Postgraduate Studies and Professor of Chemistry

LINK

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720300826

TITLE

Computational Study of the Unimolecular and Bimolecular Decomposition Mechanisms of Propylamine

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports (Accepted April 2020)

KU AUTHORS

Dr. Mutasem Sinnokrot, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

LINK

https://www.nature.com/srep/

TITLE

Unveiling the Role of Bisulfide in the Photocatalytic Splitting of H2S in Aqueous Solutions

JOURNAL

ScienceDirect

KU AUTHORS

Habeebllah Oladipo, PhD Student of Chemical Engineering; Corrado Garlisi, Post Doctoral Fellow of Chemical Engineering; Khalid Al Ali, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering; and Giovanni Palmisano, Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering

LINK

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926337320303015

Patent Issued

TITLE :

Reservoir Temperature Determination

KU INVENTORS: Mauro Fernandes Pereira, Professor and Chair of Physics LINK:

WO2019180486A1, Priority 2018-03-20, Filed 2018-03-20, Published 2019-09-26.

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INNOVATION FORWARD

Cutting-edge research and breakthroughs

Holey Graphene: The Emerging Versatile Material Investigated at Khalifa University A review paper by Khalifa University researchers Dr. Abhishek Lokhande, Postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Issam Qattan, Associate Professor of Physics, and Dr. Shashikant Patole, Assistant Professor of Physics, has been published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, covering everything to do with porous graphene. Their review discusses the state-of-the-art pore generation techniques, underlying mechanisms of action, advantages, disadvantages and applications of ‘holey’ graphene.

Graphene is a unique material comprising densely packed carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice— known mostly to the public as the layers of material that make up pencil lead. It is extremely versatile and has potential applications in various fields, particularly thanks to its superior optical, electrical, thermal and mechanical properties.

In its purest form, graphene offers myriad applications.

However, in recent years, nanoscale perforation of 2D materials has emerged as an effective strategy to enhance and widen the applications of a material beyond its pristine form.

“With the possible exception of cheese, it is well known that materials have modified properties when their structure is perforated,” said Dr. Patole. “Porous graphene, or holey graphene, is a form of graphene with nanopores in its plane.

This unique porous structure enables easy interaction with

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inorganic or organic species, which has broad applications in water desalination, water treatment, environmental protection, and energy storage systems.”

The performance of the material is affected by the pore size, density, shape, and volume, and usually, uniform pore shape and size distribution is optimal as it leads to enhanced thermal, mechanical and electrical properties.

Graphene-based porous materials are classified into three categories based on the assembled architecture, namely holey graphene, 2D laminar porous graphene, and 3D conjugated interconnected porous structures, with holey graphene showing abundant in-plane pores generated at the basal plane using various perforation techniques.

Nanochannels are formed due to the regular and periodic stacking of graphene nanosheets over each other, making interlayer pores through which liquid ions can easily pass.

“By exploiting the combined advantages of holes and graphene, holey graphene-based materials have attracted significant interest,” said Dr. Patole. “They have exceptional properties such as high electrical conductivity and high surface area, which allows holey graphene extremely versatile and able to outperform its pristine form for many applications.”

Porous graphene exhibits distinct properties from its pristine form. Compared to other graphene-based porous materials, holey graphene has an increased surface area, reduced nanosheet stacking, enhanced chemical reactivity and a stronger hydrophilic nature, which means it maximizes contact with water.

Additionally, it offers high mechanical strength for superior structural stability, high chemical inertness to avoid

INNOVATION FORWARD

When pristine graphene has been produced, it can be made porous by chemical and physical methods, but hole generation is tricky and its parameters depend on the methods adopted for its intended purpose.

“Generally, the expected pore size should be smaller than the conventional pore size of the naturally available materials,” said Dr. Patole. “However, fabricating porous graphene with well-defined pores is still a challenge as it is quite complex and restricted by our current technological limits.”

contamination issues, high thermal stability for use in rigorous environments, high electrical conductivity for rapid electron transport, and high ion diffusion due to the interlayer channels. By fine tuning the parameters of the pores, porous graphene can be optimised for various applications.

“Holey graphene-based materials can be applied in diverse fields, including electrical energy storage, energy conversion, water desalination, bioseparation, fuel cells, gas sensors, and hydrogen storage and dye degradation systems,” added Dr.Patole. “For further research and development, we need to uncover the prime properties and related potential industrial implications of these materials, as well as suitable generation methods.”

The research team identified the pores as the basis for realizing holey graphene’s potential. However, synthesizing even pristine graphene is complicated. The most scalable methods suffer from the drawbacks of producing materials with inconsistent properties and low purity. Methods that produce high-quality graphene are much more expensive and involve the use of highly sophisticated operational setups and accessories.

“This is why it’s important to develop methods that are easy, costeffective, efficient and scalable for graphene synthesis,” explained Dr. Patole.

Synthesizing holey graphene is also associated with the use of toxic chemicals and the high cost of the starting materials, so novel strategies will be required for its synthesis. The researchers investigated the use of biomass as a starting material, including Bougainvillea flowers and Plumeria rubra leaves, among other approaches.

Besides the major reported applications in supercapacitors, lithium ion batteries, electro-water splitting, and water desalination systems, holey graphene-based materials are also applied in various other applications. Some of these applications include hydrogen storage, dye degradation, organic pollutant separation, and gas sensing. Holey graphene has even been investigated for biological applications, with the researchers highlighting effective performance in nonenzymatic glucose detection in human blood samples and selective bacterial detection.

“Holey graphene-based materials have emerged as versatile materials and have demonstrated superior performance in many applications,” explained Dr. Patole. “With continuous efforts and developments, the commercial application of holey graphenebased materials will surely revolutionize all sorts of applications.”

83 KU TIMES

INNOVATION FORWARD

Khalifa University Researchers Publish Book on Next Generation Power Management Integrated Circuits for Energy Efficient Wearable Devices

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INNOVATION FORWARD

A team of researchers from Khalifa University’s System on Chip Center (SOCC) have contributed to the advancement of energy-efficient wearable electronic devices with extended battery life, and documented their contributions in a new book on power management integrated circuits for wearables.

The co-authors include KU’s Dr. Dima Kilani, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Baker Mohammad, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and SOCC Director, and Dr. Hani Saleh, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The book, titled “Power Management for Wearable Electronic Devices,” is published by Springer, one of the leading international science and technology publishers.

As Khalifa University celebrates the UAE’s Month of Reading, the recent book publication underscores the significant role KU researchers play in expanding scientific literacy and disseminating cutting-edge knowledge to readers in the UAE and around the world.

The book, which is composed of six chapters, presents a comprehensive overview of the research conducted by SOCC researchers in the field of power management integrated circuits (PMICs), which are used to power small, battery-operated electronic devices within a single chip.

Forecasts suggest that by 2030 there will be around 50 billion Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices in use around the world offering new ways to improve our productivity, health, and lifestyle. Hence, the book’s publication is very timely as it provides important insights into optimal power management designs for researchers and industry leaders working in the area of connected, low-power wearable devices.

“We are entering an era of IoT and artificial intelligence (AI), which is giving rise to great opportunities for electronic devices with low power consumption and energy efficiency,” Dr. Mohammad shared.

PMICs provide critical power management functions in wearable devices, especially in ultra-thin sensors used in hard-to-reach places, like medical implantable and smart structures. These ultra-thin sensors require a new generation of IPICs that can facilitate charging and keep up with the highestperforming wearable requirements.

The book presents different PMIC design architectures that will reduce power consumption and utilize energy harvesting sources to achieve efficient power management in ultra-thin wearables and near perpetual operation.

“The circuits presented in our book support voltage scaling to reduce the overall average power consumption of a wearable device, resulting in longer device operating time. The discussion includes many designs, control techniques and approaches to distribute efficiently the power among different blocks in the device,” said Dr. Kilani.

The book gathers all the ideas the team has previously published in scientific journals, along with new insights, to be a reference for both academic and industry.

The book’s chapters present the researchers’ experimental results of energy harvesting-based power management units (PMUs) using different combinations of power converters and voltage regulators.

“The results give a good guide for designers to select the appropriate option based on the device requirements,” Dr. Kilani explained.

The designed PMICs underwent verification and silicon validation, which means that the circuits were tested and successfully demonstrated on siliconbased integrated circuit prototypes manufactured at GLOBALFOUNDRIES (owned by Mubadala), proving that the chips work as designed.

85 KU TIMES

INNOVATION FORWARD

Optimizing a Country’s Natural Gas Supply Chain from Wells to Consumers

Khalifa University researchers developed a model to overcome the challenges natural gas plants face due to fluctuations in processed natural gas quality and quantities demanded by markets.

Researchers at Khalifa University have used artificial intelligence to investigate the optimal allocation of natural gas for maximum operating efficiency.

Satyadileep Dara, MSc in Chemical Engineering, and Dr. Yasser Al Wahedi, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, along with Haytham Abdulqader from the Department of Petroleum Engineering and Dr. Abdallah Berrouk, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, detailed their model using an evolutionary algorithm in a paper published this month in the journal Energy.

Natural gas is one of the most commonly used fuels and the fastest growing component of worldwide primary energy consumption.

“A key challenge faced by many governments lies in the optimal allocation of resources,” explained Dr. Al Wahedi.

“The market is experiencing dynamic changes that have to be taken into account.”

“Natural gas has always been a focal point due to its pivotal impact on the world economy,” added Dr. Berrouk. “The economies of many countries across the globe rely on gas because of its versatility across sectors.”

Gas plants are often challenged by fluctuations in processed natural gas quality and quantities demanded by markets.

Even more challenging is the rapid variation in the demand for natural gas products across the gas supply chain. To adapt a product portfolio to the changes in the market, a supply chain needs high operational flexibility.

The KU researchers developed a unified optimization model that envelops all supply chain components starting from reservoirs to the various downstream industries. The model aims to maximize the net profit of the gas network

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through optimum allocation of gas across the supply chain, which is defined as the network of suppliers, producers and consumers.

By taking into account the technical, contractual and economic aspects of a gas supply chain, the optimization exercise resulted in a large-scale model comprising 446 decision variables and 190 constraints. The researchers employed an evolutionary algorithm to solve the model and determine the optimum gas allocation matrix for a country’s gas network in any particular operating scenario.

“We focused on a large-scale gas value chain typical to the Middle East given that gas is a primary catalyst for economic growth and diversification across the region,” explained Dr. Berrouk.

“A system is grouped into three blocks: two onshore gas development blocks and one offshore. Each of these blocks comprises a number of gas reservoirs, stabilization trains

INNOVATION FORWARD

and processing plants. Their key products include sales gas, ethane, propane, butane, sulphur, naphtha and condensate.

These products are then routed to various consumer industries that include cement, power, polymers, steel, fertilizers and aluminium. Gas used for reservoir pressure maintenance is also considered.”

The natural gas supply chain network contains several combinations of gas pathways because there are many destinations for the products developed at each gas complex.

Therefore, there are multiple possibilities of allocating the gas from the wells to the stabilization facilities, and then from these facilities to NGL units. The simplest and most convenient way to allocate the gas is to base it on previous experience, informal obligations, or constraints evolved over years of operation.

“Such practices can only offer a sub-optimum allocation of gas since they do not pay any attention to overall supply chain benefits or account for the gas consumers,” said

Dr. Berrouk. “At a country level, the scope for optimization extends to identifying the most efficient gas allocation network in terms of energy consumption across the supply chain ranging from reservoirs to consumers.”

“We validated our model using real operating data from 2015, with results showing that our model predictions lie within 3 percent of the real data,” said Dr Berrouk. “Not only that, but we used our model to investigate the optimum allocation of gas across the supply chain for sixteen operating scenarios.”

The results found that a minimum 3 percent increase in aggregate supply chain net profit can be obtained using the optimized allocation matrix.

“It’s clear that a comprehensive optimization model can benefit the government for overall gas allocation and value generation.”

87 KU TIMES

INNOVATION FORWARD

Using the UAE’s Abundant Resources of Dates and Sand to Clean Industrial Wastewater A KU research team has developed a hybrid material capable of adsorbing pollutants from industrial wastewater using two natural resources of great abundance in the UAE – sand and dates.

Removing pollutants from industrial wastewater safely and affordably is a fundamental concern for governments worldwide. Now, an emerging technology is being explored by researchers at Khalifa University that aims to clean wastewater using two natural resources of great abundance in the UAE – sand and dates.

The KU research team developed a graphene-sand hybrid material capable of adsorbing pollutants, which involves attaching pollutants onto small particles that are then easily removed. While synthesizing graphene-sand adsorbents can be prohibitively expensive, the KU researchers have turned to a previously unused resource – date syrup – to provide the carbon needed to produce the graphene.

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“While other routes have been studied, using sugar, for example, as the carbon base for graphene-sand adsorbents, our project aims at utilizing locally available resources for tackling global challenges. As far as we know, we’re the first to use date syrup as a sustainable carbon source,” explained Dr. Fawzi Banat, Professor of Chemical Engineering, at Khalifa University.

Dr. Banat, along with Anjali Edathil, former Research Engineer in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Shaihroz Khan, visiting Research Assistant, described the in-situ strategy used to produce the graphene-sand hybrid with date syrup in a paper published in Scientific Reports.

Their adsorbent can be used as an environmentally benign and scalable option for decontaminating wastewater, with the adsorption capacity far surpassing that of similar reported graphene-based adsorbents.

“Water is one of the world’s most valuable resources, and only one percent of the global water supply is available for consumption and domestic use,” explained Dr. Banat. “With augmented urbanization and substantial industrialization activity, enormous amounts of hazardous chemicals are discharged into receiving waters every day. Among the emerging inorganic and organic contaminants, heavy

INNOVATION FORWARD

metals and dyes are frequently found in industrial effluents, which, if untreated, become a principal concern to the environment and public health. They are nonbiodegradable and tend to accumulate in living organisms.”

Numerous efforts have focused on developing costeffective and appropriate materials and technologies to regulate the amount of these persistent water pollutants to permissible levels before wastewater is discharged to water bodies. Different treatment technologies have been tested, including photodegradation, precipitation, coagulation, membrane separation, and ion exchange.

While all work, they suffer from drawbacks in applicability and cost-effectiveness.

Comparatively, the process of adsorption – where a solid holds molecules of a dissolved solid, liquid or gas on its surface by adhesion – is a relatively mature and versatile method for removing pollutants. Traditionally, carbon-rich materials such as charcoal, soot and biochar are used as adsorbents due to their low costs and high surface areas.

“With the advent of nanotechnology, researchers have explored the use of carbon nanomaterials for water purification, with the hope that it may open new fruitful pathways to curb the existing water shortage,” explained Dr. Banat.

“Graphene has attracted tremendous research interest.

Its unique physiochemical and mechanical properties have led to its potential as a revolutionary adsorbent for environmental pollutant management. However, a key barrier in the practicality of pristine graphene nanosheets for water purification is its high cost and post-treatment handling, including recovery after the decontamination process.”

Graphene is a novel 2D, one-atom-thick nanomaterial made of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure.

In many cases, such as this one, graphene is organized into sheets a few layers thick rather than existing as a single monolayer. Regardless of organization, however, graphene’s high surface area, combined with its versatile chemistry and highly hydrophobic surface, makes it an ideal adsorbent for removing pollutants. The natural defects and ‘wrinkles’ on its surface act as high-surfaceenergy adsorption sites for organic pollutants. However, graphene aggregates heavily in water due to the strong forces between the graphene layers.

“To overcome these issues, we can anchor the nanosheets onto an economical and reliable inorganic substrate such as sand,” explained Dr. Banat. “Graphene-sand hybrids not only allow the full expression of the graphene adsorption sites but also ensure dispersibility and easy separation from water.”

Dr. Banat’s research proposes a single-step strategy to develop efficient and eco-friendly graphene sand hybrids using date syrup, a widely available and sustainable carbon source in the Middle East.

Different carbon sources are available in different parts of the world, with several synthetic routes already reported for the preparation of graphene-sand hybrids from sugar, palm sugar, gelatin and asphalt.

Dr. Banat’s team used pyrolysis – the process of chemically decomposing organic materials at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen – to decompose the date syrup, triggering a change of chemical composition and the synthesis of a large volume of graphene material, that subsequently attaches to desert sand without the use of any external chemical agents.

“It is believed that during pyrolysis, the naturally abundant sucrose and fructose molecules in the date syrup undergo complete exfoliation to form graphene nanosheets on the desert sand surface, thereby exposing the powerful adsorption sites concealed in the stacked graphene,” said Dr. Banat.

Dr. Banat’s graphene-sand hybrid adsorbent was tested in the laboratory and showed remarkable efficiency in simultaneously removing both dye and heavy metals from multicomponent systems. The researchers concluded that their adsorbent had great potential as an exceptional material resource of water purification.

“This will undoubtedly open new avenues for the practicability of graphene to curb the existing water shortage,” added Dr. Banat. “We hope our material will help in increasing water resources in the UAE, reducing energy consumption in wastewater treatment processes and be used to convert oily wastewaters from waste to commodity than can be used in applications such as industrial recycling and agriculture.”

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Detecting Asteroids Before They Hit Earth

Khalifa University Researchers Advance Algorithms to Quickly and Accurately Calculate the Minimal Orbital Intersection Distance of Near-Earth Objects Far from merely a subgenre of science and disaster fiction, how to detect large asteroids that may collide with Earth is a real field of study and concern. A sufficiently large impact by an asteroid could cause massive tsunamis, multiple firestorms and an impact winter from dust and other debris in the stratosphere blocking sunlight, such as the collision 66 million years ago thought to have caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, widely held responsible for the extinction of most dinosaurs.

According to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), efforts to deflect a large object on a collision course with Earth would require at least five years of preparation.

Khalifa University’s Dr. Elena Fantino, Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering, recently published an article in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics to add to the body of research on asteroid impact avoidance. Her paper contributes two new computations to aid in determining the ‘minimum orbital intersection distance’, or MOID, of nearEarth objects in space quickly and accurately. The MOID is KU TIMES 90

the first measure of how close to Earth an asteroid could come before an impact may occur.

A potentially hazardous object (PHO) is a near-Earth object—either an asteroid or a comet—with an orbit that can make close approaches to the Earth and large enough to cause significant regional damage in the event of impact.

A PHO can be determined as non-threatening to Earth for the next 100 years or more, if its orbit is reasonably well determined.

In astronomy, the MOID is defined as the distance between the closest points of the osculating orbits of two bodies and is of greatest interest when it comes to assessing the risk of a collision with Earth.

One of the orbits is considered the reference or primary orbit, and any orbit facing the primary is called a secondary orbit. Since the sets of secondaries—and therefore the number of objects that may collide with the primary orbit—are usually large, MOID can be used as a pre-filter to discard those that don’t pose a risk in the immediate future.

“The minimum orbital intersection distance is used as a measure to assess potential close approaches and

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collision risks between astronomical objects. Fast MOID computation is in high demand but accuracy is also a key issue,” said Dr. Fantino. “Many methods for computing the MOID have been published over the past seven decades, and the majority are approximate numerical methods.

However, more recently, algebraic approaches have been established and some hybrid methods have appeared, including the SDG-MOID method.”

The SDG-MOID method was developed by the Space Dynamics Group (SDG) at the Technical University of Madrid and is a fast and accurate numerical method based on two algorithms. The first determines the distance between a point and an ellipse in three-dimensional space, and the second calculates the minimum distance between two confocal ellipses. Dr. Fantino’s research builds on this method by including asymptotic expansions for the computation of the in-plane distance component in the first algorithm of the SDG-MOID method.

“We tested these asymptotic procedures to assess the gain in computing speed, the corresponding accuracy loss, and the benefits of their introduction,” explained Dr. Fantino.

“We are also looking at improving the second algorithm of the SDG-MOID method, aiming to preserve accuracy.”

Dr. Fantino’s approach saw a 40 percent reduction in computing time without degrading the accuracy of the determinations. Such a remarkable result means this method is the ideal choice for all applications in which a fast and accurate MOID computation is required.

Computing the MOID is an old but increasingly relevant problem. While the chances of a major collision of a nearEarth object with the planet are low in the near term, it is almost inevitable that one will happen eventually.

Astronomical events such as the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor and the growing number of objects on the Sentry Risk Table (an automated impact prediction system operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 2002) have drawn renewed attention to such threats.

“The problem of computing the MOID is as old as Kepler’s laws,” explained Dr. Fantino. “However, the need for a quick and accurate solution has increased as its role in several branches of Celestial Mechanics and Astrodynamics has become more and more prominent. Nowadays, the MOID is

used primarily to discard objects from large space debris as collision risk to spacecraft, and to predict possible close encounters of asteroids and comets with planets, mainly Earth, Mars, and Jupiter.”

The MOID between an asteroid and Earth is one of the most important parameters when assessing impact risk.

However, a low MOID does not mean that a collision is inevitable as the planets in the Solar System frequently perturb the orbit of small bodies.

“Calculating the MOID involves two Keplerian orbits, represented by their classical orbital elements,” said Dr. Fantino. “The orbital elements change over time due to perturbations.”

Perturbation is the complex motion of a massive body subject to forces other than the gravitational attraction of a single other massive body—such as the effects of the Sun on the Earth’s Moon. Other forces could include a third (fourth or fifth, etc.) body, resistance from an atmosphere, or the off-center attraction of an oblate or otherwise misshapen body. In the Solar System, the orbits of many of the minor bodies, such as comets, are often heavily perturbed, particularly by the gravitational fields of the gas giants. Perturbations can alter orbits over time: in 25,000 years, Earth will have a more circular orbit than Venus, which is currently the orbit with the least eccentricity, meaning, it is the closest to circular of all the planetary orbits.

“Due to the time evolution of the orbital elements, the MOID itself is a function of time,” added Dr. Fantino. “Thus, understanding the evolution of the MOID over long time frames is important for impact risk assessment. For asteroids, such MOID monitoring allows us to better assess the risk of a possible impact with Earth.”

Once the MOID has been established, it can be quickly determined whether an object poses a risk and whether it merits more sophisticated investigation. The faster an object can be assessed, the faster a response could be initiated in the case of impact with Earth. The MOID can also be used to identify near-Earth objects coming close to perturbing planets, which could change their orbits significantly, and manage growing catalogues of space debris.

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KU Postdoc and 2017 Masdar Institute PhD graduate, Dr. Aamna Al Shehhi, has spent the last two years pursuing her postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, where she is applying data analytics for drug repositioning and early detection of serious diseases.

She is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning to screen drugs that can delay dementia and spot early-stage tumors in two separate research projects with leading researchers at MIT, Harvard, Imperial College London, and Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research.

Data for Good: A KU Postdoctoral Fellow’s Journey at MIT to Impact the Healthcare Sector Through Data Analytics

Dr. Al Shehhi is an Emirati PhD graduate who was accepted into KU’s new postdoctoral study abroad program, which funds qualified PhD graduates to pursue their postdoctoral fellowships abroad.

The aim of the program is to prepare and equip Emirati PhDs with the skills and know-how to become highly qualified faculty at Khalifa University.

In the first project, Dr. Al Shehhi is screening a range of drugs to identify those that could potentially be used to delay the onset of dementia in patients with diabetes.

“Dementia is an insidious, progressive, and degenerative neurodegenerative diseases. It destroys normal brain functionality, such as memory access and decision making, because of the overabundance of tau neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid-beta plaques in the brain,” Dr. Al Shehhi explained.

Patients with diabetes are particularly prone to developing dementia since diabetes is associated with increased dementia risk by

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60 percent. Unfortunately, there is a high rate of failure in dementia drug development, with drug candidates having a 99 percent failure rate.

This high failure rate has motivated researchers like Dr. Al Shehhi to use a data-driven approach to investigate the potential of repurposing ‘old’ drugs that show promise as medicines that could delay the onset of cognitive impairment in the diabetic population.

She is using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) – an electronic health records database in the UK – to screen different drugs to identify the ones that can be repurposed to delay dementia’s risk and its progression in the patients with diabetes.

In her second project, Dr. AlShehhi is working with researchers from the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research to build models programmed with Machine Learning and Deep Learning algorithms that can detect early-stage cancer.

“Because no single biomarker, or layer of genomic data, can provide the whole information necessary to detect and predict the behavior of tumors, our model uses multi-level genomic information obtained from sequencing of plasma samples,” Dr. Al Shehhi explained.

The model is programmed to identify the presence of cell-free circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), which is DNA that is released from cancerous cells and tumors into the blood when they die. “ctDNA can provide a general portrait of the tumor, monitor tumor response to therapy and discover early resistance mutations,” Dr. Al Shehhi said.

For the early-stage cancer, it is challenging to distinguish tumor mutations (ctDNA) from a

healthy individual’s own DNA mutations. For this reason, the team is focusing on increasing model sensitivity and specificity at this stage. “Being able to distinguish between the ctDNA produced by early-stage tumors, and the cell-free DNA (cfDNA) produced by white blood cells is critical to be able to develop interventions, and improve cancer management and patient treatment.”

Dr. Al Shehhi says that her experience as a PhD student at Masdar Institute prepared her for a postdoctoral fellowship at one of the world’s leading universities.

Her MIT fellowship has enriched her academic and research capabilities and increased her selfconfidence. She served as a teaching assistant for a graduate-level course at MIT and delivered several lectures about Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. She hopes to get the opportunity to make pedagogical changes in existing courses at KU, to reflect MIT’s methods.

She also learned first-hand the importance of collaboration in research.

“Being a part of a multi-disciplinary team of medical doctors, bioinformatics, statisticians, and computer scientists helps me to recognize the value of tackling the problems from various perspectives,” Dr. AlShehhi shared.

“I am proud to be the first Emirati postdoctoral accepted at MIT for two years. The experience has enhanced my academic capabilities and has greatly enriched and expanded my current knowledge. I hope to put the knowledge and skills I’ve gained over the years to use and give back to the UAE by contributing to the development of new innovations and the next generation of highly qualified engineers and researchers.”

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Understanding the Dynamics of an Orbit

In the 1600s, Johannes Kepler proposed an elegant model for planetary motions—all planets move in elliptical orbits. Each orbit is the result of the gravitational attraction exerted by another body on an object in motion.

“If you drop an object from a certain height, it will fall towards the center of the earth starting from zero velocity, and it will acquire speed as a result of the gravitational acceleration,” explained Dr. Elena Fantino, Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Khalifa University. “If you give that same object enough velocity in a ‘forwards direction’ instead, it will fly in a circular orbit around the center of the earth. The speed that the object has, determines the type of orbit that it will follow.”

However, over time, orbits will degrade. Dr. Fantino has published an article in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics investigating the formulae and equations used to determine changes in orbits.

Predicting the orbit of various astronomical objects seen from Earth is crucial to various modern day applications, especially traditional celestial navigation, which is still used as a backup to the Global Positioning System, or GPS. Orbital elements change over time due to perturbations, where an orbit is subject to forces other than the gravitational attraction of a single other massive body. The Moon’s orbit around the Earth, for example, is affected by the gravitational force of the Sun. Other forces can include a third body or resistance from an atmosphere.

In celestial mechanics, a Keplerian orbit is the motion of one body relative to another; it only considers the gravitational attraction of two bodies and in most applications, there is a large central body and a smaller body in orbit around it. The Sun and its orbiting planets of our Solar System form Keplerian orbits.

For most applications, Keplerian motion approximates the motions of planets and satellites to relatively high degrees of accuracy, but the two objects in a Keplerian orbit are not alone.

Gravitational forces from other objects can cause perturbations to an orbit.

In astronomy and celestial navigation, the trajectory of naturally occurring astronomical objects in the sky is given as an ‘ephemeris’. An ephemeris is a piece of information that allows users to calculate the positions of planets and their satellites, asteroids, or comets at virtually any time. They cover past positions and future, generated through several accurate observations and theories arising from celestial mechanics. But

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uncertainty remains, the greatest of which are caused by unmodelled perturbations.

“Perturbed Keplerian motion is a multi-scale problem, where orbital elements evolve slowly when compared to the change of time of ephemeris, whose fast evolution is determined by the rate of variation of the mean anomaly,” explained Dr. Fantino.

“Keplerian orbits are commonly represented by sets of so-called orbital elements, a collection of six geometrical parameters which fully and unambiguously define an orbit. These six parameters are constants of motion; in other words, they do not change with time. When a perturbation is acting, the orbital elements change and these changes express the evolution of the orbit. The way in which the orbital elements change depends on the characteristics of the perturbation. These rates or modes of variation can differ considerably and, in particular, astrodynamicists classify the variations as slow or fast. Many effects can be understood and analyzed by isolating the slowly-varying terms and neglecting the rapidly varying components (which typically are the angles, like the mean anomaly), in this way saving computing time. This separation can be accomplished by analytical theories and not by numerical techniques, such as the Cowell method, which is just numerical integration

of the equations of motion of an object, perturbations included. Numerical techniques simply approximate numerically the solution of the whole set of differential equations (acceleration equals the sum of all terms that generate it) and cannot separate, discard or isolate terms.”

Dr. Fantino proposed an analytical theory to isolate or consider the slowly-varying part of the third-body perturbation and remove the fast component.

“Usual integration schemes that look for the separation of fast and slow frequencies of motion may be superior to the simpler integration done with the Cowell method,” said Dr. Fantino. “The description of the long-term dynamics of highly elliptic orbits under third-body perturbations may require an expansion of the disturbing function in series of the semi-major axes ratio up to higher orders.”

Vectorial formulation has proved useful in the case of thirdbody perturbations and may be an efficient alternative to classical formulations when orbits are highly elliptic, such as in extrasolar planetary systems, artificial satellite theory, and in hierarchical n-body systems in general.

“When approximating the long-term dynamics of a system under third-body perturbations, the vectorial approach is much more simple compared with classical expansions based in trigonometric terms,” explained Dr. Fantino.

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Khalifa University’s Novel MEMS Gyroscope and Magnetometer to Help AVs Navigate Rocky Terrain in

TO HELP VEHICLES NAVIGATE THEIR WAY AROUND THE SOLAR SYSTEM, DR. DANIEL CHOI IS LEADING A TEAM TO DEVELOP A NOVEL MICRO-ELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEM GYROSCOPE AND MAGNETOMETER FOR A MINIATURIZED SPACE ATTITUDE CONTROL SYSTEM

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Rough terrain is tricky for anybody to navigate let alone an autonomous vehicle. A human walking across a rough terrain can instinctively adjust movements to stay upright; robots lack this instinctive balance. More than simply staying upright, an unmanned vehicle on a farflung planet would need to keep its antenna accurately pointed towards Earth for communications; keep its data-collecting instruments precisely pointed for accurate onboard experiments and interpretation; and optimize heating and cooling effects of shadow and sunlight for thermal control.

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To help vehicles navigate their way around the solar system, Dr. Daniel Choi, principal investigator and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Dr. Ibrahim Elfadel co-investigator and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Khalifa University, are leading a team comprising Dr. Ru Li, Eng. Dima Ali and graduate student, Muneera Al-shaibah, to develop a novel micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscope and magnetometer for a miniaturized space attitude control system.

space altitude control systems.”

Attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of an vehicle with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity, such as the celestial sphere. In aviation, this is traditionally the Earth’s horizon.

Controlling vehicle attitude requires sensors to measure vehicle orientation, actuators to apply the torques needed to orient the vehicle to a desired attitude, and algorithms to command the actuators based on sensor measurements and specification of the desired attitude.

An unmanned ground or aerial vehicle needs a robust and reliable system in place to keep it functional once it has left terra firma on Earth. If the robot should need help stabilizing on rocky ground, a planetary mission would be hampered by the communications delay imposed by the enormous distance between earth and space-faring robots. Even at its maximum speed of 5.2 megabits per second (Mbps), message from the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter (MRO) a single high-resolution image takes 90 minutes to be sent back to Earth. If a UGV had to wait for this information every time it encountered a large rock it wasn’t sure how to navigate, it would take an inordinate amount of time for any mission to be completed.

Gyroscopes are devices that measure or maintain rotational motion. When things rotate around an axis, they have angular velocity which is measured in degrees per second or revolutions per second. Angular velocity is simply a measurement of the speed of rotation. MEMS gyroscopes are small, inexpensive sensors that measure this angular velocity. They are found in most autonomous navigation systems: balancing a robot can involve a gyroscope measuring rotation from a balanced position and sending corrections to a motor.

Much of the communication difficulty could be solved if the technology sent into space were autonomous, with the necessary tools designed by teams like the one led by Dr. Choi at Khalifa University.

“This research project is the first to be sponsored by the UAE Space Agency since the agency was established in 2014,” said Dr. Choi. “We started this project in December 2017, aiming to design, fabricate, and characterize a MEMS gyroscope and magnetometer to be used in inertial measurement units (IMU) of

MEMS gyroscopes are used in automotive roll-over prevention and image stabilization as well as many other applications.

One key process in designing a system pertaining to attitude control is the mathematical modelling of the vehicle dynamics and environmental influences.

Everything is tested and analyzed under simulated space conditions.

A MEMS gyroscope device includes a vibrating structure which determines the rate of rotation. When the gyroscope is rotated, a small resonating mass is shifted as the angular velocity changes.

This movement is converted into very low-current electrical signals that

can be amplified and read by a host microcontroller to control a ship’s attitude.

“Our team was able to fully characterize the MEMS gyroscope device by finding its resonance frequency, or frequency of maximum oscillation amplitude,” explained Dr. Choi. “Before testing, intensive simulations were done to find the resonance frequency. This involved actuating the proof or test mass of the device by applying the optimum amount of direct current.”

The simulations showed a frequency at which the gyroscope shows a resonant peak of 47.7 KHz, while testing showed a value of 46.6 KHz. With a percentage error of just 2.2 percent, the team concluded they had successfully tested their design.

“In addition to the MEMS gyroscope, the team has also been testing the MEMS magnetometer,” said Dr. Choi. “The design has been successfully tested for static capacitance and resonance frequency in both ambient and vacuum conditions.”

A magnetometer is a device that measures magnetism—the direction, strength, or relative change of a magnetic field at a particular location.

In an aircraft’s attitude and heading reference system, they are commonly used as a heading reference. As magnetometers are miniaturized to be incorporated in integrated circuits, they are finding increasing use as miniaturized compasses. In a MEMS magnetometer, a change in voltage or resonant frequency can be measured electronically.

“We have confidence in our circuit and designs and are currently working on improving and optimizing them for operations,” said Dr. Choi. “The next step is to design and fabricate applicationspecific integrated circuits (ASIC) for implementing these devices in upcoming space missions.”

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Khalifa University Researchers Use Synthesized Nanoparticles to Protect the Environment from Persistent Pollutants in Wastewater

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TO AID IN THE TREATMENT OF WASTEWATER, RESEARCHERS FROM KHALIFA UNIVERSITY HAVE SYNTHESIZED A NANOSTRUCTURED METAL OXIDE MATERIAL TO KICKSTART A REACTION AIMED AT REMOVING PHENOL FROM WASTEWATER

Industrial wastewater is an undesirable by-product of various industrial processes and needs to be treated and cleaned before it can be reused or disposed of to prevent any environmental detrimental impact. Many pollutants can be very difficult to treat.

To aid in the treatment of wastewater, Dr. Mohammad Abu Haija, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and Dr. Fawzi Banat, Chair of Chemical Engineering, have synthesized a nanostructured metal oxide material to kickstart a reaction to remove phenol from wastewater. They described their catalyst in a paper recently published in the journal Applied Catalysis B: Environmental.

“The wastewater typically produced during industrial processes contains organic and inorganic pollutants that are environmentally persistent and cannot be removed by conventional methods,” explained Dr. Banat. “Some of these pollutants are dyes, pesticides and organic solvents which may contain aromatic compounds, cyanides, ammonia, sulphides, and phenols.”

Phenol is a persistent organic pollutant that is commonly used in agriculture and in general disinfection.

“Phenol’s poor biodegradability demands a tertiary treatment as the conventional primary and secondary processes, like membrane technology and electrochemical processes, are not efficient at dealing with phenol in wastewater,” said Dr. Haija.

Recent studies have indicated an increase in the prospect of advanced oxidation processes focused

on peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation as an effective treatment method, owing to its pH flexibility, redox potential and great oxidation ability.

“The use of PMS as an oxidant has attracted a lot of attention due to the different reactive oxygen species produced during its activation process,” explained Dr. Haija.

However, PMS alone is not enough to take care of the phenol in wastewater. It needs a catalyst to get the degradation reaction started.

Activation via metal oxide catalysts has drawn much attention as they are reusable, easy to recover, and reduce the need for chemical reagents. Even though the naturally abundant transition metals show high activation of PMS, their high solubility and toxicity make them somewhat unfavorable for use in wastewater treatment and other environmentally focused applications.

Metal oxides with vanadate (a salt containing both vanadium, a transition metal, and oxygen) are environmentally abundant oxides, with remarkable physical and chemical properties which enable their application in batteries, semiconductors, and catalysis.

Combining vanadate with rare earth metals such as cerium, lanthanum and praseodymium shows a great enhancement in their electrochemical properties, thermal stability, surface area and magnetic properties.

Cerium vanadate (CeVO4) is naturally occurring and can also be prepared using simple methods in the laboratory.

“Due to its optical, electrical, magnetic and catalytic properties, CeVO4 is often used as a catalyst, with several reports about its efficiency at degrading organic pollutants, such as organic dyes and for the oxidative dehydrogenation of propane,” explained Dr. Banat.

The research team at KU prepared CeVO4 nanoparticles using a simple ‘one-pot’ co-precipitation method. The prepared nanoparticles were scrutinized for their stability and purity and were found to exhibit good crystallinity and display a rod-like structure. The lab-derived CeVO4 replicated naturally occurring cerium vanadate.

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Emirates Nuclear Technology Center Project Adds to the Safety of Nuclear Power Plants STRESS CORROSION CRACKING OF STAINLESS STEELS IN THE PRIMARY WATER OF PRESSURIZED WATER REACTORS IS ONE ISSUE THREATENING THE SAFETY OF A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT. TO IMPROVE SAFETY, RESEARCHERS FROM KHALIFA UNIVERSITY’S NUCLEAR ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT ARE INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF THE CARBIDES PRODUCED WHEN HEAT-TREATING STEEL.

Pyungyeon Cho, Research Assistant in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, has developed a project to investigate the main role of the carbides (carbon-metal alloys) produced when stainless steel and nickel-based alloys are heat-treated.

Nuclear power plants use stainless steels in the various structures of the reactor for robustness, but the environment in a nuclear reactor is uniquely stressful.

Materials subjected to reactor conditions for long periods of time begin to corrode and crack. Cho’s project is expected to show how the carbides produced at the boundary between the particles in the steels act during stress corrosion cracking in one area of the reactor.

“The stress corrosion cracking of austenitic stainless steels and Ni-based alloys in the primary water of pressurized water reactors is one issue threatening the safety of a nuclear power plant,” explained Cho. “A number of studies have been performed on the primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC) of austenitic stainless steels and Ni-based alloys, and several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the observations. However, the exact mechanism remains open to debate.”

Cho’s project sets out to verify the role of the grain boundary carbides in PWSCC. To isolate one factor leading to carbide formation and chromium depletion, stainless steel 347 is used and nickel-based carbides are precipitated without chromium depletion. In the first stage, optimized heat treatment conditions are determined and in the second stage, PWSCC tests are performed. After these tests, microstructures and crack morphology are examined.

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All thermal reactor designs require the fast fission neutrons to be slowed down to interact with the nuclear fuel and sustain a chain reaction. Pressurized water reactors (PWRs) use ordinary water as a coolant and neutron moderator (a medium to reduce the speed of fast neutrons), leaving them as thermal neutrons with only minimal kinetic energy. PWRs are by far the most common type of reactor in use today. Kept under high pressure and not allowed to boil, the primary water (the water in contact with the uranium fuel) passes through a heat exchanger, where it transfers its heat to a second loop of water at a lower pressure. This secondary water transforms into steam used to spin turbines that produce electricity.

The secondary water is not in contact with radioactive elements and can be recycled after having been condensed. The plume of steam escaping from the tower of a nuclear power plant comes from a third loop of tertiary water that cools the condenser. PWRs are among the cleanest of the nuclear power reactors, as a radioactive product would need to make its way through the zircaloy shell of the fuel rod, into the primary water, into the secondary water, and then into the tertiary water.

The safety provided by these multiple barriers comes at the additional cost of build complexity.

The structure around the reactor and associated steam generators is designed to protect it from outside intrusion and to produce those outside from the effects of radiation in case of any serious malfunction inside. Typically, this is a metre-thick concrete and steel structure.

“Austenitic stainless steels and nickel-based alloys have been widely used in PWR primary coolant systems, such as reactor internals, steam generator tubing, reactor pressure vessel inlet and outlet nozzles and so on, because these alloys satisfy the requirements for primary side components,” explained Cho. “However, stress corrosion cracking on Ni-based alloys and their welds in primary water conditions has been observed since the 70s. Since 1997, we’ve even had reports of cases of intergranular stress corrosion cracking on cold-worked austenitic stainless steels in primary water conditions.”

Primary water conditions are characterized by their high temperature, high pressure, low dissolved oxygen, added hydrogen, and other additives such as boric acid and lithium hydroxide. Boron and cadmium control rods are used to maintain primary system temperatures at the

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desired point and an operator can control the steady state operating temperature by adding boric acid.

The high temperature water coolant with boric acid dissolved in it is corrosive to carbon steel, which limits the lifetime of the reactor and the systems that filter out the corrosion products. However, stainless steel should not be affected.

“PWSCC is influenced by a number of factors: chemical compositions (carbon, nickel, chromium), grain size and grain boundary orientation, carbide precipitation, cold-work, stress, temperature, pH, and hydrogen partial pressure, among others. Studies show some unique features of cracking behaviour, for example, the cracking of the alloys in the primary side is almost intergranular, and cold-work enhances the susceptibility of alloys to PWSCC.” A grain boundary is the interface between two grains, or crystallites, in a polycrystalline material. They are 2D defects in the crystal structure, and tend to decrease the electrical and thermal conductivity of the material.

It has been observed that PWSCC is suppressed by the microstructural changes in both austenitic stainless steels and Ni-based alloys after sensitization heat treatment, but it is unclear how this happens. Cho theorized that the carbides precipitated by this treatment play a main role in the microstructural changes of the stainless steel.

“When both the alloys are heat-treated at a temperature range of 450 to 850 C for sufficient time, chromium-rich carbides are precipitated at grain boundaries, leading to the depletion of chromium along the grain boundaries,” explained Cho. “Since carbide formation is always accompanied by chromium depletion, it is not easy to identify which one plays the main role in PWSCC.” So far, the first stage has been completed and the second stage is underway. It is expected that the results from the second stage and the analysis thereafter will provide key evidence for the role of carbides in primary water stress corrosion cracking, with the research contributing to the safety of this industry.

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AI Applications in Rain Enhancement and Meteorology

Weather significantly impacts society for better and for worse, and improving our ability to forecast and predict weather events is crucial for myriad reasons. An increased notice period for a hurricane could improve safety measures for people at risk, while improved solar predictions can help optimize renewable power production.

Applying artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in conjunction with our physical understanding of the environment can substantially improve prediction of extreme weather events, like hurricanes, and unlock important insights from the climate data that is collected. “Artificial intelligence and related data science methods have been developed to work with big data across a variety of disciplines,� explained Dr. Ernesto Damiani, Senior Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems Institute at Khalifa University.

AI techniques can handle large numbers of predictor variables, integrate physical understanding into models

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efficiently, and discover new knowledge from data, contributing to improved weather predictions and a better understanding of many weather-related phenomena.

“Weather forecasting is the task of predicting the state of the atmosphere at a future time and a specified location,” explained Dr. Damiani. “Traditionally, this is done through physical simulations where the atmosphere is modelled as a fluid. The present state of the atmosphere is sampled and the future state is computed by numerically solving the equations of fluid dynamics at different resolutions: micro-, meso-, and macro-scale.”

In addition to using such physics-based model, in recent years forecasters and researchers have begun to adopt AI techniques much more widely, as they demonstrate their power in a wide variety of applications, including post-model bias correction, processing large datasets, reducing cognitive overload, and unlocking new insights in large datasets.

“The system of ordinary differential equations that govern physics-based models can be unstable under perturbations, and uncertainty in the initial measurements of the atmospheric conditions limit accuracy,” explained Dr. Damiani. “Machine learning is relatively robust to perturbations and does not require a complete understanding of the underlying physical processes that govern the atmosphere. Therefore, machine learning may represent a viable alternative to physical models in weather forecasting.”

While many research groups worldwide have focused on deep learning models, researchers at Khalifa University

Initiated in the late 1990s in the UAE, cloud seeding has become a regular occurrence in recent years, with an average of between 160 and 200 flights per year. The UAE has an arid climate with less than 100mm per year of rainfall, a high evaporation rate of surface water, and a low groundwater recharge rate. Although rainfall in the UAE has been fluctuating over the last few decades in the winter season, most occurs between December and March annually.

The UAE has embraced rain enhancement as an important tool in its arsenal to support the country’s water security efforts. Among the country’s key goals are advancing the science, technology and implementation of rain enhancement, encouraging additional investments in research funding, increasing rainfall, and ensuring water security. Forecasters and scientists have estimated that cloud seeding operations can enhance rainfall by as much as 35 percent in a clear atmosphere, and by up to 15 percent in a turbid atmosphere.

The UAE’s National Center for Meteorology commences cloud seeding drills as soon as meteorologists forecast cloudy weather. To optimize the deployment of the limited budget of the seeding material, these forecasts need to be as accurate as possible, which is where AI can step in.

Many techniques can be applied to improve their forecasting ability, including artificial neural networks (ANNs) – interconnected networks of weighted nonlinear functions that can be connected and trained in multiple layers. ANNs provide the foundation for deep learning methods and have been used in a wide variety of meteorology applications since the late 1980s, including cloud classification and precipitation classification.

have been focusing on a multi-view approach, where related groups of sensor data sources provide different views on the phenomenon, to be later compiled into a final classification or prediction stage.

Accurate forecasting is particularly crucial for the UAE’s cloud seeding operations.

Applying modern AI techniques to weather forecasting is improving our ability to sift through the deluge of big data to extract insights and accurate, timely guidance for human weather forecasters and decision-makers, and is playing an indispensable role in the UAE’s efforts to achieve greater water security.

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The highly-ranked Khalifa University offers fully accredited degrees to all nationalities through its 3 academic colleges, 13 bachelor’s, 16 master’s and 2 PhD programs, The highly-ranked Khalifa University offers fully accredited all nationalities offering plenty of opportunities for students to explore theirdegrees intereststoand learn from through its 3 academic colleges, 13 bachelor’s, 16 master’s and 2 PhD programs, award-winning teachers. offering plenty of opportunities for students to explore their interests and learn from award-winning teachers.

As Abu Dhabi’s research-intensive university, Khalifa University gives students a chance to study in-depth with expert faculty and researchers on the leading-edge of As Abu Dhabi’s research-intensive university, Khalifa University gives students Our a discovery in science, engineering, and medicine to solve real-world problems. chance study in-depth with expert andways researchers on water the leading-edge studentstohelp develop cleaner energy,faculty find new to produce sustainably,of discovery in science, engineering, and medicine to solve real-world problems.

Our create smarter diagnostic tools, and discover better ways to use AI to make data students help develop cleaner energy, find new ways to produce water sustainably, insightful. create smarter diagnostic tools, and discover better ways to use AI to make data insightful.

Study beside our award-winning faculty and help deliver real solutions, transform lives, and change the world.

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