Issue 4 I Dec 2019
Congratulation to the Fall Class of 2019!
SUMMARIZING ARABIC TEXT WITH AI FIRST EMIRATI ASTRONAUT RECEIVES HONORARY DOCTORATE DEGREE FROM KU
KU STUDENT COUNCIL PRESIDENT ELECTED
HOW SELF-DRIVING CARS ARE LEARNING TO PLAN UNDER UNCERTAINTY
RECREMA TECHNOLOGY DRIVING RENEWABLE ENERGY PRODUCTION IN SAUDI ARABIA
Dr. Majid Khonji, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, presents his research on autonomous vehicles at the IJCAI in Macao, China
Latest tool from Center to help electric grid operators in Saudi Arabia integrate solar energy into the national grid smoothly and reliably KU TIMES
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ABOUT KU TIMES KU TIMES IS A MONTHLY NEWSLETTER PUBLISHED BY THE KHALIFA UNIVERSITY MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT. IT AIMS TO KEEP OUR STAKEHOLDERS INFORMED AND UPDATED ABOUT KHALIFA UNIVERSITY’S LATEST BREAKTHROUGHS, CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH, COLLABORATIONS, INITIATIVES, STUDENT ACTIVITIES AND NEWS. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SUBMIT AN IDEA FOR AN ARTICLE, NOMINATE STUDENTS OR OTHERS TO BE INTERVIEWED, PROVIDE SUGGESTIONS ON TOPICS YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ ABOUT, OR SIMPLY WANT TO LEAVE A COMMENT, PLEASE EMAIL US AT COMMUNICATIONS@ KU.AC.AE.
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HALCON SYSTEMS HONORED FOR INVESTING IN KU STUDENTS’ SUCCESS
KHALIFA UNIVERSITY SHOWCASED SOME OF ITS INNOVATIVE PROJECTS IN THE FIELDS OF AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES, INDUSTRIALIZED ROBOTS, AND SPACE AND SATELLITE TECHNOLOGIES AT GITEX 2019 GITEX Technology Week is the biggest tech show in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. It attracted over 100,000 visitors, with over 4,500 exhibitors highlighting the evolution of the world of robotics, and the latest innovations from flying cars to talking robots.
MSc Student Presents Pitch at the UN Youth Climate Summit in NYC
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Defense technology firm Halcon Systems was recognized at a ceremony on Tuesday, 8 October, by Khalifa University senior management, faculty and students, for their dedication and commitment to KU students.
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Student and faculty, achievements, campus activities, & student activities
HH Sheikh Theyab Bin Mohamed Bin Zayed Witnesses Khalifa University’s Class of 2019 Graduation Ceremony A Total of 408 Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD Graduates Receive Degrees Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, His Highness Sheikh Theyab Bin Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Member of Abu Dhabi Executive Council and Chairman of Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince’s Court, today attended the graduation ceremony of Khalifa University of Science
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and Technology’s Class of 2019, which included 408 Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD students. In addition, four graduates from the Fall 2018 semester also received their degrees during the ceremony. The ceremony at Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi was also attended by His Excellency Eng. Hussain bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, UAE Minister of Education and
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Vice-Chairman of the Khalifa University Board of Trustees, and His Excellency Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of State, Group Chief Executive Officer, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Chairman, Masdar. Other members of Khalifa University Board of Trustees present at the ceremony included HE Ali Rashid Qanas Al Ketbi, Chairman of the Department of Government Support and Acting Director, Human Resources, Abu Dhabi Government, HE Abdulmunim Al Kindy, Director, Exploration, Development and Production Directorate, ADNOC, and HE Abdulaziz Abdulla Alhajri, Director, Refining and Petrochemicals Directorate, ADNOC. In addition, HE Saif Mohamed Alhajeri, Chairman of the Department of Economic Development and Member of Abu Dhabi Executive Council, H.E. Falah Mohammad Al Ahbabi, Chairman of the Department of Urban Planning and Municipalities, and H.E. Eng. Awaidha Murshed Al Marar, Chairman of the Department of Energy and Member of the Executive Council, were present at the ceremony. Members of the University’s faculty and staff, the graduates and members of their families also attended the event. The ceremony celebrated graduation of a total of 408 students, 20 of which were PhD students, 87 Master’s and 301 Bachelors of Science, Engineering and Art programs. During the ceremony, His Highness Sheikh Theyab conferred the degrees, congratulating the students on their graduation and wishing them success for the future. His Highness Shaikh Theyab stressed that the wise directives of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, and the support of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, have helped Khalifa University achieve prestigious ranking both regionally and internationally through its distinguished academic programs and advanced research projects. He also pointed out that efforts towards achieving future milestones would further cement the University’s position among the top institutions in the world. In his speech, Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice President, Khalifa University, expressed his gratitude to His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan for his wise and visionary leadership, and His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for his role in ushering in a transformative leap not only in Khalifa University but also in the country’s academic and research sectors in general.
Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi said: “Khalifa University
today has achieved significant milestones including 126 issued patents, with 343 pending patent applications and more than 400 invention disclosures. Such a remarkable intellectual capital output in scientific fields reflects not only the steady progress the university has made in the recent years, but also the commitment of our faculty and students in obtaining new solutions in key technology sectors that are vital to the UAE’s economic transformation.” Dr. Al Hammadi added: “As we move up in our contributions to the IP ecosystem, we are also exploring and widening the scope of our international collaborations, especially in Asia and Europe. Researchers at Khalifa University have published about 70% of the total papers in the most important 25% of scientific journals internationally. This in return has contributed to the leading status of Khalifa University as top in the UAE, while being included in the prestigious Shanghai-based Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). He concluded: “I offer my congratulations to the cohort of Class of 2019 graduates. With their newly acquired knowledge and expertise, I believe they will play a truly critical role, contributing to the economic progress of the UAE, as well as in regions across the world.” His Highness Sheikh Theyab also presented Khalifa University’s first-ever honorary PhD degree to Hazza Al Mansouri, the first Arab and Emirati astronaut to visit the International Space Station. Khalifa University has consistently contributed to the aerospace sector, especially by graduating the first-ever batch of students in Aerospace Engineering. Khalifa University students have also designed and developed MySat-1 which was launched into space in February 2019, while the launch of MySat-2 is scheduled for the near future. During the ceremony, Amna Ahli, Biomedical Engineering graduate, and a current student of the Khalifa University College of Medicine and Health Sciences, offered the graduate address. The second cohort of 2019 graduates included 149 male students, and 259 females. The number of UAE Nationals totaled 316, while international students numbered 92. KU TIMES
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Graduate Students’ Research and Achievements in Biomedical, Aerospace, and Applied Chemistry Fields Illustrate KU’s Enriching Academic Experience
Undergraduate alumni from Khalifa University have myriad opportunities ahead of them, from fulfilling careers to using their education to give back to their communities. Further study is also an option, with many students returning to the university to pursue their academic interests to higher summits, and investigate some of the most pressing science and technology challenges of our time. With postgraduate admissions open at Khalifa University until October 2019, current students enrolled in Masters and PhD courses share their experiences and research projects here.
Getting to the heart of the problem
Heart disease remains a health concern for UAE residents, as the high prevalence of obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol and increasing stress levels contributes to greater strain on the hearts of the nation. Cardiologists also warn of the blood thickening that can occur during long periods spent in the heat; with Emirati nationals more prone to cardiovascular diseases, life in the desert poses a certain risk to the population here. Many of the at-risk residents will require heart surgery at some point. Hessa Alfalahi, studying for her MSc in Biomedical Engineering, recognized that while minimally invasive cardiac surgeries (MICS) are performed as a safer alternative to traditional open-heart surgeries in many cases, the robotic catheter systems developed to assist in this surgery suffer from control uncertainty—the forces and torques applied at the proximal end of the catheter are not purely and smoothly transmitted to the distal end. This can lead to catheter positioning errors and even tissue damage, while the lack of force control makes reaching certain sites difficult. Alfalahi’s research involves designing a concentric tube robotic catheter with “zero” stiffness, thought to be the optimal solution to the engineering design problem seen in conventional robotic catheter systems.
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Her solution will see constant contact force between the catheter tip and the cardiac wall regardless of its displacement, achieving a synchronized motion with the rhythmic beating of the heart. Cardiac catheterization is a procedure used to diagnose and treat many heart problems, with one major limitation to the surgical technique being the inability to manually manipulate the catheter to follow the high-speed motion of the heart. Alfalahi’s innovative solution could see heart surgeries become safer and easier for patients in the UAE and around the world.
“Here at KU, we are not taught to be typical engineers—we are taught to be leaders and to take part in the technological revolution within the region,” said Alfalahi. “KU offers a motivating environment for students interested in research, especially with the establishment of several research centers. The diversity of research projects proposed in different engineering and scientific disciplines, the excellent supervision from our faculty, and the availability of research laboratories and other facilities have all encouraged me to pursue my postgraduate studies at KU.”
Reaching the great ‘out-there’ From internal surgery to exploring the outer regions of our solar system, Adham Alkhaja, PhD student in Aerospace Engineering, is taking his research interests off-world and designing spacecraft trajectories to explore the giant planets. The outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—are particularly interesting in terms of what they can reveal about the origin and evolution of the solar system. They are also local analogs for the many extra-solar planets that have been detected over the past twenty years.
The problem with exploring them? They’re very far away. Getting a spacecraft to Jupiter or Saturn can be achieved, but once the spacecraft is in orbit around the planet, the major challenge is to identify fueland time-efficient strategies for an exploration tour. Being so far from the sun, the solar radiation needed for electrical power generation is scarce and the communication link needed with the scientists back on Earth adds further geometrical and time constraints to trajectory and maneuver design. Alkhaja’s project builds upon state-of-the-art solutions in this field and uses the most advanced astrodynamics tools to further our understanding of our own solar neighborhood and provide the foundations for understanding distant planetary systems.
“Space has always been my passion and studying at Khalifa University has brought my passion to life,” said Alkhaja. “It has given me the opportunity to work with professionals on a project that addresses critical issues in spacecraft mission design. Also, the courses are led by experts who explain the latest developments in the field while sharing their practical experiences from the industry; this has given me the full picture and prepared me to start contributing to the field. I am grateful for all the tools this university has provided and how it has prepared me to contribute to the UAE space workforce.”
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Serving the nation and protecting the planet
Back on planet Earth, Hebah Sami, Msc student in Applied Chemistry, is working on protecting the environment and human life with her project, capturing hydrogen sulfide from Claus tail gas. The Claus process recovers elemental sulfur from the gaseous hydrogen sulfide found in raw natural gas and from the by-product gases derived from refining crude oil. The Claus tail gas is the gas produced in a refinery and not required for any further processing, meaning most of the sulfur has already been recovered. However, even the small amount of sulfur compounds remaining in the tail gas needs removing. Hydrogen sulfide is one of the major environmental pollutants, with many industrial sectors focused
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on controlling and monitoring the concentration of hydrogen sulfide in the environment—as little as tens of parts per million may cause severe health problems in humans and at high concentrations leads to death. Hydrogen sulfide also undergoes a chemical reaction to form sulfuric acid, which is highly corrosive and responsible for damaging metallic parts like tanks and pipes in various industries. Sami’s project investigates the interaction and adsorption of hydrogen sulfide gas on nanoparticles to aid in the removal of hydrogen sulfide from Claus tail gas in the UAE. Her research is of such interest to the nation that her project to synthesis a hybrid material for the removal of hydrogen sulfide is sponsored by ADNOC.
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First Emirati Astronaut Launches into Space!
The KU community joined together to watch the historic take off of the first Emirati astronaut launched into space.
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Hazza Al Mansouri Receives Honorary Doctorate Degree from KU Khalifa University awarded its first-ever honorary doctorate to Hazza Al Mansoori, the first Arab astronaut to visit the International Space Station (ISS) and the first Emirati astronaut. Hazza Al Mansouri’s space visit was a realization of a dream by the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, Founding Father of the UAE, which was turned into a vision by the UAE’s leadership. The honorary doctorate to Hazza is an expression of the pride of the UAE, represented by the country’s leadership, institutions, people and sectors, and more especially the higher education sector.
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Undergrad Student Wins Pitch@Palace UAE 3.0 for Innovative Cooling Suit PHOTO CREDIT: THE NATIONAL
Mechanical engineering undergraduate student Aryam 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. Aryam told The National what inspired her idea to invent the suit. “It started when we saw a worker faint on the street and we couldn’t do anything about it,” she said.
KU students Aryam Ahmed (right) and Latifa Al Seiari with the cooling suit they invented.
“I do not just want to show it in the UAE, I want other countries in the world to know about it. It is not only the UAE that needs this solution, it is the whole of the GCC. We want to create something that everyone can have.
The motor-powered cooling suit, which is similar in appearance to a biohazard protection suit or astronaut’s space suit, is made out of a special material that keeps the internal temperature of the user at an adjustable level between 15 and 30 degrees C. Aryam developed the suit with fellow undergrad student and project partner Latifa Al Seiari. Dr. Samuel Cubero, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, was their faculty adviser. They have filed an invention disclosure for the innovative suit, which is currently under assessment.
“Employers have a responsibility for the health of the workers, so will want to reduce the risks and number of cases. So I think they will be open to these solutions.”
Aryam will now go on to the next round of pitching at the Pitch@Palace GCC event next month in Bahrain. The winners of that round will win a place at a global final in London in December.
“As engineers, it is our responsibility to find solutions to problems to help our society.
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MSc Student Presents Pitch at the UN Youth Climate Summit in NYC MSc in materials science and engineering student Edgar B. Mejia participated in the Summer of Solutions Young Entrepreneurs Pitch Competition, which was organized by the United Nations and held in New York as part of the Youth Climate Action Summit day on 21 September 2019. Edgar was selected as one of five finalists from over 150 applicants from around the world to pitch at the Summit for his innovative Project 2 to 3 business idea. All projects aimed to provide a solution for one of three categories: Circular Economy, Climate Information, and Ethical Fashion. Edgar’s solution addressed the challenge of the Circular Economy category. He proposed leveraging 3D printing to give a second life to single-use plastics. By converting the plastics into filaments, they could be fed into a 3D printer to make something new and useful.
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“Presenting our project idea at the United Nations in front of hundreds of people was a life-changing experience. However, the most impactful part of this opportunity was meeting other young people who are determined to promote sustainable development. We need to become a generation that faces and fixes their own problems,” Edgar shared. Edgar is a Fulbright Scholar and Co-Founder of IDEA 1.61, a startup in Mexico that aims to provide highly motivated students with access to design machines and training. The focus of his Fulbright is to research upcycling of high-density polyethylene plastic waste into 3D printing filament. He received his BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois in 2018. While at Khalifa University, Edgar plans to continue doing research on novel plastics for additive manufacturing that can be easily recycled. Additionally, he is working on bringing IDEA 1.61 to the UAE, with the collaboration of national partners.
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Internship Spotlight Ali Mustafa Abdulla Mohamed Almusawa, aerospace engineering student INTERNSHIP : Dassault Aviation, Bordeaux, France
I chose Dassault Aviation because it’s a company with a long history in designing and manufacturing both civil and military aircrafts. I knew I would gain a lot of knowledge and experience from one of the pioneering companies in the aerospace industry. I got an excellent overview of the aircraft production processes and techniques and a sneak peek at the latest technology used in military aircrafts. In fact, I was responsible for improving the standards of the Rafale fighter jet slats assembly; slats are control devices in front of the aircraft’s wing. I’m looking forward to using the knowledge I gained from this internship to improve and enhance the local aerospace industry here in the UAE. I would definitely recommend an internship to fellow students as it’s the perfect gateway for students experience the work placements they will move into once they finish their academic studies.
Internship Spotlight Sumaya Zaid Saeed Ali Alzubaidi, Electrical Engineering student INTERNSHIP LOCATION : ADNOC Drilling Company
I chose to intern at ADNOC Drilling Company due to my interests in the power systems and instruments sectors; the electrical engineering tasks there were related to both sectors. It was interesting to experience the difference between student life at university and an engineer’s life in a company. I learnt a lot about the electrical and mechanical components of drilling rigs and all the different things an electrical engineer can be tasked with. I’m planning on working in the same field when I graduate and would advise all students get the maximum out of their internship program and studies. ADNOC Drilling is a great choice. KU TIMES
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Student Spotlight : Saeed Ahmad Gains Engineering Skills and Valuable Life Lessons at UC Berkeley Saeed Ahmad, BSc student in Mechanical Engineering, spent the summer in California, studying at one the US’s top schools, UC Berkeley, during a study abroad program sponsored by the UAE Ministry of Education. As one of only 30 undergraduate students selected from all universities across the UAE to participate in the MOE’s Ambassadors Program, Saeed is extremely grateful for the study abroad opportunity and described his experience as “unforgettable.” “I was always motivated to participate in a study abroad program from the moment I began my education at KU. And I am so glad I did it! I would definitely do it again if I could,” Saeed shared. During his two-and-a-half-month visit, Saeed gained key skills and life lessons that have reinforced his interest in mechanical engineering and in learning. “This experience reinforced my future goals in many ways. It made me focus more on what’s important in my life. While I was there, I started planning what I am going to do when I come back. For example, I now want learn to learn a third language – Spanish! I also want to do my undergraduate internship somewhere outside the country, for more experience.” Saeed took the course ‘System Dynamics and Controls’ at UC Berkley, which is one of the most important courses in the field of Mechanical Engineering. “UC Berkeley is considered as one of the top 10 best engineering schools in the world. The outstanding reputation of the university was enough to push me to apply for it. With so many courses offered there during their 4 summer sessions, it was really easy for me to pick the right course that is relevant to my graduation plan.” The young mechanical engineer enjoyed learning about the culture and found learning in the classroom with the other students to be truly inspiring.
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“One thing I definitely liked about the classes is that everyone seemed to be motivated and well-focused in their studies. In all the classes, students were constantly engaging with the lecturer; positive energy was all around. The classes were quite large compared to our classes here at KU which gave me the chance to meet many different people of different cultures.”
“I noticed that education seemed more stressful there, but at the same time, the students enjoyed it and dealt with it differently. I could tell that the students were dedicating all their time to building their life so they can be financially stable later on.” The experience also helped him learn a lot more about himself. “The simplest way to say it would be, I value education. I find passion in learning and educating myself. I find that knowledge is ‘power’. The more you learn, the more successful you become, and the better you handle your life.” The UAE National hopes to be able to use his education and passion for learning to give back to his country. “I am extremely motivated by what the country does for its youth, and I want to return this favor by educating myself as much as possible, and use my knowledge and cognitive abilities to improve this country later on in any way. I would also like to thank KU for giving me the chance to be the student that I always wanted to be.”
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Baheth Capstone Funding Awarded to two KU Student Teams Two teams of undergraduate students have won the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority’s (DEWA) R&D Center AlBaheth grant worth AED20,000 for their projects. The first project, titled “Membrane distillation crystallizer for zero liquid discharge and resource recovery from desalination brine,” addresses one of the major issues in desalination – sustainable management of desalination brine, the main waste from water desalination. The students will explore some innovative ways to convert brine into a valuable product.
Membrane testing facility that the students will use during their research.
The students are: Fatmah Rashed Mohamed Rashed Makhmasi, Aishah Abdulla Ahmed Alyammahi, Khawla Mohamed Salem Mohamed Al Hammadi, Shama Thabit Gaafar Al-Nahdi, and Yasmeen Youssef Ataout. They are being advised by Dr. Faisal Al Marzooqi, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Dr. Lourdes Vega, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and H2 (RICH). The second project, titled “Solar Fuel Production using Brine,” also looks at how to manage and use brine to generate a valuable product. Selected students will develop a brine treatment process that combines a solar receiver and a membrane continuous flow vacuum evaporator unit, which will generate steam for sustainable hydrogen production by solar photoelectrochemical water splitting.
Wahaj Solar beam-through solar heat concentrator under construction at the Masdar Institute Solar Platform at Khalifa University, and Wahaj Solar’s proof of concept concentrator, which students will use to treat brine and produce solar fuel by photo-electrochemistry.
The project will be carried out as an undergraduate senior design project and will be advised by Dr. Khalid Al Ali, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineeringand Dr. Faisal Al Marzooqi, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering. KU TIMES
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Halcon Systems Honored for Investing in KU Students’ Success
Dr. Arif Al Hammadi, KU Executive Vice President, (left) presents trophy to Dr. Saeed AlMansori, CEO of Halcon Systems.
Defense technology firm Halcon Systems was recognized at a ceremony on Tuesday, 8 October, by Khalifa University senior management, faculty and students, for their dedication and commitment to KU students. Halcon Systems has been passionately supporting our students’ participation in multiple international competitions over the last two years. They sponsored a team of students to participate in the 2018 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage and BAJA competitions. For the Baja SAE competition, engineering students designed and built a single-seat, all-terrain sporting vehicle, while for the SAE Supermileage, they built a single-person, fuel-efficient vehicle that
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complied with the competition rules. The experience greatly enhanced the students’ educational experience, giving them both hands-on learning opportunities in engineering and leadership. Halcon Systems also sponsored the KUSpark Team that participated in the 2019 SAE Supermileage. The team of nine students from Mechanical, Electrical, Computer and Chemical Engineering programs won eighth place out of 31 international universities that participated in the USbased competition. Halcon Systems has pledged to continue to support our students next year as well. Dr. Saeed AlMansori, CEO of Halcon Systems, has committed to sponsoring KU’s 2020
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SAE Supermileage team, bringing the total sponsorship amount to more than AED1.7 million. Their support has not only helped to enhance the educational experience of many KU engineering students, but it is also contributing to the development of their potential future employees. Halcon Systems has hired many of the Supermileage competition teams, who are currently being sponsored by the company to continue their graduate studies overseas. During the recognition ceremony, two KU alumna and former SAE Baja and Supermileage participants addressed the audience and shared their career experiences post-graduation, and how KU helped open
up new opportunities in their professional lives. Eng. Rawdha Almararr, earned her Bachelors and Masters in Mechanical Engineering from KU, and an MBA from the Abu Dhabi School of Management. She worked at the Crown Prince Court managing engineering projects and was then seconded to the Ministry of Education as the youngest director in charge of establishing the professional licensing department. Rawdha led the 2013 SAE Baja team that participated in the USA. Eng. Linda Ismael is currently working at Halcon systems. Linda was part of the 2018 SAE Supermileage team that participated in the USA.
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Stanford Fellows Workshop Held On Thursday, 3 October, KU students learned about the Stanford University Fellowship Program during a workshop hosted by the Study Abroad Unit of the Student Success Department.
schools, and work towards ensuring that their peers gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to compete in the economy of the future and make a positive impact on the world.
Three KU students and Stanford Fellows, including BSc in Electrical Engineering students Ruba Ayman Nasser, Maryam Abbas Ahmad Hussain Sajwani, and Hajer Mohammed Salem Mohammed Almahri, shared their experience and excitement about the unique University Innovation Fellows (UIF) program.
Khalifa University had a total of four students participate in the Stanford Fellows Program in 2018. They become the first-ever group selected from the UAE for the UIF program.
The global program run by Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), empowers student leaders to increase campus engagement with innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity and design thinking. It encourages students to become agents of change at their
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The experience included a six-week online training program; a Silicon Valley Meetup in California, US, where they attended experiential workshops and exercises focused on topics including movement building, innovation spaces, design of learning experiences, and new models for change in higher education; and participation as ‘special guests’ in the Eastern Hemisphere Meetup in Dubai, organized for teams from China, India and Far-East Asia.
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Associate Professor Shines Light on Earth’s Development on Good Question Podcast
Dr. Aisha Al Suwaidi, Associate Professor of Earth Science, was interviewed last month for the Good Question Podcast, a podcast about science and scientists in the UAE. Dr. Al Suwaidi discussed geology, geochemistry and the focus of her research, which is understanding how the Earth was 200 million years ago. Specifically, she focuses on understanding how carbon has changed in the environment and the atmosphere through time to try and understand what the impact was of that carbon change. Throughout the one-hour long discussion, Dr. Al Suwaidi shines a light on the importance of studying theEarth and the formation of its geological structures and ecosystems over time, in order to better protect it, and to help us understand other planets as well.
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Faculty visit ASU BlockChain Lab
They introduced faculty of the ASU Supply Chain Management Department and researchers of the ASU Blockchain Research Lab to Khalifa University and the research projects being carried out at the DSO Research Center, which was launched in July 2019 to conduct research in supply chain analytics, digital operations management and the future of work in digital enterprises. The KU professors met with Dr. Dragan Bosocovic, Research Professor and Director of the Blockchain Research Lab, and Dr. Todd Taylor, Professor of Practice in the ASU Supply Chain Management Department and founder of the Blockchain Research Lab, who is also a member of the DSO Research Center’s steering committee.
Visit to Arizona State University Cements Collaboration Opportunities for Blockchain Research
KU’s Dr. Khaled Salah, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Dr. Raja Jayaraman, Associate Professor of Industrial Systems and Engineering, have returned from a visit to the Arizona State University’s Blockchain Research Lab, where they met with faculty, students, and business executives to discuss potential areas for Blockchain-related research collaboration between Khalifa University’s Digital Supply Chain and Operation Management (DSO) Research Center and ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab. Dr. Salah and Dr. Jayaraman toured the ASU Blockchain Research Lab and learned about the Lab’s ongoing research projects in the areas of Blockchain-enabled supply chain management, Blockchain-based energy trading, and BAAS (Blockchain as a Service) IoT solutions.
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The productive meeting included discussions with ASU industry partners Dash and ChainRider, who are affiliated with the University’s incubator program, called Skysong Innovations, which brings together industry, faculty and research students to support the commercialization of Blockchain-related research being carried out at ASU. SkySong offers opportunities for companies whose business objectives would benefit from a strong connection with ASU entrepreneurial and research-based initiatives. Dr. Salah found the business model particularly inspiring, noting that it created mutually beneficial partnerships and robust university innovation ecosystem. Dash and ChainRider developed Blockchain platforms with numerous potential applications, including for digitalizing land records and automating the registration of title deeds. Dr. Salah and Dr. Jayaraman received training on the ChainRider platform, and discussed ways for the DSO Research Center to implement the platform in their research. Developing opportunities for further collaboration between the two research centers was a top priority during the professors’ visit. They invited a PhD student from ASU to visit KU for one week to lay the foundation for the development of various blockchain-based solutions. While Dr. Salah was invited to participate in the 2020 Hyperledger Global Forum, taking place in Phoenix, Arizona in March 2020. The professors also discussed different projects for collaboration, including Blockchain solutions in the area of healthcare, energy
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ASCE President Addresses KU’s ASCE Chapter
Khalifa University welcomed Robin A. Kemper, the President of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), to KU’s Main Campus on Thursday, 26 September 2019.
trading, M2M economy, and IoT management. Forging strong collaborations with leading academic institutions and industries is key to achieving impactful research, and the members of the DSO Research Center are eager to leverage these critical connections and bring more skills, talent and experience to their center. Arizona State University has been ranked as the #1 in the U.S. for Innovation, according to US News and World report for the past five years in a row. It therefore has much to offer the DSO Research Center in its mission to become an internationally recognized center in digital transformation of supply chains and analytics-driven management.
ASCE is a professional body that represents members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. Robin addressed students of KU’s ASCE Student Chapter – which includes 77 KU students – about the role of civil engineers as important contributors to their local communities. She also highlighted several role-models and successful leaders in the field of civil engineering. Her inspiring talk reiterated the ASCE’s commitment to supporting and mentoring engineering students to become responsible engineers capable of making a positive difference in the world. ASCE is a leading provider of technical and professional conferences and continuing education, and the world’s largest publisher of civil engineering content.
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Annual Majors Day Hundreds of Freshman students came to learn about KU’s 13 BSc programs at the annual KU Majors Day event, which took place on Tuesday, 8 October.
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B.SC. IN AEROSPACE ENGINEERING
B.SC. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
B.SC. IN BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
B.SC. PETROLEUM ENGINEERING
B.SC. IN CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
B.SC. INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
B.SC. IN CIVIL ENGINEERING
B.SC. APPLIED MATHEMATICS & STATISTICS
B.SC. IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING
B.SC. CHEMISTRY
B.SC. IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
B.SC. PETROLEUM GEOSCIENCES
B.SC. IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
B.SC. PHYSICS
The Annual Majors Day serves as an excellent platform for students to gain useful information about different majors, which will help them to make an informed decision about their choice of program. Senior students, faculty, advisors, employers, alumni and career guidance staff assisted students with their exploration journey. The students heard from key industry players, including representatives from Abu Dhabi National
Oil Company (ADNOC), Abu Dhabi Investment Council, the Ministry Of Education, the National Petroleum Construction Company, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, and Baker Hughes Company. Four distinguished alumni also provided invaluable insight to help give the Freshman students an idea of what to expect postgraduation.
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MEET THE KU STUDENT CLUBS! Many of KU’s student-led clubs were busy recruiting new members in September and October. Our student clubs offer students an important opportunity to network with people who share similar interests, and gives them the chance to explore possible career opportunities and learn what it takes to reach their goals. The academic experience of our students is enriched by participating in extracurricular activities that allow them to pursue their personal interests beyond the classroom. Whether it is arts, science, culture, history or social, there is always a place for all students’ interests.
Aventures Club
KU’s “Aventures Club” is named after the French translation for adventures. The aim of the club is to plan and conduct fun, outdoor activities and develop our members’ outdoor skills. Our vision is to infuse an adventurous lifestyle our members, and to enhance their leadership, problem solving and decision making capabilities 40 members Activities: Fun, adventurous, skill developing and personality building activities alongside relaxing and stress releasing events.
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Aventures Club was recruiting students at a booth in the Student Center on 30 September 2019
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Theater Club The Theater & Talent Club gives students a place to unleash their non-academic skills in photography, directing, production and acting. The club’s goal is to create an environment that differs from the academic one, where KU students are encouraged to discover their talents. spot the light on the new extraordinarily students that are in KU community. The Club, which has 211 members, organizes events that are attended by the public, such as the national day and the film festival that is held every year to let the students take a break from their studies and bring out their artistic side for a while.
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KU Talk: To Inspire a Soul The Literature Club at KU believes that given just a few minutes, you can change a person’s mind, guide someone who is lost, and inspire a soul. The power of talking, spreading ideas and sharing experiences cannot be overlooked, and is what drives the Club’s KU Talk event. At this Fall’s KU Talk, which took place on Sunday, 29 September at the Khalifa Innovation Center, the Literature Club invited three students to deliver brief but thoughtprovoking TED-style speeches to the KU Community. Reem Said Al Rawahi’s speech was titled “Digitalization”; Sara I. Al-Ali delivered a speech titled “Upside Down”; and Mohamed Fikri presented a talk called “Try”. KU TIMES
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Chess Tryouts On Tuesday, 24 September, chess tryouts were held at KU’s Main Campus to select a student team to compete in the 2020 Chess Championship of Higher Education Sports Federation, an inter-university competition with universities from across the UAE participating. The tryout session was very successful. A total of 32 students participated. The pre-selected students will now prepare for their next tournament, which will be held on 22 October. The winners of that tournament will determine the male and female squads that will compete in the2020 Chess Championship.
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Time to Vote! KU Student Council for 2019-2020 Elected Elections are held very Fall semester for the KU Student Council. This year was especially exciting, as it marked the first time that undergraduate and postgraduate students will join together to form one unified council.
and initiatives if they were to get elected. Following the assembly, the candidates campaigned for two days before the online voting link was sent to all students to place their vote.
On 6 October, an assembly was held to announce the two Student Council President candidates. At the assembly, the candidates briefed students on their Student Council plans
A big congratulations to Mohammed Saif Alteneiji who was elected as the 2019-2020 KU Student Council President.
KU Student Council Members include
PRESIDENT Mohammed Saif Alteneiji
VICE PRESIDENT Layla Amardoud
Khalifa University’s Health, Safety and Environment Day
EVENTS CHAIR Khadeeja Khaled AlJaberi
On Monday, 14 October, Khalifa University hosted its Environment, Health and Safety Day for staff and students. Members of the KU Community had the opportunity to browse stands from health centers and eco-companies, check their vital signs like blood pressure and BMI, and even practice CPR. Staff and students were also able to have their skin assessed, discuss the importance of self-examination for cancer prevention, and grab a free t-shirt to promote reducing energy consumption. KU TIMES
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Employer On-Campus Days Help Match Interested Students to Companies
The Career and Alumni Services Office has organized a series of workshops and info sessions where employers can connect directly with students at the KU Main Campus. The info sessions are designed to enhance students’ understanding of the job market and educate them about available opportunities at reputable local and international companies, while also providing a chance for companies to recruit top talent. The companies that visited during September and October include Tawazun, Tenaris, the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE), and AD Investment Council.
Making a Wish Come True
Future Teachers Scholarship Workshop 23 undergraduate KU students who have received “Teachers of the Future” scholarships from the Ministry of Education (MOE) signed MOE contracts with their parents during the Future Teacher Scholarship Workshop, which was held at KU’s Main Campus on Tuesday, 24 September. The scholarship program provides fully funded mathematics, statistics and chemistry grants to students committed to becoming tomorrow’s teachers and educating the youth in state schools. The scholarships are available to UAE Nationals and Arab residents. During the workshop, the new Future Teacher scholars and other students learned about the strategic direction of the Ministry of Education, the UAE’s national indicators related to education, and components of the UAE school system.
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Sara Bilal Alshamsi, a 10 year old girl with SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) type 1 -- a genetic disease characterized by the progressive loss of motor neurons -- had a wish: to visit BODY WORLDS to learn more about the human body and gain a deeper understanding of her illness. Sara was grateful to have the opportunity to see the one-of-akind exhibit in her own home country of the UAE.
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KU Faculty Conducts Workshops at ALAPP 2019
Participants at the pre-conference workshop “Innovation, collaboration and creativity in researching business communication and professional practice,” hosted by the Malaysian Association of Applied Linguistics and delivered by Dr. Gina Poncini in Kuala Lampur on 21 September 2019. Third from left: Dr. Gina Poncini; Second from left, Dr. Hadina Habil, Associate Professor, Office of Corporate Affairs UTM and ALAPP Conference Chair.
Dr. Gina Poncini, Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, was invited to conduct two workshops before and during the 9th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (ALAPP), held in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, from23-25 September 2019. The conference was organized by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and UCSI University. The pre-conference workshop, titled “Innovation, Collaboration and Creativity in Researching Business
Communication and Professional Practice,” was hosted by the Malaysian Association of Applied Linguistics (MAAL) in conjunction with the ALAPP Conference 2019. Workshop participants applied design thinking tools to identify and understand a problem or need in the research process, reframe the problem, and generate innovative solutions. Other interactive activities focused on ways to foster engagement and creative collaboration in professional contexts. Dr. Poncini conducted a shorter workshop on a similar research theme during the conference itself.
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KSA National Day Celebrated Khalifa University celebrated Saudi National Day 89 at its Main Campus on Monday, 23 September 2019. A number of students, faculty and staff wore KSA flags, enjoyed treats, and heard from KU’s Saudi professor and students on the strong ties between the UAE and KSA. KU wishes the people of Saudi Arabia continuous prosperity, happiness and success!
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All Lit Up Celebrating the National Day of the People’s Republic of China on 1 Oct.
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Strata’s Robotic Arm Gets Upgraded A team of senior engineering students improved the function and autonomy of robotic arms commonly used for industrial purposes. Strata Company provided the students with a UR10 robotic arm, which the students programmed and rigged with sensors to detect and move objects from one place to the other. The robot had to perform the task without any human assistance. “We used MATLAB to program the robot because it provided us an environment that is easy to use and it can be expressed in mathematical notation. We used Festo sensors to simultaneously map and identify the objects that needed to be manipulated. For instance, the control of the robot arm was used to simulate control of the interface parts from solid work to RoboDK in MATLAB,” said Ayesha Sari Alhameli, Senior Aerospace Engineering student. She was joined by engineering students Ali Sultan Almarzooqi and Amna Abdulla AlMatrooshi. The students effectively bridged the gap between university project and industrial solutions with real world applications.
Simulink blocks were used to revolute the actuation change of the motion to provide a given input. Furthermore, it was used to create a signal builder while developing the desired angles of the given timeline. Through this, most of the project was theoretical but in various instances, they worked directly with the hardware and components. Simulink played a crucial role in the exportation of CAD assembly models. In light of this, Simulink ran as an entity of MATLAB, or, in some instances as a tool to integrate the interaction with solid work. Solidwork played a crucial role in visualizing how all the parts fit together. The software we used enabled us to tweak movements for fully autonomous running. The future of the project lies on the success of the theoretical analysis of the project.
“The lessons we learned throughout the project form the basis for troubleshooting and future improvements,” Amna shared. KU TIMES
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RECRUITING TOP STUDENTS
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UniExpo Dubai 26-27 SEPTEMBER 2019
Khalifa University was one of over 50 exhibiting higher-ed institutions from the UAE and Gulf region at the first edition of UniExpo Dubai, a flagship higher education exposition, held in Dubai. Hundreds of university students, parents, learned about KU and explored various educational and scholarship opportunities.
Advanced Academic Rheumatology Review Course (ADARRC)
Over 600 higher-ed institutions attended the EAIE Conference and Exhibition, Europe’s largest and most important event for higher education. Over 5,500 professionals from around the world attended workshops, sessions, posters, and networking events.
12-14 OCTOBER 2019
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VIP VISITS
Chairman of Abu Dhabi Department of Health Visits KU
HE Sheikh Abdulla Bin Mohamed Al Hamed, Chairman of the Department of Health—Abu Dhabi (DoH), accompanied by HE Mohamed Al Hameli, Undersecretary of DOH, visited Khalifa University on Thursday, 3 October 2019. The visit started with the tour of KU’s The Body Museum, which is hosting the world-famous BODY WORLDS exhibit for the first time in the Arab world, followed by a tour of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences (CMHS). The tour included a brief on the progress of CMHS educational and research facilities, including the Simulation Center and the OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) suits. The guests concluded their visit with a tour of the KU Biotechnology Center, where they met with a number of researchers and graduate students who highlighted various achievements and research projects being carried out through the Center.
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Eritrean Minister of Education Visits BODY WORLDS
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SEMINARS Visiting Academic Prof. Bruce Jakosky Enthralls Packed Auditorium with Seminar on the Future of Mars Exploration As the UAE celebrates the first Emirati in space and prepares to establish a city on Mars within the next 100 years, the topic of space exploration has lit a fire under the ambitions of the students at Khalifa University. A presentation by Prof. Bruce Jakosky, from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado, combined the UAE’s plans for human exploration of Mars with an explanation of the work so far and the scientific goals that will be accomplished with Emirati expertise. His research focuses on understanding the nature of planetary surfaces and atmospheres and the possibility for the existence of life elsewhere in the universe.
“Exploring Mars will always be important for understanding the planets and their potential for life,” he told a packed auditorium in a compelling seminar at Khalifa University’s Main Campus.
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How One KU Professor Found Himself Writing Two Books at Once
The inaugural seminar from the Department of English, which took place Tuesday, 15 October, saw Dr. Anthony Archdeacon, Assistant Professor of English, deliver insight into the process and work that goes into publishing a book. Dr. Archdeacon introduced the motivation behind his foray into book publishing and shared his story from idea to proposal to contract with humor and honesty. He explained that he learned a lot from his first proposal to a publishing house, which saw him having to wait a year between submission and finally getting a contract to publish. While waiting for a response to his first submission, Dr. Archdeacon began work on a second book with a different publishing house; five days after that submission, he received a response from the first publisher. He soon found himself in the unique situation of writing two books at the same time. Dr. Archdeacon shared these stories through his two examples of the book publishing processing and gave brief overviews of his two projects. He is currently working on his manuscripts and looking to finish soon. The Department of English will host a further three seminars this semester.
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Visiting Professor Dr. Samir Elhedhli Delivers Seminar on Supply Chain Analytics
Dr. Samir Elhedhli, Professor of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo & Visiting Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Khalifa University, delivered a seminar titled “Supply Chain Analytics: Data-Driven Modelling and Optimization for Warehouse Operations” at the Main Campus on Monday, 23 September. The seminar was hosted by KU’s Research Center on Digital Operations Management and Supply Chain. It was attended by students and local stakeholders, including representatives from Aramex, Ittihad International Investment, Crown PaperMill, National Cement Factory, and Ittihad PaperMill.
Dr. Samir Elhedhli poses with faculty from the DSO center and Aramex representatives
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Dr. Georg Petroianu Delivers First Talk as part of CMHS Distinguished Speaker Series The College of Medicine and Health Sciences (CMHS) inaugurated its first Distinguished Speaker Series with a seminar titled “The History of Ionone: From Cleopatra to Asymmetric Beta-Carotene Cleavage” delivered by Dr. Georg Petroianu, Associate Dean for Research at the CMHS, on Wednesday, 9 October 2019, at the Main Campus.
Seminars on Photocatalysis Delivered by National Institute of Chemistry Researchers
Back-to-back talks on the latest research being done in the field of photocatalysis by two researchers from the National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia, took place on Wednesday, 9 October 2019 at the Masdar City Campus.
Dr. Albin Pintar, Research Professor and Head of the Laboratory for Environmental Sciences and Engineering, delivered a seminar titled “Schottky barrier height determination and photoelectron generation in Au/ TiO2 nanorod arrays for solar energy conversion.”
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Dr. Gregor Žerjav, Research Assistant, delivered a seminar titled “Visible-light active TiO2+Bi2O3 catalysts used in advanced oxidation processes for wastewater treatment.”
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Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center of Clinical Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Aziz Nazha, Shares Insights to AI in Healthcare in Seminar
In a seminar titled “Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, The Cleveland Clinic Way,” Dr. Aziz Nazha discussed the current state-of-the-art machine learning and deep learning model applications in healthcare. From a background in treating patients with leukemia, his research focuses on using artificial intelligence to translate genomic and complex healthcare data into useful clinical tools that can improve patient outcomes, which he shared with a packed
auditorium of KU students and researchers. “This is the best time in human history to do biomedical research thanks to the democratization of AI,” explained Dr. Nazha. “It’s up to us as researchers to take advantage of this technology.” Starting with a brief recap of the types of AI available to researchers and medical professionals, Dr. Nazha explained the difficulties in bringing AI diagnostic tools to the
public and introduced the current Cleveland Clinic Center for Clinical Artificial Intelligence initiatives and ongoing projects. “The question is, once you’ve developed the system, how do you get it to the physicians?’ he mused. “That’s the big problem: you have to deploy the AI.” Dr. Nazha also highlighted the importance of talent in the AI community, saying that investing in developing talent is the most vital area for clinical artificial intelligence right now. KU TIMES
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Highlights of the latest important announcements, strategic initiatives, new partnerships, and VIP visits
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Khalifa University Tops in UAE, Second in MENA Region and among Top 200 Globally in THE World University Subject Rankings 2020 for Engineering and Technology Current Ranking Covers Chemical Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Khalifa University ranked first in the UAE, second in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and among the top 200 globally in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2020 by Subject: Engineering and Technology. The University is placed within the 176-200 band out of 1,008 universities assessed in the 2020 THE listing for subjects. Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive VicePresident, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, said: “The Khalifa University’s status in the current listing once again strongly illustrates some of our core strengths that keep us in the forefront, as the most soughtafter academic institution for engineering and technology. We have already established our leading role in innovation by the sheer magnitude of our research outcome. We believe this ranking firmly portrays our special expertise in various subject areas that offer students productive avenues to transform into true professionals as they chart their future course.”
The ‘THE World University Rankings 2020 by Subject: Engineering and Technology’ includes a range of narrower subject areas covering General Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Chemical Engineering. The subject tables employ the same range of 13 performance indicators used in the overall World University Rankings 2020, brought together with scores provided under five categories. However, the overall methodology is recalibrated for each subject, with the weightings changed to suit the individual fields. The weightings for the engineering and technology ranking are: Teaching (30%), Research (30%), Citations (27.5%), International outlook (7.5%) and Industry income (5%). For engineering and technology, an institution must either have at least 4% of its academic staff or at least 40 academic staff in the ‘engineering and technology’ discipline, to be considered for the subject ranking by THE. KU TIMES
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Khalifa University-KAIST Joint Research Center Launches Comprehensive Projects under Smart Transportation and Smart Healthcare Projects Linked to Development of Wireless Autonomous Electric Vehicles and Smart Healthcare
Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KU) and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have launched two projects each on smart transportation and smart healthcare under the joint research center. The smart transportation projects focus on autonomous electric vehicles that can wirelessly charge, while the smart healthcare projects focus on the development of sensors and wearable devices for personal healthcare as well as healthcare robotics and devices. Dr. Sung-Chul Shin, President of KAIST, said: “The opening of this joint research center is another crowning achievement in KAIST’s long-standing mutual collaboration with KU. We stand firmly with KU to support the UAE’s brilliant vision for science and technology development and human capacity building. As the center’s primary focus is developing the emerging 4th industrial revolution technologies, we look forward to impactful research breakthroughs that will ultimately change our lives for the better.” The two projects on smart transportation are led by two KU Principal Investigators, Dr. Khalifa Al Hosani (Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and Dr. Majid Khonji (Assistant Professor of Electrical
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Engineering and Computer Science), respectively. Two projects on smart healthcare are led by two KU Principal Investigators, Dr. Ahsan Khandoker (Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering) and Dr. Haider Butt (Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering), respectively. According to a report titled Dubai Self-Driving Transport Strategy, the benefits of self-driving transport (SDT) could be huge ranging from highway safety benefits to reduced parking costs, reduced mobility costs, environmental benefits, improved productivity, and improved quality of life and citizen happiness. In Dubai alone, it is estimated that these benefits of SDT would be valued at more than AED22 billion per year. The smart healthcare projects are well aligned with Abu Dhabi 2030 healthcare plan initiatives led by Department of Health (DoH) and key UAE organizations such as Mubadala. Both projects will provide the basis for significant opportunities to demonstrate the use of intelligent medical devices and software for personalized healthcare. Launched in April 2019, the Khalifa UniversityKAIST Joint Research Center focuses on key areas of the fourth industrial revolution including smart transportation and smart healthcare.
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Taking to the Skies to Take Down Intruder Drones
their crops to maximize their yield; for unmanned delivery; to enhance sports TV coverage; and aid in military surveillance and civil security. But as useful and entertaining as drones may be, these flying gadgets can also be put to less friendly purposes. After all, the machine abides by the will of the person controlling it. Hence, drones are being used to smuggle contraband into prisons, evaluate security measures and operations of potential targets for robbery or terrorism, and just cause disruptions in busy places. Gatwick Airport near London, England, hit the headlines in December 2018, when hundreds of flights were cancelled following reports of drone sightings close to the runway. The reports caused major disruption, affecting approximately 140,000 passengers and 1,000 flights during the Christmas period. During the incident, the Ministry of Defense deployed the Royal Air Force (RAF) Regiment to counter the drone as it disturbed the airspace around the airport for almost 36 hours, disappearing and reappearing to prevent any airplanes from landing or taking off right in the heart of a busy travel period. Although it is illegal to fly a drone within one kilometer of an airport in the United Kingdom, it’s hardly difficult for a drone pilot to flout those rules — a one kilometer search radius affords plenty of opportunity to evade detection — evidenced by the frequency of drone infringements on airspace.
Although the most sophisticated military and commercial drones cost millions of dollars, small drones for hobbyists are now very inexpensive and widely available. Most people purchasing a drone have no nefarious masterplan in mind: they’re enchanted by the use of a drone for a unique photographic perspective, smooth video footage, or even racing. Essentially, they’re a fun toy in many cases. Beyond entertainment purposes, however, this technology has a big future. While the market for consumer drones may still be in its infancy (despite a lowered price point), drones can be used by farmers to save time scouting
For this reason, there have been several near misses with drones coming within a few feet of commercial aircraft — the British Airline Pilots Association reported there were over 100 near misses in 2018 in the UK alone. After the incidents at Gatwick Airport in December 2018, the industry isn’t taking any chances. While this wasn’t the first time an airport has been closed due to illegal drone activity, it may well be the most infamous and most expensive with airlines losing revenue of USD64.5 million and incurring the costs of providing passenger accommodations due to missed and delayed flights. The United Kingdom isn’t the only country suffering drone misuse—Dubai airport was among the first in the world KU TIMES
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to experience drone activity closing runways when in 2015, the flights were halted for 55 minutes. In 2016, three more incidents occurred and then February 2019 saw a further 30-minute closure as another drone strayed into the airport’s airspace. According to the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, the cost of closing an airport can be AED3.6 million—per minute. Strict drone licensing, registration, training and stiff penalties have been introduced, with airport authorities in the UK approaching Dubai for advice on how to deal with drone incursions in the future. Gatwick airport faced heavy criticism for its failure to capture or disable the drone and the RAF suffered
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similar backlash for its use of an alternative system to the Drone Dome, a counter unmanned air system (C-UAS) used by the British and US special forces in counter terrorism missions. Companies and militaries are investigating technologies that can apprehend drones or render them incapable of causing damage, but the fact remains, there is no completely reliable method of taking down an intruder drone. The first challenge of the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC) in 2020 deals precisely with this issue as a team of UAVs must autonomously track and interact with intruder UAVs, to ultimately capture and neutralize the intruders.
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All the MBZIRC 2020 challenges were developed to push the technological and application boundaries in robotics, focusing on fast, autonomous navigation in complex environments to complete a task. Challenge 1 puts this speed and autonomy to the test, with the UAVs needing to use robust perception to track dynamic objects and then capture the intruders. While traditional piloted UAVs would face enough challenge in this arena, the most important part of MBZIRC is the autonomous completion of tasks. The team of UAVs must avoid accidental collisions, remain in the challenge arena and maintain contact between themselves, while identifying, tracking, and devising a plan to apprehend the
intruder drone. They will need target detection algorithms for both long-range and short-range identification, depth sensing systems and tracking technology, along with a gripper to grab the intruder when they get close enough. A large ask, but as the 25 teams selected for MBZIRC 2020 Challenge 1 hail from some of the world’s top robotics labs, expectations are high for success. The results of this challenge will go a long way in developing systems that can be utilized by airports around the world to intercept intruder drones and avoid a repeat of the incident at Gatwick Airport.
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Tech on Display at GITEX Khalifa University showcased some of its innovative projects in the fields of autonomous vehicles, industrialized robots, and space and satellite technologies at GITEX 2019. GITEX Technology Week is the biggest tech show in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. It attracted over 100,000 visitors, with over 4,500 exhibitors highlighting the evolution of the world of robotics, and the latest innovations from flying cars to talking robots.
Robotic Arm KU students improved the function and autonomy of robotic arms commonly used for industrial purposes.
Smart Inspection System KU researchers are developing a system that employs drones and unmanned ground vehicles to improve oil and gas pipeline monitoring.
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MySAT 1 The first CubeSat to be developed by local students at KU, MySAT-1 was launched into space on 17 November 17 2018.
On the sidelines of GITEX Technology Week 2019, Khalifa University signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Abu Dhabi Digital Authority (ADDA) to share experiences and benefit from knowledge and science that will enhance the practical application of advanced scientific research. Under the terms of the agreement, both parties will work together to prioritize research topics and joint initiatives in the field of ICT. The agreement also underscores both organization’s commitment to promoting the national capabilities across Abu Dhabi’s government entities in the field of digital transformation.
Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice President of KU, and Dr. Rouda Al Saadi, Director General of ADDA, sign MoU at GITEX to strengthen knowledge-sharing between the two organizations.
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KU Algorithms are Making Self-Driving Cars Safer
Khalifa University faculty and students showcased three cutting-edge projects that are advancing the stateof-the-art in autonomous vehicles and smart transportation during the Dubai World Congress for Self-Driving Transport, which took place from 1516 October in Dubai.
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The congress brought together top experts, policymakers, technology developers, researchers and academia to exchange ideas and proposals about connected autonomous vehicles. Dr. Majid Khonji, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and his students presented three projects, including a jointly developed KU-Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) self-driving car prototype, to hundreds of Congress visitors.
All three projects directly address the critical need to improve safety assurance of autonomous vehicles. The first project is being developed by Dr. Khonji and a team of researchers at KU’s Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS) – one of the flagship research centers under the University’s newly launched Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems Institute. The team is programming self-driving cars with robust algorithms designed to help an autonomous vehicle (AV) do route
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constraints while keeping collision risk below a given safety threshold that meets government regulations. The third project on display at the Congress is the KU-KAIST selfdriving vehicle prototype, which is being developed under the recently launched KU-KAIST Joint Research Center. The AV is being developed with enhanced vehicleto-infrastructure communication capability that will allow the AV to receive critical information from a road network. It is also being developed with enhanced cybersecurity systems, car-sharing systems, path following, and auto parking using magnetic field localization.
planning under uncertainty. Uncertain conditions and environments, like extreme weather and unknown roads, pose technical challenges to an AV’s perception algorithms – the algorithms that allow a car to understand what it “sees.” The algorithms being developed at KUCARS aim to help AVs determine uncertainty from the environment through the three key subsystems of perception, prediction, and planning and control, while simultaneously helping to ensure safety.
The second project is being developed in collaboration with MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). It aims to improve vehicle-tovehicle communication between AVs. Improving an AVs ability to “talk” with other vehicles would significantly improve the safety and reliability of an autonomous vehicle.
The Dubai World Congress for Self-Driving Transport featured more than 700 technology leaders and innovators and 3,000 visitors. The event aimed to highlight the leading role Dubai is playing in selfdriving transport and to accelerate efforts to achieve the targets of Dubai Autonomous Transportation Strategy by attracting experts and technologies of self-driving transport to the UAE. The event also honored the winners of the Dubai World Challenge for Self-Driving Transport (which carries a prize money of AED19 million). The challenge attracted 65 entities from 20 countries, 15
The collaborative teams are developing connected AVs capable of planning trajectories while avoiding obstacles and meeting efficiency
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KU’s Sustainable Transport and Renewable Energy Projects on Display at WETEX
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Khalifa University showcased some of its leading innovations in sustainable transport and bioenergy at WETEX 2019, which took place at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Center from 21-23 October.
Projects on display included a 3D model of KU’s integrated Seawater Energy and Agriculture System (SEAS) -- the flagship project of the Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium (SBRC) and the world’s first research facility to grow both food and fuel using desert lands irrigated by seawater; the autonomous vehicle being developed with enhanced vehicle-to-infrastructure systems under the KUKorea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Joint Research Center; and the solar-powered car developed by 17 engineering students under the supervision of Dr. Fahad Almaskari, Assistant
Professor of Aerospace Engineering, which was ranked as the fastest qualifying solar car that won second place in the 2015 Abu Dhabi Solar Challenge. WETEX shows the latest solutions in conventional and renewable energy, water, sustainability, and conservation. It is a platform for companies to promote their products and services, and meet decision-makers, investors, buyers and interested parties from around the world, to make deals, review the latest technologies, learn about current and future projects, and explore investment opportunities in the region
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Khalifa Innovation Center Kicks-Off Cohort of 16-Week Incubation Training Program for 2019 10 Emirati Innovators Lead Commercialization of Patents through Startups Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice-President, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, said: “Entrepreneurship thrives only through innovation and we are delighted to be part of the Khalifa Innovation Center’s Incubation Training Program that will help Emirati startups. Joining with our partners, we are keen to ensure these budding entrepreneurs and their technology startups will flourish and become major enterprises in their area of expertise, contributing to the UAE and the global community. We believe the Incubation Training Program will immensely benefit these young entrepreneurs.”
Khalifa Innovation Center (KIC), which is hosted by Khalifa University, kicked-off of its cohort of the 16-week Incubation Training Program last month. Founded by Khalifa Fund, Tawazun, Mubadala Investments Company, Sandooq Al Watan and Khalifa University, KIC supports commercialization of local high-technology innovations, nurturing them into successful startups. Started recently, 10 high-tech startups seed-funded by KIC, selected out of the 141 applications from across UAE universities and research centers, started receiving commercialization-focused training and support with specific focus on business, product and marketing development. Khalifa University faculty are involved in five of the total 10 startups that are part of the KIC Incubation Program. As part of the commercialization program, the participants will receive one-on-one mentorship, access to core industry experts, Khalifa University’s lab facilities, founding partners’ network, as well as special purpose vehicle (SPV) and innovation license company registration through Abu Dhabi Global Marketplace (ADGM).
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Mohamed Al Qadhi, Acting CEO, KIC, said: “Khalifa Innovation Center bridges the gap and enables inventors and positive researchers to create viable commercial businesses that have economic returns and generate employment opportunities in the UAE. Unlike other incubators or accelerators, KIC focuses on deep-tech startups and scouts for the best inventions that have commercial value across the UAE.” The KIC startups from Khalifa University selected for the program include Jinomix which provides comprehensive DNA and genetic mapping, the Khalifa University-Strata Manufacturing initiative to make bicycles from aerospace carbon prepegs, and the Medical Advanced Researched Projects (MARP) which offers testing of antenatal fetal welfare. In addition, SPL Co which offers software modernization and migration services, and Networksync – two projects from Khalifa University’s Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC) – have been funded by Khalifa Innovation Center. KIC acts as an incubator for start-ups and research innovation by young Emirati entrepreneurs and inventors. The Center aims to provide the space, funding and mentorship needed in order for the recipients to grow their businesses, and create the next the generation of leaders in the technology industry.
FROM THE NEWSROOM
Entrepreneurs Prepare for Pitch@Palace UAE 3.0 at KIC Bootcamp
HH Duke of York; Mahmoud Al Hai Al Hamli, Board Member of Khalifa Fund; Dr. Arif Al Hammadi, Executive Vice President of Khalifa University; and Mohammed Al Qadhi, General Manager of Sandooq Al Watan
Khalifa University was delighted to host the Pitch@ Palace Bootcamp on 6 and 7 October at the Khalifa Innovation Center, to prepare finalists to pitch their project ideas at the prestigious Pitch@Palace UAE 3.0 event, which took place on 9 October at Emirates Palace. Launched in 2014 by Prince Andrew, Duke of York, in the UK, Pitch@Palace is a global platform for entrepreneurs of innovative projects to showcase their ideas to leading business executives. During the Bootcamp, a group of business owners presented their practical experience and provided professional advice to the finalists. Pitch@Palace UAE 3.0 and Pitch@Palace GCC 2.0 aims to develop connectivity between UAE the wider GCC and other key markets. The winners will be invited to Pitch at Pitch@Palace Global 4.0 at St. James’s Palace in December 2019. KU TIMES
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FROM THE NEWSROOM
Green Barjeel Project Launched
The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE) launched the Green Barjeel research project last month. The collaborative project aims to leverage innovative methods to grow microalgae biomass with a high lipid content in tower-shaped structures. Run in cooperation with Khalifa University and American University of
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Sharjah, the project involves collecting algae from the UAE’s desert ponds and cultivating them. The microalgae biomass will help to sequester CO2 and remove dust particles from the ambient air to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. In addition, the structures can serve as passive cooling systems for use in public spaces.
FROM THE NEWSROOM
Photo courtesy of MOCCAE
Nuclear Science for Development - Student Competition Finals Ten teams comprising some of the UAE’s brightest high school students participated in the final rounds of the second cycle of the Nuclear Science for Development - Student Competition on Tuesday, 22 October at Khalifa University’s Main Campus. The competition is supported by the UAE Permanent Mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR), Emirates Nuclear Energy Company (ENEC), and the Ministry of Education. The aim of the competition is to promote nuclear education and knowledge in youth, and encourage youth to think critically about the positive aspects of nuclear science with a specific focus on how nuclear science can practically contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). About 100 teams from schools across the UAE participated in the first round. Technical experts from the IAEA and the UAE evaluated all proposals. The 10 teams which scored highest by all experts made it to the finals.
The research project also seeks to examine and classify the diverse indigenous algal strains and test the potential of using them to produce biofuel and biofertilizers. Furthermore, the scope includes an experimental study on the safe and sustainable removal of Nitrogen oxides (NOx) and Sulfur oxides (SOx) from the atmosphere.
During the final round, the finalist teams presented videos of their projects to the jury, which is composed of high level officials from FANR, ENEC, Ministry of Education, ICBA, EAD and the IAEA. The team who wins first prize will win a trip to the UAE’s Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant and to Vienna, Austria, where they will visit the IAEA headquarters and its laboratories in Seibersdorf.
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Expert insights from KU’s worldclass faculty
Mission Possible: KU’s Senior VP for Research and Development Discusses the Global Energy Prize as a Driver for Sustainable Energy for All at World Energy Congress 2019
As a side event to the World Energy Congress 2019 held last month in Abu Dhabi, the Global Energy Prize Association held a panel discussion session including members of the Association’s International Award Committee, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and previous laureates of the Prize to consider sustainable energy for all. Sustainability continues to be the main concept
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around which development is built; however, the challenge is far from being solved and there needs to be more access to affordable and reliable energy for all populations, and far more progress needs to be made in clean energy production. As energy is the world’s largest industrial sector—contributing to 70 percent of the world GDP—access to energy could contribute to reducing inequality and poverty worldwide.
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
The United Nations agrees, as access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy is the seventh of the 17 sustainable development goals. Energy is central to nearly every major challenge and opportunity the world faces today, per the UN, and be it for jobs, security, climate change, food production or increasing incomes, access to energy for all is essential. Increasingly, solution providers are realizing sustainability is about more than where that energy comes from; it’s about meeting the basic needs of all people and extending to them the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better life. But with some seven billion people on the planet today, and another three billion expected by 2050, society cannot hope to give them a comfortable standard of living without heavy dependence on energy and technology. It seems pertinent, then, that the discussion centered around whether sustainable development were myth or reality. “That depends on us,” acknowledged Dr. Steve Griffiths, Senior Vice President of Research and Development at KU. “Sustainable development is becoming a reality but we are certainly not there yet. Particularly in the energy sector, we are not yet on track to achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement or the many goals of the Sustainable Development agenda. Further scientific efforts balanced with appropriate policy measures will be needed.” Dr. Griffiths is a member of the Global Energy Prize International Award Committee, which comprises 20 members from 14 countries, all of whom are representatives of the most reputable scientific and academic organizations as well as governmental and public figures from Russia and abroad.
The Global Energy Prize is an international award which recognizes outstanding scientific innovations and solutions in global energy research and its concurrent environmental challenges. Awarded annually in Russia, each laureate receives a commemorative medal and a monetary prize for outstanding scientific developments in the field of energy that help solve the most acute and difficult energy problems. The Prize was established in 2002 and has been awarded to the world’s leading scientists, whose discoveries and technological innovations meet global energy challenges in traditional energy, non-traditional energy and energy application. Dr. Griffiths was keen to highlight the UAE’s contributions to the move towards sustainable clean energy for all, pointing out that several of the largest and most cost-effective demonstrations of renewable energy in the world can be found in Abu Dhabi. Renewable energy sources including solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower are limitless and, most importantly, cheap, thanks to many recent improvements in technology. When the Noor Abu Dhabi solar power plant was switched on in June 2019, it became the cheapest operational solar plant in the world, and the third time within two years that the UAE has broken the record for cheap solar. “Developments in sustainable energy production are happening not just because they should, but because there’s an economic reason,” explained Dr. Griffiths. Innovative partnerships and continuously improving technologies will help to achieve a sustainable future, with the Global Energy Prize one such example driving sustainable energy for all. KU TIMES
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KU Faculty Speaks at World Green Economy Summit
On Monday, 21 October, Dr. Alejandro Rios, Director of the Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium (SBRC), spoke on a panel titled “Challenges and solutions for green energy” at the World Green Economy Summit (WGES), one of the leading global forums on the green economy. He discussed the need for a supporting R&D ecosystem to boost development of novel solutions to generate clean energy sustainably. Specifically, he highlighted the role of collaboration between academia and the private sector in bringing about applied research solutions that can transform value chains, and talked about the efforts that the global and local aviation industry is carrying out to produce sustainable fuel. He was joined by fellow panelists:
D R . M AT T K E N N E DY, Head of Strategy and Business, International Energy Research Centre (Moderator)
M R . T I M A R M S B Y, Regional Head of Energy and Infrastructure, Pinsent Masons
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MR. RAMIZ HAMDAN ALAILEH, Alaileh, Sustainability and Energy Efficiency Director, Department of Energy – Abu Dhabi
WGES brings together world-class experts in critical sectors from around the world to directly focus on advancing the global green economy and sustainability agenda, achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals and implementing the recommendations of COP21 & 22. WGES is organized by the Dubai Electricity & Water Authority and World Green Economy Organisation in cooperation with Dubai Supreme Council of Energy and WETEX.
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
KU Professor Delivers Keynote Speech at Ametek Technology Day Dr. Philip Beeley, Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Director of the Nuclear Technology Center (NTC), delivered the keynote speech at the AMETEK Technology Day – a technical seminar on the latest technology solutions from AMETEK, the American global manufacturer of electronic instruments and electromechanical devices – which took place on Thursday, 17 October in Abu Dhabi.
Dr. Beeley highlighted the research being carried out at KU’s Nuclear Energy Department and Nuclear Technology Center. He shared how his teams are focused on enhancing radiation safety in the environment, supporting the development of systems and technologies for safe and efficient nuclear power plants, and developing robust materials for nuclear energy applications.
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PROLIFIC PROFESSORS
KU faculty and researchers are publishing their work in leading journals every month.
E L I A S Z I K KO S , Senior Lecturer from the Preparatory Program, published a paper in the journal Periodica Mathematica Hungarica. Periodica Mathematica Hungarica – founded in 1971 – is the journal of the Hungarian Mathematical Society (Bolyai Society).
D R . H A B I B A A L S A FA R , Director of the Center for Biotechnology and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, published a paper in Scientific Reports.
TITLE Closure of an Exponential System in some HardySmirnov Spaces AUTHORS Elias Zikkos and Dr. Gajath Gunatillake
DR. BERIHU TEKLU, Postdoctoral fellow from the Center for CyberPhysical Systems (C2PS), co-authored a paper in the Journal of the Optical Society of America B (JOSA B). TITLE Quantum Phase Communication Channels Assisted by Non-Deterministic Noiseless Amplifiers AUTHORS Dr. Berihu Teklu, Dr. Hamza Adnane, and Dr. Matteo G. A. Paris
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TITLE Introducing the first whole genomes of nationals from the United Arab Emirates AUTHORS Dr. Habiba S. AlSafar, Mariam Al-Ali, Dr. Gihan Daw Elbait, Dr. Mustafa H. Al-Maini, Dr. Dymitr Ruta, Dr. Braulio Peramo, Dr. Andreas Henschel & Dr. Guan K. Tay
DR. SHOAIB ANWER, Postdoctoral Researcher, working with Dr. Kin Liao, Professor of Aerospace Engineering, published a paper in ACS Publications TITLE Nature-Inspired, Graphene-Wrapped 3D MoS2 Ultrathin Microflower Architecture as a High-Performance Anode Material for Sodium-Ion Batteries AUTHORS Dr. Shoaib Anwer, Dr. Yongxin Huang, Dr. Baosong Li, Dr. Bharath Govindan, Dr. Kin Liao, Dr. Wesley J. Cantwell, Dr. Feng Wu, Dr. Renjie Chen, Dr. Lianxi Zheng
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
DR. RANJITH BOSE, Postdoctoral Researcher, working under D R . A K R A M A L FA N TA Z I , Professor of Chemical Engineering, has published a paper in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering TITLE Electrodeposition of Unary Oxide on a Bimetallic Hydroxide as a Highly Active and Stable Catalyst for Water Oxidation AUTHORS Dr. Ranjith Bose. Dr. K. Karuppasamy, Dr. Hashikaa Rajan, Dr. Dhinesh Babu Velusamy, Dr. Hyun-Seok Kim and Dr. Akram Alfantazi
PhD student H A R R Y A P O T O L E R I S and D R . M AT T E O C H I E S A , Professor of Mechanical Engineering, published their work in the journal Nature Energy.
TITLE Utility solar prices will continue to drop all over the world even without subsidies AUTHORS Harry Apostoleris, Dr. Sgouris Sgouridis, Dr. Marco Stefancich and Dr. Matteo Chiesa
D R . M AT T E O C H I E S A , Professor of Mechanical Engineering, D R . A M A L A L G H A F E R I , Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, PhD student M A R I A M A L A L M A H R I , and MSc student A B D U L R A H M A N A L H A G R I wrote a paper with six others that was recently published in the journal Carbon. TITLE Direct growth of single-layer terminated vertical graphene array on germanium by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition AUTHORS Dr. Amal Al Ghaferi, Dr. Matteo Chiesa, Mariam Al Almahri, Abdulrahman Al-Hagri, Dr. Ru Li, Dr. Nital Rajput, Dr. Jin-You Lu, Dr. Shan Cong, Dr. Karen Sloyan, and Dr. Srinivas Reddy Tamalampudi KU TIMES
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Cutting-edge research and breakthroughs
Summarizing Arabic Text with AI System Accurately Summarizes Information Written in Arabic and Could Have Great Impact in Many Sectors, Including Government
The amount of information we consume from multiple sources is growing like never before. To handle this massive amount of information, people are turning to computers to provide summarizations that can be quickly read. Advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques have recently been developed by major software companies that successfully paraphrase lengthy English texts better than anything previously available. However, work on algorithms capable of summarizing Arabic text has not been progressing as quickly, until now. A group of researchers from Khalifa University’s Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC) and the Khalifa University College of Engineering have developed artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that can automatically summarize long Arabic texts to produce coherent briefs. Their system overcomes some of the major challenges to automating Arabic summarization, which stem from the complicated nature of the Arabic language.
“The Arabic language tends to have a high degree of ambiguity due to its structure,” explained Ahmad Al-Rubaie, EBTIC’s Head of Research, Operations and Strategy. “In addition, the
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presence of Arabic colloquial and classical variations, marks for pronunciation above and below letters that are often omitted when writing but change word meanings, and differences between formal written classical Arabic and its modern counterpart complicate matters further. Moreover, summarization evaluation standards for Arabic summarization have not reached the maturity of the English language, although this is starting to change, but it remains that different Arabic summarization systems use different evaluation methods.� To tackle the issues of automatic Arabic summarization using AI, EBTIC proposed and implemented a unique
system that combines the advantages of current state-of-the-art summarization research with methods specifically developed for the Arabic language’s complex structure. The system was developed by Lamees Al Qassem as part of her MSc by Research in Engineering. Al Qassem was supervised by Dr. Hassan Barada, Associate Dean of the College of Engineering, Dr. Di Wang, EBTIC Senior Researcher, Ahmad Al-Rubaie and Dr. Nawaf Almoosa, Director of EBTIC and Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She is now pursuing her PhD in Engineering at KU. KU TIMES
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The algorithm produced a summary of recent Arabic news articles from various sources and made them available to users through an easy to use interface. Developed as a complete end-to-end solution, the system was designed with a back-end component that collected newspaper articles from various UAE based newspapers and online news outlets, which it then archived in order to produce summaries for each article. The output was served to users through a mobile application developed on the Android mobile operating system. Summaries of relevant stories were provided to users based on their profiles.
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A limited trial was conducted at KU to test and improve the system followed by demonstrations at various showcases and events where EBTIC was involved. The most recent of these events was EBTIC’s 10th Anniversary celebration in April 2019. The system remains operational and there are current plans to further develop it for use by EBTIC partner. The EBTIC Arabic text summarizer leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP), the branch of AI that helps computers understand, interpret and produce written human language. It works by first running the Arabic text through an algorithm designed by Al Qassim that first detects and extracts nouns, as nouns are representative of the key information contained in sentences. The extracted nouns, as well as a number of other features selected through research and experimentation, are fed into a “Fuzzy Logic” engine, a type of scoring system that determines the degree to which sentences are important and thus should be included in the final summary. Fuzzy Logic is well suited for determining how important a sentence is in an article or text.
“In traditional binary logic the importance of a sentence in an article or text can be either important or not important. In Fuzzy Logic, the level of importance can be an infinite range of importance values, enabling the representation of vague concepts. For example, in Fuzzy Logic, a sentence can be very important, slightly important, not that important, or not important at all,” Dr. Di Wang said.
The team followed a rigorous evaluation criterion when researching and developing the summarization system, which has already garnered significant interest from EBTIC’s partners. A paper describing the system titled “Automatic Arabic Text Summarization Based on Fuzzy Logic” won Best Paper Award at the 2019 UAE Graduate Student Research Competition (GSRC). An extended version of the paper has been accepted for publication at the International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Speech Recognition 2019 to be held at Trento University in Italy. Three other papers have already been published. “The proposed method and its components were tested and compared to existing state-of-the-art systems, at both the component level and system level,” Dr. Barada explained. “For example, our noun extraction algorithm was evaluated against the Stanford morphological analyser to ensure it matches or outperforms the current state-of-theart. The team also looked at the various Arabic summarization engines available and evaluated their system against the others using the same Arabic texts and evaluation method where available and possible.” “The research and development process was demanding, but the result was that we outperformed most, if not all, existing methods that have been implemented,” Al-Rubaie said. Dr. Almoosa added, “The team is currently in discussion with a UAE government agency to adapt the system to be able to summarize information that is more demanding, which would require further enhancements and a greater understanding of the underlying meanings in sentences.”
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Making Incremental Support Vector Regression Greedy to Win the Clash Royale Competition 2019
In a challenge set to teams the world over to construct the most efficient machine learning model, EBTIC walked away with first and second place. Their model to predict win rates of the most popular decks of online video game Clash Royale will now be used to improve the game’s AI engine as well as add new objectively vetted predictive capabilities to the work of EBTIC and its partners. Clash Royale is a video game combining elements from collectible card games, tower defense and multiplayer online battle arena, mixing all the popular game mechanics into a card-based online video game that surpassed USD2.5 billion revenue in the three years since its launch in 2016.
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The game’s objective is to destroy the most opposing towers, with playable troops, buildings, and spells represented as cards. Prior to each battle, players construct a deck of eight cards which they use to attack and defend against their opponent’s cards. Clash Royale is a hugely popular game, and even has its own e-sports world championship. The machine learning element enters into the game at the very start, with both players beginning with four randomly chosen cards from their deck of eight. Once a card has been played, a new card is automatically drawn from the player’s deck. Dr. Dymitr Ruta and Dr. Ling Cen from EBTIC’s Big Data Analytics group developed a model
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to achieve the most accurate win rate predictions from the cards chosen. The two researchers enhanced support vector machine models with their own parallelized greedy search algorithms to take first and second place in the competition. In machine learning, support-vector machines (SVM) are supervised learning models with associated learning algorithms that analyze data and then classify them. Given a set of training examples, each marked as belonging to one or another category, an SVM algorithm builds a model that assigns new examples to each category. Support vector regression (SVR) extends the original capability of the SVM model into the regression space, wherein the relationships among variables are estimated. “The Challenge focused on efficiently predicting the win rates of the most popular Clash Royale decks in 1v1 play using support vector regression,” explained Dr. Cen. “Specifically, the intention was to find out whether it is possible to build an efficient win-rate prediction model on a relatively small subset of decks, whose win rates were estimated in the past.”
“Support vector regression is a powerful supervised machine learning model especially well-suited to normalized or binarized data,” said Dr. Ruta. “However, its quadratic complexity in the number of training examples eliminates it from training on large datasets, especially high dimensionally data with frequent retraining requirements.”
competition,” continued Dr. Ruta. “Hundreds of thousands of labelled data examples were reduced to just hundreds.”
In other words, support vector regression would not be appropriate to use on large datasets like the Clash Royale Challenge 2019 training dataset, which included 100,000 decks comprising exactly 8 cards out of the total of 90 unique possible cards with accompanied win rates computed for over 160 million games.
“With the first place scored by our model, we have demonstrated an extreme efficiency of the proposed data editing strategy, which relatively quickly squeezed out the winning accuracy out of just 1 percent of the original dataset,” said Dr. Ruta. “Our model outperformed over one hundred competitive teams from around the world and our results will now be used to improve the game’s AI engine.”
“We proposed a simple two-stage greedy selection of training data for SVR to maximize its validation set accuracy at the minimum number of training examples and illustrate the performance of such a strategy in the context of the
A greedy algorithm is a simple, intuitive algorithm used in optimization problems. It makes the optimal choice at each step given the data available at each step as it attempts to find the optimal way to solve the entire problem. Such algorithms will take all of the data in a particular problem and then set a rule for which elements to add to the solution at each step.
The team was presented with their awards at the Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS) 2019 conference in September 2019.
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ReCREMA Technology Driving Renewable Energy Production in Saudi Arabia Latest tool from Center to help electric grid operators in Saudi Arabia integrate solar energy into the national grid smoothly and reliably
The world is moving continuously towards the use of more sustainable sources of energy than the fossil fuels on which we predominantly rely today. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) suggests in its 2019 GCC Renewable Energy Market Analysis report that stated plans and targets for renewable energy in the GCC put the region on track to see a major acceleration in renewable energy deployment in the coming years with the UAE and Saudi Arabia at the forefront. “Saudi Arabia is planning to increase the share of renewable energy in the total energy mix, under its ambitious Vision 2030 plan, in order to ensure long term economic stability,” explained Dr. Imen Gherboudj, Senior Research Scientist at the Research Center for Renewable Energy Mapping and Assessment (ReCREMA) at Khalifa University. “The challenges are multiple, including the plan to integrate 27.3GW and 58.7GW of
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renewables by 2023 and 2030, respectively.” To foster the integration of renewable energy sources, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (K.A. CARE) has initiated the development of the Renewable Management Center (RMC) in collaboration with Elia Grid International and Khalifa University. Saudi Arabia is facing increasing demand for electricity and desalinated water as the country’s population and economy grows. According to government estimates, the demand for electricity may exceed 120GW by 2032. Unless alternative energy and energy conservation measures are implemented, the overall demand for fossil fuels to meet this demand will continue to grow along with the associated carbon emissions and opportunity costs of burning resources that could be exported or transformed into higher-value products.
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KU’s ReCREMA was established in 2012 to support the UAE and IRENA in the advancement of a publiclyaccessible database of solar and wind resources. The work done by the center has vastly improved understanding of the solar and wind resources of the Arabian Peninsula. Through its remote sensing, mapping and modeling expertise, ReCREMA has produced a number of tools to help the UAE improve air quality, preserve water resources, and increase the contribution of clean energy. Now, the center is leveraging its expertise in mapping and modeling renewable resources to aid Saudi Arabia in its efforts to bolster its clean energy capacity through its latest innovative tool, the RMC.
“The main function of the RMC is to provide key stakeholders in the electricity sector with information that will ensure a smooth integration of renewable energy sources, which has a direct impact on how the energy sector will manage generation, transmission and distribution,” said Dr. Gherboudj.
“The RMC is equipped with a screen that displays the output of models developed by Khalifa University, including weather, dust and solar forecasts for the Arabian Peninsula. The system also displays renewable power predictions for solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar plants.” The screen will provide information on the renewable energy production potential in an easy and understandable way for the system operators and experts. Solar and wind renewable resources are subject to fluctuations in supply and so predicting their availability will allow the system operator at the national grid to best utilize them. The screen will display the available renewable energy plants with their characteristics, individual and integrated generation profiles (from two days ago, actual, and for two days ahead) for each and all installed renewable energy plants, and past and forecasted weather conditions (irradiation, wind, dust, temperature) in the Kingdom. The screen will also provide information allowing the RMC staff to review historical generation.
“There is great potential to further improve the developed tool for the K.A. CARE-RMC by integrating more components—such as grid architecture, storage capability, etc.—and functionalities— scheduling of power generation, demand response, scheduling battery response—to help reduce the challenges associated with adherence to grid code requirements with intermittent renewable energy resources,” added Dr. Gherboudj.
Detailed research indicates the introduction of alternative sources of energy will ensure a marked reduction in the use of fossil fuels for power generation and water desalination, which means longer-term availability of hydrocarbons for export and national industry. By developing an intuitive system that accurately monitors and helps forecast the availability of renewable resources, ReCREMA is helping Saudi Arabia maximize the utilization of clean energy in its electric grid, supporting the country’s ambitious goal of generating nearly 60GW of renewable energy by 2030. KU TIMES
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Simulated Aircraft Impact Analysis on Nuclear Power Plants Adds to Global Body of Research Fatema Almuhairi, Msc in Mechanical Engineering, dispels fear of radioactive material release in the event of an airplane crash at a nuclear power plant with simulated impact analysis of APR1400 reactor containment building. The nuclear power industry has been developing and improving reactor technology for more than five decades and from day one, there has been a serious focus on the potential hazards of operating nuclear reactors. As with all other industries, the design and operation of nuclear power plants aims to minimize the likelihood of accidents, and avoid major human consequences should they occur. Evidence shows that nuclear power is a safe means of generating electricity with the risk of accidents in the plants themselves low and declining. The Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) plays an essential role in ensuring that the UAE’s nuclear reactors are safe, secure and reliable. And now, so too will research from KU postgraduate student Fatema Obaid Ali Almuhairi, whose thesis focuses on impact analyses on nuclear buildings from aircraft. Almuhairi’s research, titled Aircraft Impact Analysis for APR1400 Reactor Containment Building, will complement
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the safety design features of the APR1400 nuclear reactor, a design developed by the Korean nuclear industry under the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO). The Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in the UAE will comprise four APR1400 nuclear reactors with the first scheduled to become operational by 2020. Attacks on nuclear power plants have been feared since the first nuclear power plant went live in 1954 in Obninsk, Russia. The lack of such attacks is largely due to the fact that many government agencies have developed standards for impeccably tough nuclear reactor walls to keep radiation in and terrorists out. “Aircraft impact on nuclear power plant structures is an issue of global concern, since the consequences of such an impact can be severe and may lead to the release of radioactive material into the environment,” explained Almuhairi.
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“The reactor containment buildings (RCBs) are the last barrier of protection in a nuclear power plant, where it protects the plant from external incidents, prevents the release of radioactive materials during normal operation or accidents, and provides a radiation shield.” A containment building is a reinforced structure enclosing a nuclear reactor, designed to contain the escape of radioactivity. As the fourth and final barrier to radioactive release, the containment plays a critical role in the most severe nuclear reactor accidents. RCBs in the United States are subjected to mandatory testing for a nuclear plant to earn its operating license. In Europe, the European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group ensures plants in the EU conform to standards. While in the UAE, FANR provide regulation to ensure that RCBs are built to withstand extreme conditions. The stringent requirements imposed on a nuclear plant consider the effect of impact from a large commercial aircraft. The external walls of the RCBs, which house critical safety-related equipment and fuels, must stand up to impact without perforating or rupturing. The APR1400 RCB is a pre-stressed concrete containment vessel (PCCV) surrounded by an auxiliary building, which houses additional safety-related equipment and other systems. The RCBs’ characteristic
dome shape and unique material properties make them robust structures. RCBs comprise prestressed tendons, reinforced steel, and liner plates alongside the concrete outer shell. Testing containment buildings is nothing new. In 1988, Sandia National Laboratories conducted a strength test on a large concrete block by slamming a fully loaded F-4 Phantom jet directly at it to investigate the survivability of a nuclear power plant in the event of an attack. The jet disintegrated upon impact while the concrete block remained relatively unscathed. The 482mph impact left only a 64mm deep gouge in the 3.66m wide block from an impact force of over 700 G. Subsequent studies concluded that commercial airliners did not pose a danger. “Compared to previous studies in this field, this work goes a step further by analyzing the effect of aging on the impact response of an APR1400 RCB,” said Almuhairi. “With aging, the RCB’s materials degrade, and as a result, the load-bearing capacity could be compromised. In the event of an aircraft impact on an aged RCB, the structural integrity might be lost.” Three degradation mechanisms were considered in modeling the aging of the containment: liner corrosion, rebar corrosion, and pre-stress loss of tendons. “The impact an Airbus A320 would have on the RCB for the APR1400 was investigated using finite element
analysis,” said Almuhairi. “A new modeling approach was developed to determine the impact pressure of the aircraft, taking into account the change of the aircraft’s cross section during crushing and dividing the impact into three stages. “We found that the unaged RCB is able to withstand the impact load of an Airbus A320 aircraft without liner or rebar failure for impact velocities as great as 300 m/s,” explained Almuhairi. “While aging the RCB caused the plastic liner and rebar strains to increase, the structural integrity of the RCB was maintained for most cases. Full penetration of the RCB was reported only for the unlikely event of an A320 impacting a highly degraded RCB (where all degradation mechanisms were applied simultaneously) at a velocity of 300m/s, a scenario that is judged very unlikely to occur during the design life of 60 years.” Results from studies by the Electric Power Research Institute support Almuhairi’s findings: penetrating even weak reinforced concrete requires multiple hits by high speed artillery shells or specially-designed ‘bunker busting’ artillery—both of which are well beyond what intentional human damage methods are likely to cause. Nuclear reactors are more resistant to attacks from large aircraft than virtually any other civil installations, according to the World Nuclear Association, and Almuhairi’s research contributes to this growing body of evidence while providing peace of mind in case of nefarious intent. KU TIMES
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Easing Bunions Without Surgery: The First-of-its-kind Medical Shoe Engineered at KU Design project from three KU students promises a non-surgical approach to treating one of the most common foot complaints. It is estimated that over 48,000 people in the UAE suffer from bunions, a common ailment of the foot. A bunion is a bony prominence from the misalignment of the metatarsal phalangeal joint (the joint at the base of the big toe) causing the toe to point outward and rotate towards the smaller toes, medically known as hallux valgus deformity. While the precise cause is not known, it is believed that bunions are caused by multiple factors including abnormal foot function and mechanics, such as over-pronation, abnormal anatomy at the joint, and genetic factors. Abdulaziz Alzurahi, Researcher and Lab Manufacturing Assistant at KU and founder of the Bio-Mechanics STAR Online Research Center, guided Aishah Saeed Alzeyoudi and Maitha Mohamed Alhajeri, both Biomedical Engineering graduate students, on a project to investigate the causes of bunions and a non-surgical intervention method as part of the Biomedical Engineering course, supervised by Dr. Kinda Khalaf, Associate Chair in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “Hallux valgus is one of the most common deformities of the forefoot, with a prevalence rate of 23 to 35 percent globally,” said Alzurahi. “To determine potential causes, we conducted a survey to estimate the prevalence in the UAE and analyzed gait cycles among volunteers. We found that the survey was inconclusive but the gait analysis found people with bunions did have an abnormal gait compared to control.” Aside from vanity issues, bunions can be very painful for sufferers. The most common symptom is a hard lump on the side of the foot which often leads to the big toe pointing towards the other toes — or even overlapping them — and hard, red or swollen skin over the lump. People may also
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have pain along the side or bottom of the foot, which is usually worse when wearing shoes and walking. Most shoes can’t accommodate the protrusion — particularly the high heels and pointed-toe shoes favored by many women — and so put pressure on the misaligned joint, eventually causing inflammation and even arthritis. To judge how severe a bunion is, clinicians will x-ray and measure the angles between the bones in the foot. The hallux valgus angle is of particular interest as it is the angle between the first metatarsal bone and the big toe, and the intermetatarsal angle between the first and second metatarsals. Bunions range from mild to severe but all need attention: the metatarsal phalangeal joint (MTP) helps bear and distribute weight and a bunion at this joint can seriously impair the foot’s functioning. In most cases, bunions are treated without surgery to reduce pain and keep the bunion from worsening, but the only way to remove a bunion is surgery. Surgery is an invasive and drastic course of action, involving an intense and long recovery period. Studies suggest that 85 to 90 percent of patients are satisfied with their results but one review found that about a third of patients were dissatisfied even when their pain and toe alignment improved. This may be due to unrealistic expectations of perfectly straight big toes and underestimating the recovery period. In most cases, however, it is possible to intervene before surgery is required. “The non-surgical approach to treating bunions involves several treatments such as toe spacers, well-fitting shoes, walking barefoot, and physiotherapy,” said Alzurahi.
“Our initial design followed the same concept of the invisalign technology used by orthodontists to fix misaligned teeth,” said Alzurahi. “We proposed having curved aligners on the side of the bunion to apply a compressive force until the bone is back in its normal position. However, after consulting the experts, we realized this would make the disorder much worse than we thought, so we changed our approach to apply a dislocation movement to the toe instead.” The aligners create an opposite force reaction to the toes in contact inside the shoe. The magnitude of the force is related to the width of the aligner: the wider the aligner, the more force is created. The team designed three toe spacer sizes to apply different levels of pressure. They plan to improve their design using sensors to change the width of the aligners automatically according to a predetermined therapy plan. The team also plans to improve the materials used to make the shoes more comfortable for patients and reduce the weight of the shoe to allow patients to wear them for longer. “This is one of the best research case studies on bunions,” added Alzurahi. “I am so proud and glad to be part of
this one-of-a-kind study. It was great to initiate this research in the UAE, with a special visit from my side to an orthopedic surgeon who was very impressed by the concept. Until now, we haven’t seen a shoe like this and having a team comprising engineers and medical doctors allowed us to reach a first-of-its-kind prototype design.”
“We designed a shoe that can help treat bunions effectively to reduce the need for surgical intervention. Our team met a podiatrist in Abu Dhabi to evaluate our design and I visited an orthopedic surgeon to gain a surgeon’s point of view on design enhancements.” The result is a medical shoe using toe separators as novel aligners inside the shoe for automatic load generation to the toes — applying an opposite direction force to the toe and bringing it to its normal position over time. The aligners are changed on a bi-weekly basis until normal bone curvature is achieved. KU TIMES
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Criteria for Learning Without Forgetting in Artificial Neural Networks Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have achieved state-of-the-art performance in many machine learning tasks, but are yet to outperform the human brain, not least because they keep forgetting previously learned information. In a paper which won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Computing, Milan, Italy, in July 2019, Dr. Ibrahim Elfadel, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Principal Investigator with the KU Center for Cyber Physical Systems, Dr. Rupesh Raj Karn, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Dr. Prabhakar Kudva, IBM Research Staff Member address this important problem of forgetful systems. Artificial neural networks (ANN) are computing systems inspired by biological neural networks found in animal brains. Such systems learn to perform tasks by considering examples, generally without being programmed with task-specific rules. In image recognition, for example, an ANN may learn to identify images that contain cats by being trained on example images that have been manually labelled as “cat” or “not cat” and then using these the trained network to identify cats in other images. They do this without any prior knowledge of what constitutes a cat—i.e. that they have tails, whiskers and fur—by generating identifying characteristics from the examples they process. However, when building a system or adding new capabilities, increasing the number of tasks required means that the system must preserve the inference accuracy based on the
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original data while incrementally training on additional data. For example, a robot may be delivered to a customer’s house with a set of default object recognition capabilities, but new site-specific object models may needed for the robot to navigate in the presence of objects not included in the original training set. “Traditional machine learning models have typically assumed that all the training data is available prior to the model building phase,” explained Dr. Elfadel. “Very often, this is not the case.”
almost always needs to start from scratch. Granting ANNs with this ability is a cognitive computing conundrum. “You can think of it this way: in an ANN (and possibly also in the human brain) memory data is encoded diffusively in the weights of the connections between the neurons,” explained Dr. Elfadel. “It is not easy to pin down the memory cells undergoing catastrophic forgetting. Nor is it easy to pin down what is being forgotten among already stored data.”
ANNs, especially those with multiple interconnected layers of neurons, also known as Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), have a higher capacity for progressive learning than other traditional machine learning models, mainly due to the potentially large number of parameters which can be tuned to incrementally build more accurate models. “However, even progressive learning on such DNNs cannot go on forever,” said Dr. Elfadel.
One possible solution is task progressive learning. This should effectively transfer knowledge across a series of tasks, incorporating prior knowledge at each layer by reusing old computations in learning new ones. Progressive networks are designed to retain a pool of pre-trained models throughout training and learn lateral connections to extract useful features for new tasks—much like the human brain does.
PROGRAMMING AI TO NOT FORGET WITH TASK PROGRESSIVE LEARNING Catastrophic forgetting is the tendency of an ANN to completely and abruptly forget previously learned information upon learning new information. This makes continual learning difficult. While an ANN is based on the design of the human brain, there’s a fundamental difference between the two: humans leverage prior experiences to acquire new knowledge, but an AI system
“Task progressive learning without catastrophic forgetting using artificial neural networks has demonstrated viability and promise,” said Dr. Elfadel. “Due to the large number of ANN hyper-parameters, a model already trained over a group of tasks can further learn a new task without forgetting the previous ones.” Several algorithms have been proposed for progressive learning, including synaptic weight consolidation, ensemble, rehearsal, and sparse coding.
DETECTING INFORMATION SATURATION IN ANNs “One major problem with such methods, however, is that they fail to detect the congestion in the ANN shared parameter space to indicate the saturation of the existing network and its inability to add new tasks using progressive learning,” explained Dr. Elfadel. “The detection of such saturation is especially needed to avoid the catastrophic forgetting of old trained tasks and the concurrent loss in their generalization quality. An ANN is based on a collection of connected units called artificial neurons, with each connection able to transmit a signal to other neurons. An artificial neuron that receives a signal then processes it and signals other neurons connected to it. These connections have a “weight” that adjusts as learning proceeds.
The weight increases or decreases the strength of the signal at a connection. “In all these methods, the set of ANN weights needed to accommodate the new tasks grow with their number. Intuitively, the ANN should become congested as soon as the set size is too high relative to the total number of weights. This intuitive congestion measure is clearly correlated with the onset of catastrophic forgetting.” “In progressive learning, a tuning criterion is typically applied over the trajectory of ‘important’ ANN parameters in weight space so that their contours do not deviate much with respect to those defined by older tasks,” explained Dr. Elfadel. “The basic idea is that in an ANN, congestion should be detected when all of the parameters become
‘important’ for the training of older tasks. Once this is achieved, a barrier to progressive learning is created, and any further learning of new tasks would result in the catastrophic forgetting of older tasks.” The paper proposes a methodology for ANN congestion detection based on computing the Hessian of the ANN loss function at the optimal weights for a group of previously learned tasks. In mathematics, the Hessian describes the local curvature of a function of many variables.
PREDICTING SATURATION WITH HEURISTIC ALGORITHMS “Since the Hessian calculation is compute-intensive, we provide Hessian approximation heuristics that are computationally efficient,” said Dr. Elfadel. “The algorithms KU TIMES
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are implemented and analyzed in the context of two cloud network security datasets with results showing that the proposed metrics give an accurate assessment of the ANN progressive learning capacity for these datasets. Furthermore, the results show that progressive learning capacity is very much data-dependent with the network security data sets exhibiting higher congestion thresholds for progressive learning than the more traditional image data sets used in DNNs.” The paper describes how a snapshot of the parameters is taken after each progressive training phase, with the rank of the loss function Hessian measured at these parameters. Closeness to full rank is indicator of a congestion risk in the ANN and of possible catastrophic forgetting. “Our work provides a way to measure congestion and can be applied to several incremental learning paradigms such as multitask continual learning, transfer learning, and progressive learning, to measure the risk of catastrophic forgetting with the learning of newer tasks,” said Dr. Elfadel. “We are very pleased with this award and grateful to the KU Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems and its Center of Cyber Physical Systems for facilitating our participation in this IEEE conference. We hope that our techniques will become part of the automated machine learning design toolbox of data scientists and cognitive system designers.”
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How Self-Driving Cars are Learning to Plan Under Uncertainty
Dr. Majid Khonji, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, presents his research on autonomous vehicles at the IJCAI in Macao, China
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“A robust AV perception algorithm should account for different sources of uncertainty and should provide a probabilistic view of the world that captures what is unknown in the environment. Such a probabilistic view is essential to generate control policies that are quantifiably safe,” says Dr. Majid Khonji, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and member of KU’s Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS). However, current state-of-the-art methods for dealing with safety are experimental and are not backed by a rigorous theoretical foundation, Dr. Khonji explained. This means, AVs are trained through repetition until someone decides it is statistically safe, “which is biased towards the test environment and doesn’t give strong theoretical guarantees on safety.”
Programming self-driving cars so that they can navigate unknown roads safely is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry. Uncertain environments, such as extreme weather and unknown roads, or when errors occur in an AV’s sensors or cameras, pose several technical challenges to an AV’s perception algorithms – the algorithms that allow a car to understand what it “sees.”
In August, Dr. Khonji presented a paper at this year’s International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), which is one of the leading global conferences on Artificial Intelligence, on the algorithms he is developing to help robots and AVs handle uncertainty in a much safer, more predictable way. His algorithms enable an AV to plan safe trajectories under uncertainties so that the probability of collision is below a given threshold. His findings are being implemented in a collaborative research project with MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and another with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) through the KUKAIST Joint Research Center.
Dr. Khonji is working with KU researchers Dr. Jorge Dias, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Dr. Lakmal Seneviratne, Professor of Robotics and Director of the Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS). “Our algorithm is more rigorous and gives a theoretical guarantee on safety,” Dr. Khonji explained. A lack of proper theoretical treatment for the problem of planning under uncertainty may be the reason why autonomous vehicles are yet to fully take off in urban centers around the world. High-profile AV accidents reveal serious safety issues, but Dr. Khonji believes there is a solution that can help prevent serious accidents and AV mishaps, and it lies in the math. Dr. Khonji and his team proposed a software stack, or chain of algorithms, designed to enable AVs to determine uncertainty from the environment through the three key subsystems of perception, prediction, and planning and control. Their rigorous algorithms and mathematical models directly address the problem of trajectory optimization under uncertainty, which is considered in its simplest form an NP-Hard problem – a set of problems that have no optimal solution within a reasonable running time – through the best “close-to-optimal approximation algorithm attainable in theory.” KU TIMES
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Research into Drone Usage by Militant Groups by KU Professor Cited in UN Security Council Report Research into drone usage by militant groups by Dr. Ash Rossiter, Assistant Professor of International Security, has been cited in a United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) report, titled “Greater Efforts Needed to Address the Potential Risks Posed by Terrorist Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems.” CTED issued the Trends Alert following increased concern from Member States to the potential risks posed by terrorist use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). “Unmanned aircraft systems, colloquially known as ‘drones’, comprise an unmanned aircraft and its associated elements, including a remote pilot and the system of communication between the two,” reads the report. The UN is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented, and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. CTED Trends Alerts are designed to increase awareness of emerging trends identified through CTED’s engagement with UN Member States and include relevant evidence-based research from members of the CTED Global Research Network and expert researchers from around the world. The price of drones has fallen dramatically; they’re now available to anyone with a passing interest in UAS. Beyond entertainment purposes, this technology offers myriad potential. But as useful and entertaining as drones may be, this increased accessibility has led to renewed attempts by malicious actors, including organized crime and terrorist groups, to exploit UAS for nefarious purposes. “Judging by recent media reporting and pronouncements by senior US military and security officials, the use of drones by militant groups is both reshaping conflict between armed non-state actors and state parties and now presents a grave and direct threat to nations in the West and elsewhere,” said Dr. Rossiter. “Such is the potency ascribed to drones that their mere appearance is enough to worry some authorities.”
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According to the CTED report, including citations from Dr. Rossiter, terrorists and non-State armed groups have successfully acquired and weaponized commercial UAS with small improvised explosive devices to conduct lethal attacks in conflict zones. “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) played a leading role in this innovation, and has disseminated guidance material to its supporters on executing attacks using UAS,” reads the report. Dr. Rossiter’s paper, titled “Drone usage by militant groups: exploring variation in adoption,” published in Defense and Security Analysis, details this, saying the use of a variety of systems by militant groups in Syria and Iraq has attracted considerable attention from the public, policymakers, and warfighters alike.
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oil field in Saudi Arabia on September 14, suspending around half of the Kingdom’s daily oil production. “Based on the recent experiences of Western militaries in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is perhaps unsurprising that much of the current concern about the use of cheap, commercially available or modified drones has focused on their use as a delivery system for improvised explosive devices,” said Dr. Rossiter. “Drones carrying IEDs could further increase the physical separation between state and non-state combatants in violent encounters but they are also employed away from the battlefield, causing huge damage to arms depots and energy infrastructure.” Small, commercially-available drones have been used by militants for surveillance and reconnaissance tasks, and also for the wider organizational goals of propaganda and publicity. The CTED report explains the use of UAS by terrorists encompasses four interlinked and overlapping areas: attacks, disruption, surveillance, and propaganda.
“Referring particularly to events in December 2016 in and around Mosul, the head of US Special Operations Command concluded that the adaptive use of commercially available drones by ISIL was the ‘most daunting problem’ his operators faced on the battlefield in 2016,” said Dr. Rossiter. “General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told a Senate committee during his reappointment hearing that drones were ‘at the top of our list for current emerging threats.’ For many in the US security establishment, the threat will only increase in the future and migrate from the battlefield to the homeland.” Recently, this threat has warranted the attention it receives. Far beyond being a nuisance and security annoyance in restricted areas including Dubai and Gatwick airports, a coordinated attack by 10 drones caused fires at a major oil processing facility and nearby
“With the objective of enhancing organizational reputation, many groups fighting in Syria and Iraq have used drones extensively to film fighting and martyrdom operations,” explained Dr. Rossiter. “Through clever curation, ISIL has even used footage of winged drones in flight with imagery of bomblets being dropped to mislead viewers about the extent of their capabilities. It’s difficult to estimate the degree to which drone video footage has actually benefited various groups, but the fact that more and more groups are sharing footage of their operations tells us that they at least think it’s a very important tool for garnering support.” Although United Nations Member States take varied approaches to countering UAS through a combination of regulation and security frameworks, it is well-established that counter-UAS technologies to detect and intercept UAS in flight are required. “As stopping the spread of readily available commercial drones is not an option, warfighters engaged in low-intensity conflict will need to develop preventative measures either physically to stop drones or interrupt their radio signals electronically,” said Dr. Rossiter. “As countermeasures mature, militant groups may see fewer advantages in obtaining and operating drones.” The CTED report highlights that the need for a transnational response is emphasized by research including that of Dr. Rossiter, showing the impact work at Khalifa University can have on an international scale.
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TO UNLEASH INGENUITY THE MISSION
At Khalifa University, we are constantly pushing the boundaries to develop new energy solutions that will help nations keep their environmental and energy needs in balance. Through the Masdar Institute, our researchers are ensuring humankind can continue to expand and advance without further derailing the planet’s climate by inventing better, more sustainable ways to power industries, cities and homes. Join Khalifa University to create game-changing solutions to solve the world’s most pressing energy challenges. ku.ac.ae
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