KU TIMES | Issue 3

Issue 3 | Oct 2019

Khalifa University Kicks Off New Academic Year and Reflects on Achievements from 2018 - 2019

KU WELCOMES NEW STUDENTS AND FACULTY

BODY WORLDS BY KHALIFA UNIVERSITY LAUNCHES

EBTIC WINS AWARDS AT TWO INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES

HH Sheikh Hamed inaugurated KU’s new medical museum, The Body Museum, which is hosting the BODY WORLDS Exhibition for the first time in the Arab world.

SKIN-DEEP COMMUNICATION: USING THE HUMAN BODY TO TRANSMIT BIODATA AMONGST WEARABLE MEDICAL DEVICES Dr. Ibrahim Elfadel showcases the first ever successful body-coupled communication transmission at conference in Germany.

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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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KHALIFA UNIVERSITY’S SUCCESS IN DEVELOPING YOUTH HIGHLIGHTED AT AQDAR WORLD SUMMIT INTERVIEW WITH SHAIKH TAHNOON BIN KHALIFA BIN MOHAMMED AL NAHYAN ON HIS 8-WEEK INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE AT ST GEORGE’S HOSPITAL IN LONDON Shaikh Tahnoon Bin Khalifa Bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, Biomedical Engineering bachelor’s student at Khalifa University, recently completed his summer internship in the UK. Here are excerpts of an interview with Shaikh Tahnoon on his personal experience.

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HH SHEIKH HAMED ATTENDS KU’S FIRST WHITE COAT CEREMONY AND INAUGURATES THE BODY MUSEUM

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KHALIFA UNIVERSITY’S SUCCESS IN DEVELOPING YOUTH HIGHLIGHTED AT AQDAR WORLD SUMMIT

DOCTORS-TO-BE: DE-STRESS BEFORE CLASSES

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DARKMATTER AND KHALIFA UNIVERSITY LAUNCH CYBERSECURITY RESEARCH AWARD

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES ADDS NEW BSC IN PHYSICS PROGRAM

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SHANGHAI-BASED ACADEMIC RANKING OF WORLD UNIVERSITIES 2019 PLACES KHALIFA UNIVERSITY TOP IN UAE

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THE CLOAK OF COMPASSION: WHITE COAT CEREMONY INDUCTS FIRST CLASS OF FUTURE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS

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LEADING-EDGE ENERGY AND WATER PROJECTS ON DISPLAY AT 24TH WORLD ENERGY SUMMIT

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THREE NEW RESEARCH CENTERS LAUNCHED TO FOCUS ON CARBON CAPTURE, ADVANCED MATERIALS AND SUPPLY CHAIN LOGISTICS

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AZELIO TO PARTNER WITH KHALIFA UNIVERSITY AND MASDAR TO INSTALL NEW CLEAN-TECH PILOT PROJECT AT MASDAR CITY

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FIRST C2PS SYMPOSIUM ON APPLIED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND CYBER SECURITY HOSTED AT KHALIFA UNIVERSITY

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AP WORKSHOP AT KHALIFA UNIVERSITY CONVENES HUNDREDS OF EDUCATORS

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KU INTERNS LEARN ABOUT CULTURE AND ENERGY SECTORS IN JAPAN

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FOLLOWING PROGRESS TOWARDS MBZIRC 2020

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WELCOME NEW KU FACULTY!

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WELCOME NEW KU STUDENTS!

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KU CELEBRATES BOLD ACHIEVEMENTS FROM 2018-2019 ACADEMIC YEAR

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38 KU Senior Management Joins 8 UAE Ministers at First-of-its-Kind Summit Focused on Empowering Communities and Developing Education in Moscow and Signs MoU with leading Russian Technical University.

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JAPANESE INTERNS VISIT KU

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UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO STUDENTS VISIT KU

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KU STARTUPS DELIVER PITCHES AT DEMO DAY

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INTERNSHIP SPOTLIGHT FACULTY INVITED TO DELIVER LECTURES AT THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE & JUDGE INTERSEC AWARDS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

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AUGUST & SEPTEMBER SEMINARS

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BIOTECHNOLOGY CENTER INTERNS ANALYZE THYROID DISEASE IN EMIRATIS

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INTERVIEW WITH SHAIKH TAHNOON BIN KHALIFA BIN MOHAMMED AL NAHYAN ON HIS 8-WEEK INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE AT ST GEORGE’S HOSPITAL IN LONDON

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TAWAZUN SEEDS PROGRAM

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SOCIETY FOR UNDERWATER TECHNOLOGY HOSTS SEMINAR AT KU

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JAXA TEACHES KHALIFA UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO CONTROL ROBOTS IN SPACE

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EBTIC UPSKILLS TELECOMMUNICATIONS REGULATORY AUTHORITY (TRA) EXECUTIVES THROUGH AI WORKSHOP

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UAE MILITARY HISTORY TAKES TO THE STAGE AS KU PROFESSOR PUBLISHES NEW RESEARCH

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PROLIFIC PROFESSORS

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SKIN-DEEP COMMUNICATION: USING THE HUMAN BODY TO TRANSMIT BIODATA AMONG WEARABLE MEDICAL DEVICES

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR CYBER CRISIS MANAGEMENT EXPERTISE SHARED

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EBTIC WINS TWO AWARDS AT COMPUTING AI & MACHINE LEARNING AWARDS 2019 FOR INTUITU PROJECT

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EBTIC TAKES 3RD IN GECCO 2019 COMPETITION

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PULLING SALT OUT OF SEAWATER WITH MAGNETS

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NEW LOW-COST CATALYSTS FOR CLEANER ENERGY

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DUBAI WORLD CONGRESS FOR SELF-DRIVING TRANSPORT 15 - 16 OCTOBER 2019

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WETEX

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

Welcome New KU Faculty!

Khalifa University welcomed 20 new faculty members to the College of Engineering and College of Arts and Sciences, and 18 new faculty to the College of Medicine and Health Sciences in August. The outstanding class of new faculty are experts in their field, and hail from some of the world’s top-ranking universities. The expertise they will bring to Khalifa University is unparalleled!

KU is proud to recruit top quality faculty from around the world to achieve our goal of becoming a center of educational excellence and a developer of valuable innovations for the UAE and wider world.

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Welcome New KU Students!

Newly Admitted Undergraduate, Graduate and Medical Students Welcomed at Fall 2019 New Student Orientations Khalifa University welcomed a total of 712 local and international undergraduate students and 152 local and international postgraduate students to the College of Engineering and College of Arts and Sciences, along with 30 new medical students to the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, during New Student Orientation in August.

Khalifa University is committed to helping each of you build your skills, maximize your potential, and achieve your goals!

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KU Celebrates Bold Achievements from 2018 - 2019 Academic Year Partnerships, Recognitions and New Launches Inspire New Successes in Year to Come

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Launching of new initiatives, collaborations, regional and global recognitions, as well as participating in and hosting major international conferences have transformed 2018-19 into an academic year of milestones for Khalifa University.

The university marked the successful completion of the critical design review (CDR) for MYSAT-2, the university’s second CubeSat. Earlier, MYSAT-1, the first CubeSat developed

by Khalifa University students, successfully captured an image of earth in March 2019, following its launch in November 2018.

The launch of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences (CMHS) began KU’s foray into the healthcare sector, designed to contribute to the UAE’s ecosystem with qualified, trained, and skilled care providers and medical professionals.

Reiterating its involvement in the rapidly growing space and aerospace sector, two Khalifa University start-ups – Ayn Astra and Farmin – won UAE Space Agency-Krypto Labs’ Joint GeoTech Innovation Program for Incubation. Ayn Astra focuses on providing land monitoring services using satellite data, while Farmin aims to develop optimal urban and rural land management strategies.

The year also witnessed the official launch of the next edition of the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC), scheduled to take place in February 2020 to focus on the role of robotics and artificial intelligence as smart city solutions. The global competition aims to provide an environment to foster innovation and technical excellence in robotics, while encouraging spectacular performance with robotics technology.

Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice President, said:

“Each year reflects our qualitative and quantitative success that consolidate our status as a globally recognized researchoriented academic institution. We believe our achievements will continue across all segments even as we seek to expand our research areas and diversify our academic offerings.”

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TIE-UPS AND COLLABORATIONS Tie-Ups and Collaborations

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In partnerships, Khalifa University is collaborating with Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) for the Dubai World Challenge for SelfDriving Transport, supporting the UAE’s progress towards adoption of this new mode of transport.

KU is also collaborating with the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science Middle East Fellowship Program, offering three postdoctoral and three PhD fellowships including one exclusively for a UAE national student. A partnership with the China Scholarship Council (CSC), the region’s first, enables up

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to 30 Chinese students each year to pursue their PhD studies at Khalifa University. The launch of a Joint Innovation Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence for Clean Energy with Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, was another key collaboration. The university also signed an MoU with Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics to further strengthen industry-academia collaborations.

Khalifa University hosted major events including the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s firstever IEEE Global Communications Conference, Globecom 2018; the Khalifa University-Mubadala-SRC Forum on Artificial Intelligence (AI); and the Times Higher Education Asia Universities Summit 2019.

KU also participated in major events, including the 14th International Defense Exhibition (IDEX 2019), the 5th Naval Defense Exhibition (NAVDEX 2019), and Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) 2019.

During ADSW 2019, KU celebrated the success of the its Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium (SBRC), which produced the first batch of sustainable halophyte-based biofuel at its Seawater Energy and Agriculture System (SEAS) facility that was combined with traditional jet fuel to power the world’s first commercial flight on an Etihad Airways Boeing 787 from Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam. The SEAS pilot facility recently completed a major upgrade to improve its performance and the healthy growth of its salt-tolerant plants and fish.

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Local and International Recognitions Student success at international and regional competitions not only marked faculty expertise at Khalifa University but also helped drive innovations.

These include the 2019 MENA SPE PetroBowlÂŽ Regional Championship by Petroleum Engineering students, ninth place out of 104 universities at the Design Build Fly (DBF) 2019 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Competition in the US, and top honors for two projects at the 14th IEEE UAE Student Day 2019 competition.

Several students won honors for their innovations at the Think Science Fair 2019 when a large number of school students from grades 9-12, as well as undergraduate students, showcased their prototypes at the 2019 Think Science Competition.

Moreover, a team of six Electrical and Computer Engineering bachelor students became one of five global finalist teams to present a project at the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) Student Design Competition during the International

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Symposium for Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) 2019 in Japan. Also, the ‘SparKU’ team of nine Mechanical, Electrical, Computer and Chemical Engineering students won eighth place out of 31 international universities at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage 2019 competition in the US.

KU students also claimed five of the 11 Best Paper Awards at the fifth UAE Graduate Students Research Conference (GSRC 2019) in which nearly half of the 120 finalist papers came from KU graduate students.

During the year, the Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC), which leads research into advancing intelligent systems technologies for next generation networks, celebrated its 10th anniversary. Founded by Khalifa University, Etisalat and BT, and supported by the ICT Fund, EBTIC has

over 40 patents granted, with 60 more currently being filed in ICT, big data, and data storage.

Climbing the Rankings Capping these achievements came the international rankings.

In the most recent Times Higher Education (THE) 2019 Young University Rankings, Khalifa University placed among the top 40 leading institutions with a ranking of 38th out of 351 academic institutions, a jump of 11 slots from the last year.

In the QS World University Rankings 2020, the University ranked 268th overall with a jump of 47 slots, out of the 1,000 universities assessed from 82 different locations across the world, and remains the top-rated institution in the UAE.

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Doctors-to-be: De-stress Before Classes KU’s new medical students spent Thursday, 29 August, sharing ideas and getting to know each other through fun team-building exercises during Falcon Day, an event organized by Falcon Learning Communities to engage students, staff and faculty of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences in physical and mental activities to stimulate brains and camaraderie before the start of classes.

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Physics, the first course required by the major.

KU’s development of a Physics BSc degree was motivated by wide-ranging opportunities and educational and career prospects for anticipated graduates.

College of Arts and Sciences adds New BSc in Physics Program

The Physics Department is delighted to announce that its Physics BSc Degree has received initial accreditation from the UAE’s Commission for Academic Accreditation (CAA).

This new KU degree adds to the rapidly growing range of science degree offerings at the university.

The College of Arts and Sciences now offers four BSc Programs in Petroleum Geosciences, Applied Mathematics & Statistics, Chemistry, and Physics.

Already this semester, there are ten KU students who are enrolled in a new course: PHYS 103 Orientation to

The Physics Department has created an efficient and flexible academic program, aimed to inspire and facilitate students’ exploration of their interests while providing practical training that is relevant to the UAE’s economic needs and aligned with the country’s strategic vision.

The degree’s flexibility will allow students to have options, with an initial menu of elective tracks in Engineering Physics, Space Science, and Physics Education.

The Physics BSc degree is also designed to readily accommodate an additional Minor degree, such as the recently announced Minor in Artificial Intelligence or the options in Nuclear Engineering or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, all offered by the College of Engineering.

To help supply the required manpower for the new BSc degree, the Physics Department recently grew by four faculty members, who all began their first teaching assignments in August.

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where each future medical professional receives their white coat.

In the nineteenth century, respect for the certainty of science was in stark contrast to the quackery and mysticism that plagued medicine at the time and to emphasize the transition to the more scientific approach to modern medicine, physicians rejected the black overcoat of yesteryear for the most recognizable symbol of the scientist—the white lab coat.

The Cloak of Compassion: White Coat Ceremony Inducts First Class of Future Medical Professionals The first day of school is exciting for everyone; but possibly none more so than for the very first class of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at Khalifa University. The new College marked the entrance of the first cohort of students into the medical profession with a White Coat Ceremony held in the Main Campus Auditorium on Tuesday September 10.

A relatively new, but no less momentous ritual, the white coat ceremony is a rite of passage in the journey toward a healthcare career and involves a formal “coating” of students,

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Before even their first class, students are initiated into the medical profession with the commitment to what their white coat represents: becoming (and staying) proficient in the science and technique of medicine and to the human obligations of being a doctor.

The white coat reminds students of their professional duties by being easily recognizable and a repository for information. Pockets hold reference cards and penlights, reflex hammers and notebooks; the neck is adorned by a stethoscope. Above all, the coat is a cloak of compassion.

Donning the white coat is a promise to pursue medical education diligently and to embody all the vital attributes of a good doctor: compassion, honesty, tolerance and respect. It’s a promise to always strive to be worthy of the privilege of being a doctor and a warm welcome to a profession of status and importance.

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Three New Research Centers Launched to Focus on Carbon Capture, Advanced Materials and Supply Chain Logistics New Research Centers to Further Expand Scope of Khalifa University’s Research Areas to Cover UAE’s Strategic Sectors Over the summer, Khalifa University launched three new research centers in carbon capture, advanced materials and supply chain logistics, bringing the University’s total number of specialized research centers to 18 across all three campuses. The new centers strengthen KU’s position as a leading academic institution with a wide array of research centers, covering the full spectrum of industry and economic sectors.

ADAM is the first R&D center in the UAE to focus on 3D printing. It aims to develop advanced methods for additive manufacturing design and processes, printable materials and three-dimensional material architectures and components, in order to drive rapid development and utilization of advanced materials locally and internationally. ADAM’s director is Dr. Rashid Abu Al Rub, Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.

Together with KU’s existing research centers, which include the recently developed KU-KAIST Joint Research Center, the University’s 18 research centers respond to the technical challenges posed by the country’s ambitious national goals and sectoral development targets.

Included below is a full list of KU’s research centers, along with the center’s affiliated research institute and center director:

The three new research centers are the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and Hydrogen (RICH), the Advanced Digital & Additive Manufacturing Center (ADAM), and the Center for Digital Supply Chain and Operations Management (DSOM). The new centers were developed in direct response to the UAE’s rapidly evolving national goals and strategic needs.

MASDAR INSTITUTE

The RICH will focus on the research and development of novel CO2 capture and utilization (CCU) technologies as well as H2 production, storage and distribution. The RICH center, which is directed by Dr. Lourdes Vega, Professor of Chemical Engineering, joins five other research centers affiliated with Masdar Institute, one of KU’s three flagship research institutes. The Masdar Institute is focused on clean and renewable energy as well as water and environment research.

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The DSOM will conduct high quality, impactful research in supply chain analytics, digital operations management and the future of work in digital enterprises. The Center will cover topics that include digital transactions, management, and optimization in the domains of maritime logistics, manufacturing production, and health care delivery. DSOM’s director is Dr. Mohammed Omar, Professor of Industrial Systems and Engineering.

Research Center for Renewable Energy Mapping and Assessment (ReCREMA) DR. HOSNI GHEDIRA

Nuclear Technology Center (NTC)

Advanced Power and Energy Center (APEC) DR. EHAB EL-SAADANY

Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium (SBRC) D R . A L E J A N D R O R I O S G A LVA N

Center for Membranes and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT) D R . H A S S A N A R A FAT

Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and Hydrogen DR. LOURDES VEGA KU TIMES

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS INSTITUTE Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC) D R . N AWA F A L M O O S A

First C2PS Symposium on Applied Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security Hosted at Khalifa University

System-on-Chip Center (SoCC) DR. BAKER MOHAMAD

KU Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS) D R . L A K M A L S E N E V I R AT N E

KU Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (C2PS) DR. ERNESTO DAMIANI

KU-KAIST Joint Research Center DR. DANIEL CHOI

PETROLEUM INSTITUTE Center for Catalysis and Separation (CeCaS) D R . K Y R I A K I P O LY C H R O N O P O U L O U

Gas Research Center DR. PETER RODGERS (ACTING)

OTHER RESEARCH CENTERS Aerospace Research and Innovation Center (ARIC) DR. WESLEY CANTWELL

Digital Supply Chain and Operations Management

At its first symposium on September 12, the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (C2PS) convened center researchers, potential research partners, guest speakers from institutions around the world, and organizations involved in the AI industry to discuss applied artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.

The projects undertaken at the center were proudly presented under two of its four themes responding to the major challenges of Industry 4.0; the exponential growth in the size of ambient data, particularly in the context of the Internet of Everything; and the need to ultimately shift from assisted to autonomous intelligence paradigms. Techniques for establishing trust relations among internet-of-everything (IoE) devices, edge processors, cloud-based applications, and other components of the cyber-physical systems (CPS) ecosystem were also highlighted.

“We aim to create understanding and empowerment through support and development of existing technological capabilities and responsibility for global standardization,” said Dr. Ernesto Damiani, C2PS Director. “In doing so, we are improving quality of life, as well as the cyber technology experience for users in the long term.”

DR. MOHAMED OMAR

Advanced Digital & Additive Manufacturing (ADAM) Center DR. RASHID ABUALRUB

Center for Biotechnology (BTC) D R . H A B I B A A L S A FA R

Healthcare Engineering Innovation Center (HEIC) D R . C E S A R E S T E FA N I N I

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After opening remarks from Dr. Arif Al Hammadi, Executive Vice President, and Dr. Steve Griffiths, Senior Vice President of Research and Development, explaining the university’s commitment to researching the complete range of technological areas underlying CPS and supporting the secure technological innovations required to achieve the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, Dr. Damiani opened the symposium with a presentation on the open problems in artificial intelligence and security.

“We are privileged to live in such a dynamic time where emerging technologies create endless opportunities for value creation,”

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he said. “Looking back to the

last decade, we can easily highlight the game changers— the discoveries that ushered in a new framework for thinking, spurred scientific enquiry, and revolutionized our lives.

Thanks to such discoveries, we no longer assert that something is technologically impossible; we only wonder how long before it will fit in the hand of a child.

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to add efficiency at all layers of our globalized society’s fabric. From industry, to business, government, and even entertainment, IT is going to change our lives for the better, enabling a smarter, sustainable future.”

Delegates were offered a glimpse of this future through many presentations, including that of key note speaker Dr. Fakhri Karray, Visiting Professor and Director of the Waterloo University’s Center for Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

Dr. Karray explained the advances in intelligent mobility and how the goal is to design more efficient, more intelligent, and safer transportation systems better suited to the latest advances in information and communication technologies. He laid out the challenges and opportunities in designing the next generation autonomous vehicles and building the more sustainable cities of the future.

Following Dr. Karray, Dr. Naoufel Werghi, Associate Professor at C2PS, introduced the concept of visual data representation and its importance in the process of facial identification. He explained that face recognition applications and distinguishing features within the spectrum of biometric modalities have been rigorously researched, but that there are new challenges to facial data that need to be researched. Dr. Werghi emphasized the vital role of face shape representation when dealing with 3D images and addressed the problem of people identification in fully arbitrary and extreme conditions.

Fellow Research Scholar in C2PS, Dr. Song-Kyoo Kim followed, introducing a framework for how to appropriately adopt and adjust machine learning (ML) techniques to construct electrocardiogram-based (ECG) biometric authentication schemes.

The proposed framework can help investigators and developers on ECG-based biometric authentication mechanisms define the boundaries of required datasets and get training data with good quality.

Dr. Ibrahim Elfadel, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was joined by Dr. Rupesh Karn, Postdoctoral Fellow, to survey the field programmable gate array (FPGA) virtualization challenges, and the various solutions proposed by academia and industry to address them. They explained how the pressing performance demands of AI workloads have led data centers and cloud service providers to deploy heterogeneous hardware fabrics, including CPUs, GPUs and FGPAs that offer users a wide spectrum of performance and cost options. They concluded that FPGAs provide more hardware flexibility, higher performance, and a lower power footprint, but that they present distinct challenges to the deployment of a lightweight virtualization layer that does not hamper the advantages of their bare-metal usage.

Lunch was succeeded by a presentation from visiting professor Dr. Moataz Ahmed, Associate Professor of Information and Computer Science at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, on artificial lifts in the oil industry and how automation of their monitoring can improve performance and prevent financial losses. Importantly, he explained how just a one percent improvement in their performance could provide over half a million additional barrels of oil each day worldwide, and that various machine learning methods could be used to

monitor conditions, detect anomalies, identify issues, and predict failures in artificial lift devices.

With the tremendous advances in ubiquitous computing, mobile crowd sourcing (MCS) has become an appealing part of IoT, explained KU’s Dr. Rabeb Mizouni, Associate Professor of Computer Engineering, and Engineer Menatella Abououf. They detailed how in MCS systems, workers collect data with a certain quality of service (QoS) and get incentivized in return, but that MCS systems are vulnerable to misbehavior, with workers submitting false or fake reports to degrade the QoS or maximize their profit with minimal costs. They presented a selection approach based on game-theory in their presentation, in which their model detects and eliminates misbehavior.

The final presentation was delivered by visiting scholar Dr. Emanuele Bellini, contributor to the European Virtual Institute for Integrated Risk Management.

Dr. Bellini noted that it is cumbersome to evaluate the credibility of messages transmitted on an open and vast network, and that a decentralized trust management system, made possible through block chain technology, can authenticate the messages received from other systems. His talk focused on the adoption of block chain in trust and reputation management systems implementation, highlighting significant trends and providing valuable recommendations.

A panel discussion rounded off the event, with Dr. Damiani closing the symposium.

The C2PS Symposium brought together some of the most innovative minds in cyber-physical systems and computer technology sectors, reflecting KU’s commitment to creating an environment that encourages the sharing of ideas about key areas of science and engineering, which can lead to further innovation and useful collaborations.

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KU Interns Learn about Culture and Energy Sectors in Japan Ten female engineering students from Khalifa University have returned from Japan where they participated in the collaborative Abu Dhabi Oil Company/ Cosmo Oil Company/Japan Cooperation Center for Petroleum (ADOC/Cosmo/JCCP) Internship Program 2019. The students enjoyed a meaningful cultural immersion during their two-week internship. They visited famous universities in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, and received hands-on exposure to global companies in the oil, energy, and manufacturing sectors.

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Japanese Interns Visit KU A group of five Japanese students from the Economics department of Ritsumeikan University in Japan visited KU on Thursday, 29 August as part of their summer internship at Abu Dhabi Oil Company (ADOC). The group received an overview about KU from Dr. Ahmed Al Shoaibi, Senior Vice President of Academic and Student Services, and enjoyed a tour of the Aerospace Research and Innovation Center (ARIC) labs, the Robotics Lab, and the KU library and gym.

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University of Tokyo Students Visit KU A group of students from the University of Tokyo visited Khalifa University on Sunday, 8th September, the second official delegation from the University of Tokyo to visit KU in two years.

The undergraduate UT students met many KU students and faculty and toured the Aerospace Research and Innovation Center (ARIC) at the Main Campus, and the Yahsat Space Lab at Masdar City Campus. The UT students also heard from members of KU’s Japanese Club and learned about important aspects of UAE culture.

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KU Startups Deliver Pitches at Demo Day Two Khalifa University startups being incubated by the GeoTech Innovation Program, Farmin and Ayn Astra, delivered business pitches at GeoTech Innovation Program Demo Day on Wednesday, 11 September at Krypto Labs in Masdar City.

The GeoTech Innovation Program is a joint initiative by the UAE Space Agency and Krypto Labs to accelerate the growth of business startups and transform their innovative ideas into commercially viable, scalable, and market-ready products, fostering innovation and knowledge-based activity in the UAE space industry.

Many investors and experts in space tech joined GeoTech Innovation Program Demo Day and learned about the smart solutions being developed by KU companies Farmin and Ayn Astra in the field of satellite data processing.

Ayn Astra offers a land deformation monitoring platform that uses satellite data and advanced processing algorithms to map ground deformation patterns. The startup is founded by Adham Alkhaja, PhD student in Aerospace Engineering Department, Dr. Prasanth Marpu, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and two KU alumni Dr. Nikolaos Lisosis and Dr. Prajowal Manandhar.

Ayn Astra uses data from optical and radar satellites, in situ measurements and land cover mapping to deliver continuous ground surface deformation monitoring solutions. This allows customers to efficiently plan and manage infrastructure and housing development projects. The startup aims to expand its operations by providing a wide range of satellite-based services such as monitoring the health of palm trees and tracking the movement of sand dunes.

Farmin is a smart agriculture platform that combines satellite imagery with AI to continuously map entire farm fields to maximize farm production. Founding members include KU’s Dr. Ali AbdulKareem, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Dr. ZiAng Zhang from Rice University.

The system analyzes multi-spectral satellite data that measures water levels, soil nutrients and diseases

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in the ground, and displays where the strong and weak yield spots are located. Then an in-house developed AI technology recommends an action enabling early intervention to be taken. The system helps to maximize farm production, save costs by cutting down on water and fertilizer consumption, and combat climate change by promoting sustainable agriculture.

The GeoTech Innovation Program Demo Day gave Farmin an opportunity to showcase the interface they developed, the working features, the problems it can solve and the numerous potential future applications.

“Farmin can help government oversee and forecast the agricultural production of an entire region, enabling them to strategically plan into the future,” shared Dr. AbdulKareem.

The Demo Day also helped match the startups with potential partners and interested end-users, providing them with an opportunity to seek further funding to complete the development of their satellite-based products.

Ayn Astra is seeking to raise funds in order to acquire and process large amounts of archived satellite data to develop a historical record of deformation over wide swathes of land, including residential, industrial, civil infrastructure and farms. The startup then aims to continuously monitor expansive areas to look for future deformation trends.

Currently, Farmin requires lengthy pre-processing of data and can only do this in very small areas.

Additional funding will help increase the scale and efficiency of the unique agriculture tool.

The startups reflect KU’s commitment to bridging the gap between lab and market and bringing innovations most critical to key UAE sectors to market where they will benefit society and further advance the development of the country’s knowledge economy.

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Khuloud Khaled Al Hamdi, Communication Engineering student INTERNSHIP: YAHSAT (AL YAH SATELLITE COMMUNICATION COMPANY)

I chose Yahsat because satellite communication fascinates me and I knew Yahsat would be the best place to learn more about it.

Moreover, I wanted to do my internship in a place where I can connect the theory I learn with a work environment.

Internship spotlight Abdulaziz Alzurahi, International Internship Ambassador Student for 2019, Mechanical Engineering student INTERNSHIP : SCUOLA SUPERIORE SANT’ANNA (THE BIOROBOICS INSTITUTE, PONTEDERA, ITALY)

I was chosen to represent Khalifa University as an International Internship Ambassador Student for 2019 and spent my time in Italy at the BioRobotics Institute and the Don Carlo Gnocchi Rehabilitation Centre. I’m really interested in biorobotics as a mechanical engineering student and the BioRobotics Institute offers an intense research-based environment, while the Don Gnocchi Foundation helps people suffering from severe brain injuries using cutting-edge technology.

My internship centered around building a complex MATLAB algorithm for patients’ experimental methodologies to measure gait

initiation parameters in children with cerebral palsy. Happily, my work has helped the Don Gnocchi Rehabilitation Centre overcome one of its major difficulties in gait analysis and will make a difference to many peoples’ lives.

I’ve learnt how an engineer can play a vital role in healthcare research and believe that initiating collaborations between doctors and engineers would change the medical research industry and elevate it.

I highly recommend other students experience internship training as it plays a vital role in reshaping your technical and educational point of view.

During my internship, I was assigned to work with the system engineering team, where I helped with documentation and learnt about different topics related to communication engineering and satellite design. I was also introduced to the new software systems used by the company, and was assigned different tasks to familiarize myself with them. Finally, I also visited different teams to learn more about the company and how the teams work together.

My plans for the future are to find a job after graduating and after working for a few years, pursue a master’s degree. I would absolutely recommend my fellow students consider doing their internship at Yahsat.

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Faculty Invited to Deliver Lectures at the National University of Singapore & Judge InterSec Awards for the Middle East

The two judges, Athol Yates (right), and Eng. Arif Al Janahi, Chief Operating Officer, Security Industry Regulatory Agency (SIRA), Dubai (left), with three winners of the Award for Security Project of the Year – the company Ejadah with its project, Jumeirah Beach Residences CCTV Upgrade

In a reflection of the quality of research at Khalifa University, Dr. Athol Yates, Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, was invited to give two lectures at the Middle East Institute within the National University of Singapore (NUS).

NUS is ranked 1st in Singapore & Asia Pacific, and 22nd in the world according to the 2018 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Singapore has a strong emphasis on building relations with the Gulf and the lectures were aimed at developing a greater understanding of the UAE. Dr Yates’ lectures on 19 and 20 August were on policy making in the UAE and on his soon to be released book, The Evolution of the UAE Armed Forces.

UAE Embassy representatives attended his talks.

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Dr. Yates also had the opportunity to serve as a judge for the InterSec Awards for the Middle East, presented in Dubai on 11 September 2019. There were awards in three categories - security, safety and fire protection.

He was invited due to his expertise in physical security and was a judge for security products, systems and integration.

The judging process consisted of all judges reviewing entries online with the top seven entries from each category being shortlisted. All shortlisted entries were interviewed by a panel of the judges in Dubai.

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August & September Seminars Visiting Professor Dr. Jacinta Sa Shares Insight into Solar Applications with Plasmonic Nano-Hybrid Structures in Lecture at Masdar City Campus The efficient conversion of light energy into chemical energy is key for sustainable human development. Dr. Jacinta Sa, group leader of Nanoleaves and Heterogeneous Catalysis at Uppsala University and Modern Heterogeneous Catalysis at Institute of Physical-Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, reported on the applications of silver- and copper-based supramolecular assemblies to solar fuels to attendees at the Masdar City Campus on Thursday, 25 July 2019.

Dr. Sa reported on concomitant reductive hydrogen production and pollutant oxidation using visible light as an energy source, thus increasing the economic viability of the process and its green credentials. He discussed the fabrication of ultra-thin active layers with tunable absorption properties and how to meet the particularly challenging demands of portable and lightweight consumer applications, self-charging technology, integrated building, and tandem solar cells.

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Visiting Senior Research Fellow Dr. Tanveer Hussain Explains His Work on Atomistic Modelling on Functionalized 2D Nanostructures for Clean Energy Storage Applications

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Visiting Professor Dr. Robert Smith? Delivers Seminar on Unexpected Infection Spikes in a Model of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccination

In a seminar delivered at the Main Campus, Dr. Tanveer Hussain, Senior Research Fellow at the School of Molecular Sciences, University of Western Australia, detailed his work on efficient hydrogen storage using 2D materials. Hydrogen is considered an ideal alternative to depleting fossil fuels due to its high energy density with no harmful effects on the environment. He presented how boron-graphdiyne is a potential storage material with enhanced thermal stability, mechanical response, and thermal conductivity.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccination (RSV) is an acute respiratory infection that infects millions of children and infants worldwide, but while research continues, there is no vaccine currently available.

Dr. Hussain’s expertise also lies in the field of metal-ion batteries and his seminar covered how the performance of rechargeable batteries could be improved by designing new anodes based on 2D materials. Again, graphdiyne was presented as a potentially suitable anode material for rechargeable sodium batteries as it provides large pores and space for sodium molecules to intercalate in and move throughout.

Dr. Smith? introduced how his work extended an existing model with seasonal transmission to include vaccination against RSV, where vaccination was both a continuous process—applied during pregnancy— and a discrete one—pulse vaccination.

Using impulsive differential equations, Dr. Smith?’s research shows that eradication of RSV could be achieved with 75 percent coverage, meaning RSV vaccination has the potential to significantly reduce the overall prevalence of the disease.

Dr. Robert Smith?, professor of disease modelling at the University of Ottowa, uses mathematics to study infectious diseases and is contributing to the field of mathematical biology with mathematical models of disease transmission.

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Visiting Professor Dr. George Mylonakis Delivers Seminar on SoilStructure Interaction Effects for Structures on Footings and Piles Professor of Civil Engineering and Chair of the Geotechnical Engineering and Soil-Structure Interaction at the University of Bristol, UK, Dr. George Mylonakis visited Khalifa University on September 15 to deliver a lecture at the College of Engineering. Titled “Recent Advances in Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) for Structures on Footings and Piles”, the lecture offered a reconsideration of factors controlling the importance of soil-structure interaction effects as related to the seismic response of structures supported on footings and piles.

It is widely believed that SSI effects are invariably beneficial, which Dr. Mylonakis calls an oversimplification that may lead to unsafe designs for certain environments. He shared a review of basic dynamic analyses of structures on flexible foundations in relation to structural stiffness, foundation compliance and excitation frequency and emphasized the importance of the frequency dependence of foundation impedances in relation to the identification of resonant frequencies and associated participation coefficients. Dr. Mylonakis addressed these with some new solutions for the stiffness of footings, piles and pile groups under linear and moderately non-linear conditions.

Visiting Professors Share Expertise at C2PS Symposium on Applied Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security The Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (C2PS) hosted its first symposium on September 12, inviting guest speakers from institutions around the world to present their expertise on smart mobility, the robustness of critical infrastructure devices, and block chain-based reputation and trust management systems.

Following an introductory presentation from center director Dr. Ernesto Damiani, the symposium welcomed Dr. Fakhri Karray to the stage to cover the advances, opportunities and challenges in intelligent mobility. Representing a cornerstone and integral part of the “Smart City Concept”, intelligent mobility has seen major technological developments, with the latest tools in AI and communication systems applied toward the design of a new generation of autonomous vehicles.

Dr. Karray, co-director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Waterloo, explained the main purpose of intelligent mobility is to design more

efficient, more intelligent, and safer transportation systems that are better suited and more adapted to the latest advances in information and communication technologies, including 5G and the Internet of Things. As his research work spans the area of AI as applied to autonomous machines and man-machine interaction systems, Dr. Karray highlighted the technologies allowing the design of next generation autonomous vehicles and the challenges we face in building the more sustainable cities of the future.

Professor of Information and Computer Science at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dr. Moataz Ahmed took the podium to discuss artificial lift devices in the oil industry and the importance of robustness in critical infrastructure devices. Artificial lift devices refer to the mechanical devices installed inside production wells to increase their flow of crude oil and there are thousands worldwide boosting production, with their number expected to rise significantly over the years. Anomalies in their performance can lead to significant production loss and an increase in operational expenses, explained Dr.

Ahmed, and it has been estimated that just a 1 percent improvement in their performance worldwide would provide over half a million additional barrels of oil each day. As anomalies usually lead to failures, the ability to accurately monitor their condition and predict failure could mitigate the loss and automation could be vital in achieving this. Various machine learning methods could be used to monitor the conditions, detect anomalies, identify issues and predict failures, with Dr. Ahmed presenting the challenges encountered and results achieved so far.

Dr. Emanuele Bellini, of the European Virtual Institute for Integrated Risk Management, presented on the adoption of block chain in trust and reputation management systems implementation. He explained it is cumbersome to evaluate the credibility of messages transmitted on an open and vast network and that a decentralized trust management system, made possible through block chain technology, could authenticate the messages received from other systems.

Dr. Bellini highlighted significant trends in this area and provided valuable recommendations for implementation.

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Biotechnology Center Interns Analyze Thyroid Disease in Emiratis

Dozens of students, professors and guests attended the “End of Summer Internship Program 2019” at Khalifa University’s Main Campus on Thursday, 1 August, 2019, to celebrate the culmination of eight weeks of hard work. The event was a fitting end to KU’s Center for Biotechnology (BTC) Summer Internship Program, which included eleven undergraduate student interns from Khalifa University, the University of Sharjah, New York University, American University of Ras Al-Khaimah, Monash University in Malaysia, and the School of Industrial Biology in France.

Now in its fourth year, the BTC Summer Internship Program offers undergraduate students interested in biotechnology a hands-on learning experience to develop high-quality skills and knowledge needed for working in a molecular genetic laboratory.

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Directed by Dr. Habiba Alsafar, Associate Professor of Genetics and Molecular Biology, the BTC undertakes research that increases the understanding of the risk factors that affect major chronic diseases of the UAE population, in particular diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. The focus of this year’s internship was a project titled “Genotype and allele frequencies at two variants in two genes (VAV3 and BRAF) associated with Thyroid cancer among UAE population.”

A first-of-its-kind study conducted in an Arab ethnic group, the main objective was to evaluate the genes VAV3 and BRAF in an Emirati population to determine the frequencies of different VAV3 and BRAF genes – which are highly associated with Thyroid cancer in different ethnic groups – and their relevant genotypes.

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“I really enjoyed this experience because, as an international student, I had the opportunity to meet and interact with students and professors from different backgrounds and cultures,” shared Fahad Abbasse, a graduate student pursuing a degree in industrial biology from the Ecole de Biologie Industrielle in France. “Everyone was really friendly and they gave me a warm welcome to the center. Working with stateof-the-art technology in the lab was really rewarding, and made our lab work more enjoyable.”

The BTC interns isolated genomic DNA from saliva samples of 1,000 healthy Emiratis, representing different geographical regions. They then used a sophisticated genotyping process known as “RT-qPCR TaqMan assay” to analyze the allele frequency of two variants in the two different genes VAV3 and BRAF. The students found that the two variants showed some similarities with the Caucasian population but were different when compared to African and Asian populations.

KU biomedical engineering undergraduate student Dana AlTamimi also enjoyed the experience.

She said: “The Biotechnology center internship was

one of the best things I ever did. We were exposed to different procedures in the field of research. The internship was very interesting and helpful for my future studies and career.”

Thyroid cancer is a cancer of the gland in front of the neck that normally produces the thyroid hormone, which is important to the normal regulation of the metabolism of the body. Thyroid cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the UAE, accounting for approximately ten percent of all cancers among females. Regionally, thyroid cancer is also the fifth most common cancer in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

A better understanding of genetic polymorphisms, which is when multiple forms of a single gene exists in an individual or group, may contribute to a more accurate identification of avoidable risks associated with thyroid cancer, and to developing tailor-made preventative measures.

Throughout the eight-week internship, students conducted literature reviews using scientific public domain search engines for articles such as, PubMEd, Web of Science, and Scopus; attended a workshop on reference style using Endnote software; analyzed data using a specialized software program called “R Software;” and finally, presented their scientific findings as an oral presentation and a poster at the “End of Summer Internship Program 2019.”

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Interview with Shaikh Tahnoon Bin Khalifa Bin Mohammed Al Nahyan on his 8-week Internship Experience at St. George’s Hospital in London

Khalifa University Biomedical Engineering student, Shaikh Tahnoon Bin Khalifa Bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, performing DNA analysis and cell culture experiments during his internship assignment at the prestigious Genetics Laboratory of St. George’s Hospital in London.

Shaikh Tahnoon Bin Khalifa Bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, Biomedical Engineering bachelor’s student at Khalifa University, recently completed his summer internship in the UK. Here are excerpts of an interview with Shaikh Tahnoon on his personal experience.

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QUESTION: How long was the internship at the prestigious Genetics Laboratory of St. George’s Hospital in London?

ANSWER: My summer internship at Genetics Laboratory of St. George’s Hospital in London lasted for about eight weeks. It was a great experience.

Q: Who did you work with at the London hospital? Who was your mentor during the internship?

A: During the internship, I worked with Dr. Anand Saggar, Consultant Clinical Geneticist, who was also my mentor. His specialty is clinical (medical) genetics while his sub-specialties include hereditary Cancer Genetic Testing, and Paediatric Genetics.

Dr. Anand Saggar is a Senior Consultant in Clinical Genetics at St. Georges NHS Trust and Senior Lecturer in Medicine. He has a comprehensive record of experience in genetics, respiratory medicine, diabetes/ endocrinology, cardiology, intensive care, nephrology (kidney disorders) and neurology. He is also a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Dr. Saggar has published over 40 papers. He was a founder trustee and is currently chairman of the Scientific and Clinical Research Advisory Board of the Polycystic Kidney Disease Charity (UK). He is also President of the Medical Genetics section at the Royal Society of Medicine.

Q: How was this internship organized?

A: Genetics is one area that greatly interested me.

So I contacted Dr. Habiba Alsafar, Acting Associate Dean for Student Affairs, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Associate Professor at Department of Genetics and Molecular Biology, and Director of Khalifa University Center for Biotechnology. It was Dr. Alsafar who arranged for the internship through the UAE Embassy in London and Dr. Saggar was kind enough to accept me in his clinic and laboratory.

Q: In what area does this DNA analysis and cell culture experiments help? What are the future benefits?

A: I was interested in personalized medicine using DNA-based technology, which has a huge future benefit for better life quality for the society. I would like to see the UAE community benefit in this area and that was the reason why I was keen to do my internship.

Q: Were there other students along with you at St George’s Hospital internship program in London?

A: I was the only intern under Dr. Saggar during the eight-week internship in London.

Q: What do you feel about your internship in London?

A: It was an awesome eight-week internship experience for me at the Genetics Laboratory of St. George’s Hospital in London. I learned a lot from Dr. Saggar about clinical genetics and I believe that we can implement start-of-the-art diagnostic tools in genetic testing in Abu Dhabi and the UAE.

Q: What would you like to do after completing your biomedical engineering bachelor’s degree at Khalifa University?

A: I am looking forward to pursuing my postgraduate studies in medicine or health sciences, after completing my Biomedical Engineering bachelor’s degree at Khalifa University. I know Khalifa University offers a lot of options for those interested in science, engineering and new technology subjects for Master’s studies and I believe I can academically enrich myself here in Abu Dhabi.

I also would like to add that I am really grateful to Khalifa University, especially the faculty members who have always been very supportive in guiding me in my academics. And special thanks to Dr. Habiba Alsafar for taking the extra effort to ensure that I got the right kind of experience through this internship program.

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Tawazun SEEDS Program

Earlier this month, KU students were invited to apply for an internship opportunity through Tawazun’s SEEDS (Sustain and Enhance Emiratization in Defense and Security) program, where they will get a chance to work with a global industrial technology leader. Students enjoyed networking with SEED interns and heard presentations about the unique program.

Last year, six KU students participated in the SEEDS program.

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Society for Underwater Technology Hosts Seminar at KU

Khalifa University hosted the Society for Underwater Technology (SUT) Middle East Technical Seminar at the Sas Al Nakhl Campus on Monday, 16 September 2019. The half-day seminar was titled “Opportunities and Challenges to Improve the Economics of Flexible, Umbilical and Cable Installation.� It featured speakers and industry experts from Aquatic, Flowline Specialists, Pipeshield, Prysmian, Swan Hunter and Tekmar, who provided an overview of the technical/economic challenges and key considerations pertaining to offshore: Cable, umbilical and flexible installations Handling and installation equipment Asset protection solutions SUT is a multidisciplinary society that brings together organizations and individuals with a common interest in underwater technology, ocean science, and offshore engineering. SUT was founded in 1966 and has members from more than 40 countries, including engineers, scientists, other professionals and students working in these areas.

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JAXA Teaches Khalifa University Students to Control Robots in Space People left on the ground often help astronauts in their daily tasks but new support is on its way from floating robots.

When the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) arrived at Khalifa University on Tuesday, 10 September to demonstrate how a robot can operate in zero gravity, few were expecting a completely spherical drone reminiscent of an animated Pixar character or a droid from the Star Wars films.

The Int-Ball (the JEM Internal Ball Camera) is an experimental, autonomous, self-propelled and maneuverable ball camera currently deployed in the Japanese Kibo module of the International Space Station.

Small, round, and cute, the Int-Ball’s aesthetics were achieved through 3D printing and it uses existing drone technology to perform some of the photo-video documentation workload aboard the ISS—all with a pair of big, blue, luminous eyes. It is the first camera drone that can record video while moving in space under remote control from the ground.

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Image courtesy of JAXA/NASA.

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JAXA says the robot drone can move anywhere at any time through autonomous flight and can record images from any angle using selflocalization capabilities to orientate itself in the ISS. It weighs just 2.2lbs (1 kg) and has a diameter of 15cm, with 12 propellers. All in, the Int-Ball is about the size of a grapefruit and considerably cuter. Its internal motion control system can execute a rotation on any axis and move the drone in any direction. Its eyes represent the direction of its “gaze”—a single camera lens situated in the center.

Beyond being cool and cute, the IntBall has cut the work done by Japanese astronauts on the ISS by about 10 percent, photographing work and equipment for evaluation that otherwise would have to be done manually.

Because the Int-Ball is autonomous, the crew will be able to work on their experiments with the ground crew examining from the same vantage point.

Ultimately, the Int-Ball is intended to undertake all the photography duties and promote the automation and autonomy of intra- and extra-vehicular experiments. JAXA aims to manufacture a new version that is completely autonomous and even assist in other tasks such as inventory management and inspection in emergency situations.

Students at Khalifa University were able to learn how operators on Earth control the robotic camera in space and the finer details behind how such a robot operates in zero gravity.

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

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

HH Sheikh Hamed Attends KU’s First White Coat Ceremony and Inaugurates the Body Museum HH Sheikh Hamed Chaired Khalifa University Board of Trustees Meeting, officially opened the Body Museum -- which is hosting the world famous Body Worlds Exhibit for the first time in the Arab world -- & toured the Medical College’s state-of-the-art facilities

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On Tuesday, 10 September 2019, His Highness Sheikh Hamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince’s Court, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Khalifa University of Science and Technology, chaired a Board of Trustees meeting; attended KU’s first White Coat Ceremony -- which marked the start of Fall 2019 classes for the 30 newly enrolled students in the first cohort of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences; officially opened KU’s new medical museum, The Body Museum; and toured the College of Medicine and Health Sciences’ medical laboratories and classroom facilities.

In attendance at the KU BoT meeting were BoT members HE Hussain bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, Cabinet Member and Minister of Education and Vice Chairman of the Board; HE Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of State, Chief Executive Officer, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and Chairman, Masdar; HE Prof. Maha Barakat, Senior Advisor, Abu Dhabi Executive Office, Senior Advisor, Mubadala; HE Eng. Saleh Al Abdooli, Chief Executive Officer, Etisalat Group; HE Abdulmunim Saif Al Kindy, Director, Exploration, Development and Production Directorate, ADNOC; HE Abdulaziz Abdulla Alhajri, Director, Refining and Petrochemicals Directorate, ADNOC; and HE Dr. Nawal Al-Hosany, Permanent Representative of the UAE to International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

The White Coat Ceremony symbolizes the entrance of medical students to the practice of medicine, and elevates the value of humanism as the core of health care. It also symbolizes a student’s transition to a scientific approach to medicine, while signifying the commitment to the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship. Traditionally, the first-year students receive their first white coat of their medical school career that stands as a symbol of the medical profession.

Dr. John Rock, Founding Dean of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, said: “We extend a warm welcome to the newly-enrolled students through this White Coat ceremony as they begin their learning process on campus and at external medical facilities. We firmly believe the first batch of students beginning their classes today will excel in their academic and practical performance, setting an excellent standard for the upcoming students to follow in the future.

We look forward to celebrating your successful journey to become a physician over the next four years.”

After the ceremony, HH Sheikh Hamed inaugurated KU’s new medical museum, the Body Museum, which is hosting the Body Worlds Exhibition for the first time in the Arab world. The most visited traveling exhibition in the world, ‘Body Worlds: The Original Exhibition of Real Human Bodies’, was invented in 1977 by the German anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens. It is a traveling exposition of dissected and “plastinated” human and animal bodies.

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

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Khalifa University has signed a six-month agreement with Body Worlds to host the exhibition at its main campus in Abu Dhabi. The region’s first-of-its-kind exhibition aims to inform visitors about anatomy, physiology, and health by viewing real human bodies that are preserved through plastination.

The Body Worlds exhibition aims to urge human beings to realize the importance of the human body and prevent diseases caused by harmful habits and behavior. The exhibition can also be described as a simplified anatomy lesson that combines visitor education and satisfies curiosity. The Body Worlds Exhibition is open to students from across schools and universities in the UAE as well as the general public.

Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice President, said: “By bringing the Body Worlds Exhibition to Abu Dhabi, we have demonstrated to the community the extent of learning the students will undergo at Khalifa University’s College of Medicine and Health Sciences.

The exhibits demonstrate the complexity, resilience, and vulnerability of the human body in distress, stricken by disease, or in optimal health. We believe the exhibition will help students in the UAE learn about the marvels of human body and gain insights into human anatomy, its various stages, and how adopting a healthier lifestyle positively impacts the body.”

The plastination process, which can take up to a year for each body, is a technique or process used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts. The water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even retain most properties of the original sample. With plastination, it is possible to permanently display the inside of a body in a more fascinating and aesthetic way. These plastinated specimens are practically imperishable, allowing them to be handled and understood but can also be used for the training of future doctors, as well as for educating medically interested laymen.

Preparing a whole body plastinate can take up to 800 hours of work, and requires good anatomical knowledge,

manual skill, and patience. However, once completed, this plastinated body highlights only the scientific aspect of anatomy and does not in any way harness the human spirit for commercial display. Thus a student or a visitor can understand, from inside, the human body, which is otherwise only explained by a physician or can be read from a book with theoretical information, but without sufficient life-like visual details.

HH Sheikh Hamed then toured the College of Medicine and Health Sciences’ medical laboratories and classroom facilities. Khalifa University’s College of Medicine and Health Sciences is the region’s first 4X4 allopathic LCMEcomparable (Liaison Committee on Medical Education) post-baccalaureate medical college, which prepares its medical students for residency programs in the US and Canada.

Khalifa University has established a “Balsam” community outreach program endorsed by the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA) and the Authority for Social Contribution (Maan) to place interprofessional teams in household-centered care.

The College of Medicine and Health Sciences (CMHS) has also developed one of the largest comprehensive 24-station OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) and Simulation Center, which is designed to test clinical skill performance. The program provides a hands-on real-world approach to learning and assessment. This program will serve hospital residency programs, military training units, and other medical schools in the UAE. Additionally, the CMHS has developed a state-of-theart testing center, which is created with Prometric and Pearson VUE standards, that will allow Graduate Record Examinations (GRE), National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) and Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) testing on site.

The CMHS is offering a post-graduate MD program in five strands – Biomedical Science, Clinical Medicine, Medicine and Society, Physicianship, and Research, Technology and Innovation.

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MY CAMPUS, MY COMMUNITY FROM THE NEWSROOM

KHALIFA UNIVERSITY’S SUCCESS IN DEVELOPING YOUTH HIGHLIGHTED AT AQDAR WORLD SUMMIT

His Highness Lt. General Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, visited the Khalifa University pavilion during the 3rd Aqdar World Summit

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KU Senior Management Joins 8 UAE Ministers at First-of-its-Kind Summit Focused on Empowering Communities and Developing Education in Moscow and Signs MoU with leading Russian Technical University

A senior delegation of UAE Ministers and political and academic dignitaries participated in the Aqdar World Summit, an international event aimed at empowering communities and developing education through collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and best practices.

In its 3rd edition, the event was held in Moscow, Russia, from 29 August-1 September, under the theme “Global Empowerment of Communities: Experiences & Lessons Learned,” in conjunction with the Moscow Global forum, which provides a platform for government officials, academics and business leaders to exchange practical, cultural, commercial and social experiences.

Aqdar World Summit is organized by the Khalifa Empowerment Program and is the only global initiative of its kind in the region that provides an opportunity for all segments of the society to participate and contribute to developing strong communities and find solutions to pressing challenges in the field of

education, culture, food security, technology, and business. The Summit offered workshops, panel discussions, youth circles and an exhibition for companies to showcase their services and solutions in the fields of training, education, and empowerment.

Khalifa University was one of several UAE organizations that participated in the Summit.

Dr. Arif Al Hammadi delivered a presentation, titled “Nurturing Tomorrow’s Leaders, Growing the Knowledge Economy.”

He highlighted Khalifa University’s successful experiences in the field of education and developing the skills and potential of youth, while reaffirming the university’s commitment to continuously developing and evolving its academic offerings and research activities in response to the region’s strategic needs.

On the sidelines of the Summit, Dr. Arif signed a joint research collaboration with Dr. Nikolay D. Rogalev, Rector of Moscow Powers Engineering Institute, Russia’s National Research University, to

ensure cooperation between the two organizations for exchange of information in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Power Engineering and Energy. The aim of the agreement is to boost the economic diversification of the UAE and the Russian Federation, and to jointly address global challenges and together to create greater impacts.

The signing was followed by a tour of MPEI’s campus and state-of-theart facilities.

Other members of KU’s senior management present during Aqdar World Summit included Dr. Steve Griffiths, Senior Vice President of Research and Development, Dr. David Sheehan, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Ashraf AlNajdawi, Chief of Staff. The Summit provided a strategic opportunity for Khalifa University to expand its global network of academic and research partnerships with public and private organizations across the region who share a mutual interest in advancing best educational practices and useinspired R&D.

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

DarkMatter and Khalifa University Launch CyberSecurity Research Award The initiative will give university students, graduate research assistants, and researchers the opportunity to win a grant worth US$1.5 million Dr. Arif said: “We are delighted to partner with the DarkMatter Group to announce the launch of the CRA, as private and public sector collaboration with universities can be an effective tool for securing the key pillars of smart city infrastructure and services. Cybersecurity has come to remain one of the essential factors for today’s technology-driven world, and the UAE and the region place significant emphasis on the safety and security of the digital resources.”

DarkMatter Group, the region’s first and only fully integrated digital and cyber transformation firm, and Khalifa University of Science and Technology, have announced the launch of US$1.5-million Cyber Security Research Award (CRA) – an award focused on generating ideas that will safeguard the world’s smart cities against the cybersecurity threats of tomorrow.

In conjunction with strategic partner, Khalifa University, DarkMatter Group is inviting university students, graduate research assistants, researchers, and faculty from both local and international institutions to present ideas that could potentially advance the field of cybersecurity in the era of smart and digital cities.

The announcement came during a media roundtable that was organized at the Khalifa University Main Campus in Abu Dhabi and was attended by top officials from DarkMatter and Khalifa University.

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“The sustainability of our smart city future depends on creative and robust cybersecurity infrastructure and solutions to combat rising threats within today’s digital landscape,” said Dr. Shreekant Thakkar, Chief Scientist, Advanced Research of DarkMatter Group.

“With the unveiling of the Cyber Security Research Award (CRA), we are one step closer towards uncovering breakthrough solutions that will futureproof our connected, digitalized cities. At DarkMatter Group, we encourage research and are proud to be fostering a collaborative ecosystem that will leverage the skills and expertise of private, public, and academic entities in a bid to create a safer, more secure society for all.”

“As a research-intensive academic institution, we are also keen to share the expertise and knowledge with our collaboration partners and we believe the CRA, a robust research award initiative, will set the foundation for a smarter, safer digital world,” Dr. Arif added.

For more information on the CRA, the involved partners and the key milestones of this initiative, see https://researchawards.cyberweek. ae/.

Contestants in the CRA will showcase their poster talks for the committee to assess at HITB+CyberWeek UAE 2019, the new flagship event of Hack-in-the-Box (HITB), taking place in Abu Dhabi from 12-17 October.

This premier event encourages the next generation of leading cybersecurity minds to explore and develop solutions that will solve cybersecurity problems of the future.

For more info on HITB+CyberWeek, see https://cyberweek.ae/

FROM THE NEWSROOM

Energy Science & Engineering; the 301-400 band for the subjects of Computer Science & Engineering and Atmospheric Science; and the 401-500 band for the subjects of Materials Science & Engineering and Earth Sciences.

Published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, the ARWU considers universities that have Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists, Highly Cited Researchers, papers published in Nature or Science, a high number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and high per capita performance.

More than 1,800 universities are ranked by ARWU every year and the best 1,000 are published.

Shanghai-based Academic Ranking of World Universities 2019 Places Khalifa University Top in UAE Ranking Reflects Khalifa University’s Strength of Research and Innovation in Science, Technology and Engineering

Khalifa University has become the only university in the UAE for the first time to be ranked in the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).

According to ARWU’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2019, Khalifa University has been placed in the top leading 100 universities in the field of Chemical Engineering and the world’s top 150 universities in the field of Mechanical Engineering. It also ranked in the 151-200 band for the subject of Water Resources; the 201-300 band for the subjects of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and

Khalifa University is currently ranked 38th in the Times Higher Education (THE) 2019 Young University Rankings, ranked 11th in the ‘THE Young Universities: millennial universities’, and ranked 28th in the 2019 THE Asia University Rankings. In June 2019, the QS World University Rankings 2020 placed Khalifa University 268th overall globally.

This latest achievement, which places KU overall in the 701-800 bracket in the ARWU ranking, follows the University’s exemplary standings in developing and creating intellectual capital through research and innovation in science, technology and engineering areas. So far, KU has more than 126 issued patents and more than 400 invention disclosures. Its research publications include more than 87,735 articles, over 3,795 conference papers, and more than 310 books and book chapters.

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Leading-edge Energy and Water Projects on Display at 24th World Energy Summit KU signs MoU with Global Energy Association to promote energy cooperation and Global Energy Prize

Last month, Khalifa University participated in the world’s largest and most influential energy event dedicated to covering all aspects of the energy agenda. The 24th World Energy Congress, which was held from 9-12 September in Abu Dhabi under the theme “Energy for Prosperity”, convened thousands of global energy experts, Ministers, CEOs, policy-makers and industry practitioners to discuss critical developments in the energy sector.

Five KU research projects that feature leading-edge ideas in traditional and modern energy systems and water, and directly inspired by the university’s responsive research centers, were on display at the premier energy gathering. KU’s Dr. Steve Griffiths, Vice President of Research and Development, and Global Energy Prize International Award Committee member, was also invited to speak on a panel titled “Mission possible: The Global Energy Prize as a driver for sustainable energy for all.” He discussed how the convergence of artificial intelligence and digitalization, the main drivers of the 4th Industrial Revolution, are impacting the energy sector, and issues of cybersecurity and skill development.

Dr. Alejandro Rios, Director of KU’s Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium (SBRC), showcased SBRC’s flagship project, the integrated Seawater Energy and Agriculture System (SEAS) -- the world’s first research facility to grow both food and fuel using desert lands irrigated by seawater.

Dr. Nicolas Calvet, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Chair of the Masdar Institute Solar Platform (MISP), highlighted some of the ongoing concentrating solar power (CSP) and thermal energy

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

nanotechnology-enhanced microparticle materials she is developing could improve raindrop formation by 290 percent.

Dr. Peter Rodgers, Senior Director of KU’s Petroleum Institute and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Mohammed AlShehhi, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. Mohammed Abou-Khousa, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, displayed a novel probing device that uses microwaves to “see” corrosive particles called black powder in pipelines that transport natural gas, which could help avoid the costly plant shutdowns, production losses and expensive repairs often caused by the material.

storage (TES) technologies currently being demonstrated at the MISP. With its one-of-a-kind 100 kW beam-down solar concentrator facility, the MISP and provides local and international research institutes and solar companies the opportunity to research, test, and validate new CSP components and TES systems capable of withstanding the UAE’s harsh desert climate.

Dr. Hosni Ghedira, Director of KU’s Research Center for Renewable Energy Mapping and Assessment (ReCREMA), shared key insights into the center’s latest project -- the Renewable Management Center (RMC). The RMC is being developed in collaboration with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Elia Grid International as a tool to ensure renewable energy sources are smoothly integrated into Saudi Arabia’s electric grid. The easy-to-operate system will display key information about the country’s renewable energy systems and other important factors that could impact the generation and transmission of renewables, such as weather, dust and solar forecasting schemes.

Dr. Linda Zou, Professor of Civil Infrastructure and Environmental Engineering, showcased the award-winning cloud seeding material she is developing with a team of researchers from KU, in an effort to enhance rainfall, and in turn, food, water and energy security in the UAE. Dr. Zou was the recipient of a US$1.5 million award in the first cycle of the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science’s annual grant program. The novel

During the 24th WEC, Khalifa University and the Global Energy Association, a non-governmental organization focused developing industry research and promoting energy cooperation, signed a ‘Partnership and Cooperation Memorandum’ to strengthen their partnership in energy-related areas. Under the partnership, the two organizations will continue building academic and research ties between the UAE and Russia across all energy-related areas. These ties include the joint promotion of Global Energy Association award programs, as well as organizing of conferences and workshops focusing mostly on research and innovation.

The Global Energy Association’s Global Energy Prize is an international award, which recognizes outstanding scientific innovations and solutions in energy research and its concurrent environmental challenges. Presented each year, the award winners collectively receive a cash prize of RUB39 million (around US$600,000). Previous winners include prominent scientists such as Arthur Rosenfeld from the US (for his pioneering work in energy-efficient buildings), Akira Yoshino from Japan (for the invention of lithium ion batteries), and Thorsteinn Ingi Sigfusson from Iceland (for developing hydrogen into a viable alternative power source in Iceland).

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Azelio Partners with Khalifa University and Masdar to Install New Clean-Tech Pilot Project at Masdar City Agreement to Formalize Partnership Signed at 24th World Energy Congress in Abu Dhabi Swedish solar energy company Azelio has partnered with Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (‘Masdar’) and Khalifa University to run a pilot project evaluating new technology in power storage.

An agreement to formalize the partnership was signed by Jonas Eklind, Chief Executive Officer, Azelio, Abdulla Balalaa, Director, Real Estate Development and Design at Masdar, and KU’s Dr. Steve Griffiths, Senior Vice President for Research and Development, at the 24th World Energy Congress in Abu Dhabi.

The project aims to test and demonstrate Azelio’s Stirling engine systems and integrated thermal energy storage (TES) solution for renewable energy projects that use photovoltaic solar, concentrated solar power (CSP) and wind energy, or projects that provide off-grid solutions, with the purpose of determining if the technology can be included in current and future renewable energy projects.

“With Masdar City established as the natural home for innovation in sustainable urban development and clean technologies, we are delighted to be working with Azelio and Khalifa University to help validate the commercial feasibility of their project,” said Yousef Baselaib, Executive Director of Sustainable Real Estate at Masdar.

Testing will begin with an evaluation of Azelio’s Stirling engine system for renewable power production in fall 2019. This will be followed by an analysis of the complete system – including the TES – during the first half of 2020.

Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice President of Khalifa University, said; “As a research-intensive academic

institution, Khalifa University offers one of the most suitable platforms for testing and demonstration of new technologies and solutions, especially in clean energy, and we are delighted to partner with Azelio and Masdar to evaluate

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the Stirling system with integrated energy storage. We believe the pilot phases will provide adequate data that will help Azelio’s technology to target large and exposed segments in terms of access to energy. We look forward to offering our expertise in evaluating the technology together with our partners.”

He added: “Masdar Institute at Khalifa University will continue to serve as the research location for leading and pioneering cutting-edge scientific exploration in clean energy-related areas including energy storage, biofuels, renewable energy mapping, advanced power and nuclear energy. We firmly believe, as a research institute, Masdar Institute will continue to set fresh milestones while obtaining new solutions in clean energy and advanced sustainable technologies.”

Khalifa University will provide the research support and expertise for the two testing periods and the data collected by the researchers during the testing phases will be compared with data from existing dispatchable technologies.

“Masdar has a proven track record in the incubation of advanced clean technologies,” said Eklind. “Through this agreement we hope to gain vital operational data and other technical insights to help prepare our solution for the commercial market.”

The pilot will be installed within the site of the Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium (SBRC) – a research center located at the Masdar City campus of Khalifa University. The power generated from the project will be used to power the air conditioning for the project’s office and storage units.

FROM THE NEWSROOM

AP Workshop at Khalifa University Convenes Hundreds of Educators Khalifa University, in cooperation with The College Board, was delighted to host the Advanced Placement (AP) Teacher Development Workshop, a specially designed summer workshop for AP teachers.

More than 250 teachers and university staff members representing over 70 educational institutions in the region gathered together at KU’s Main Campus from 25-29 August to gain deeper insight into planning and teaching Advanced Placement Program® (AP) courses, as well as assessing student progress and engaging as a member of the AP community.

The AP Program enables willing and academically prepared students to pursue college-level studies

while still in high school. AP is an internationally recognized curricular program with 38 university-level courses, delivered in schools globally. Each course culminates in a rigorous, standardized exam used for admissions by universities in the Gulf and worldwide.

Students who take and succeed in AP level courses show that they are ready to challenge themselves with the most rigorous courses available to them and are prepared for college-level coursework. The AP program is thus beneficial to both students eager to enter top-ranking universities and universities interested in attracting the world’s brightest students. AP Workshops like the one hosted at Khalifa University, which are aimed at enhancing teacher and university staff understanding of the AP program, ensure that AP students receive more opportunities for success.

Dr. Ahmed Al Shoaibi, KU’s Senior Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs, kicked off the five-day workshop with a keynote speech in which he highlighted the importance of STEM education in the classroom – citing that over the next decade, 75% of all jobs will require STEM skills – and the need to adapt to a rapidly evolving academic landscape. He also emphasized Khalifa University’s commitment to creating new research and academic offerings in STEM fields and areas of strategic relevance to the UAE, such as artificial intelligence.

During the course of the AP workshops, participants heard from AP Consultants on how to assist students in their passage from highschool to university. Many participated in the AP Coordinator training, where they learned about the administration of AP for schools, while others attended AP teacher development sessions for AP Biology, AP Calculus, AP Chemistry, AP English, AP Physics C, and AP Seminar.

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

Following Progress Towards MBZIRC 2020 The first progress reports from teams competing in the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition promise an exciting tournament in 2020

For autonomous drones to be useful in tasks such as disaster zones or as first responders, they will need to be able to fly fast, far and without human oversight, often in environments where they can’t rely on external guidance systems like GPS. It’s this autonomy that’s the biggest challenge facing the teams competing in the 2020 Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition (MBIZRC), as their drones take on three intense challenges and

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a final grand challenge combining all three in a triathlon.

MBZIRC 2020 will be based on autonomous aerial and ground robots, carrying out navigation and manipulation tasks, in unstructured, outdoor and indoor environments.

The challenges are motivated by pushing technological and application boundaries in robotics.

To follow the teams as they develop

their entries, progress reports are submitted to the MBZIRC organizers, with the first reports showing great promise for the 2020 competition. Teams from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are among many elite teams working hard in preparation for the challenges ahead.

FROM THE NEWSROOM

HOW ARE TEAMS PREPARING? “After our successes at the inaugural 2017 MBZIRC, our team is leveraging our experience and in-house research results to revamp our team hardware, software and general approaches to achieve the best results,” said the KAIST team. “We are also leveraging our experiences in IROS Autonomous Drone Racing, where we have built a new drone that

can detect the gates using machine learning and fly through them as fast as possible.”

and use information from sensors that humans don’t have to work out its best route.

Machine learning allows AI to train much faster than a traditional pilot.

They say 10,000 hours of practice makes you an expert: a human would need five years of five eight-hour days a week. An autonomous drone can also fly more precisely by making subtle alterations to its flight path

“We divide each challenge into a series of sub-problems,” explained the ETH Zurich team. “On the one hand, this allows us to delegate standalone projects to students, and on the other hand, we can profit from existing solutions for those sub-problems which we had tackled

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FROM THE NEWSROOM

previously at our labs. Also, we can track which parts of the challenges we solved and which parts still need more work.”

This is where humans excel over drones—for now. Merging these subproblems into one challenge is a human ability as people can sense the world, make decisions, and act on them in real-time, compared to autonomous drones which struggle to think this quickly.

“Our approach to the three challenges, as well as the grand challenge, focuses on robustness at all levels of the task executions,” said the team from the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. “Communication between the drones will be limited to high-level task information, such as task allocations, which block to place next, and how to divide the arena for exploration. The drones will also use sensory feedback to quickly detect when the contact state changes or when errors occur to react and recover accordingly.”

THE NEXT STEPS ON THE ROAD TO MBZIRC 2020 The first progress reports indicate that all teams are progressing well and are looking forward to exhibiting their achievements at the competition in 2020. Many of the teams explained that their next steps involve rigorous testing beyond simulations. The real world, where these autonomous drones will be expected to compete, can be an immensely noisy place, and many autonomous robots that excel in the lab struggle to translate that ability to a chaotic environment.

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“Our students have already conducted significant work on each challenge. We have already developed and implemented a large number of algorithms and have tested the different components of each challenge in simulations and real-world experiments,” said the ETH Zurich team. “Now, we aim to improve each of them step by step and integrate them into a stable and robust system.”

time. In the last competition, we found there are so many great teams all over the world that far exceeded our expectations. Therefore, this time, we are trying very hard to come up with a system that can not only fulfil the requirements, but fulfil it faster and better to get more points.”

“Our next steps will focus on the interaction controllers for performing the challenges,” said the CMU team. “At each stage, we will further optimize and edit the individual modules for speed and robustness to ultimately win the challenges.”

“The Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition is one of the most prestigious robotics competitions, reflected by its popularity and the number of teams participating,” said Dr. Lakmal Seneviratne, Technical Chair of the Organizing Committee and Director of the KU Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS).

“These challenges are pushing the boundaries of autonomy in targeted applications with high societal impact and economic potential.”

“We’re looking forward to this competition very much,” said Team KAIST. “We ranked fourth or fifth last time due to minor issues, and this time we hope to do better than last

Meanwhile, the competition organizers are following the teams’ progress with great anticipation.

FROM THE NEWSROOM

EBTIC Upskills Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) Executives Through AI Workshop

KU’s Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC), in collaboration with the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), held its first workshop on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science for TRA executives in Dubai on Tuesday, 27 August 2019.

focuses on the organizational and managerial implications of these technologies, rather than on their technical aspects. The training is part of EBTIC/TRA AI Educational Initiative to increase UAE human resources skills in key areas of Data Processing and Data Analysis.

The training is designed to prepare those with strategic decision-making responsibilities – such as high-level executives and senior managers – to effectively analyze and apply key AI management and leadership insights in their work. The program

The one-day AI/data science course includes lectures by EBTIC experts.

The course is accredited by IEEE Service Society. The workshop was held at the TRA Dubai Offices and was attended by senior managers from various TRA departments.

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Expert insights from KU’s worldclass faculty

UAE Military History Takes to the Stage as KU Professor Publishes New Research Dr. Athol Yates, professor teaching civil security, security technology and internal security, discusses extensive research on the history of the UAE military and his upcoming book.

While civil security is a responsibility for every country, there are some unique challenges faced in the Middle East and by the UAE in particular.

When KU launched the Master’s program in International and Civil Security, the mission was to impart a deep understanding of these threats and develop in students the knowledge and skills to address them.

There was just one problem: “When I came to Khalifa University in 2013 to teach civil security (called homeland security in the US), all the course material was on the US and the UK,” explained Dr. Yates. “This made it uninteresting for our students.”

“So for the last six years, I have been building up material on security in the UAE, which I use in my classes now,” said Dr. Yates.

“I now use this book as a primer on the types of security incidents and disasters which the UAE has faced in the past,” said Dr. Yates.

Like any country, the UAE has had its share of criminals, accidents, natural disasters and “downright weird incidents,” as Dr. Yates calls it.

Having found few academic accounts of the civil security history in the UAE, Dr. Yates and a team of volunteers turned their attention to historic media coverage, scouring newspapers from the earliest days of the UAE. The book Catastrophes, Crashes and Crimes in the UAE covers a selection of the most fascinating stories from publications like the Gulf Weekly Mirror, Abu Dhabi News, and more which are now defunct.

“The second book in this series will soon be ready for printing.”

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Catastrophes, crashes and crimes are one aspect of civil security well covered by the degree program at KU and disaster response strategies are crucial for the continuing safety of the residents here. Natural disasters can be unpredictable yet require immediate response — while the UAE is fortunate enough to not regularly face the earthquakes, cyclones and tsunamis assaulting other countries, having a stout and comprehensive response strategy is imperative to the nation’s security should something occur.

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Research involving Dr. Yates and his colleagues at the KU Institute of International and Civil Security takes a multidisciplinary approach to addressing both the potential disruptions to the national infrastructure for food and water supply and the safety and security of its people and government.

Beyond the risk of natural disasters, there are some delicate security issues in the region: political tensions, warfare, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism plague the globe and pose a unique threat to the nation. The UAE is one of the safest countries in the region, with the national agenda index in 2018 finding 96.1 percent of the population feeling safe and secure. Keeping the people safe is an issue of national importance.

Integral to this mission is the UAE military.

“The last three years have seen me focusing on UAE military history,” continued Dr. Yates. “This has led to me being invited to give talks on it, such as at the National University of Singapore (NUS).”

Today, the UAE Armed Forces is probably the best military in the Arab world. “Given its population of just one million citizens and a land area the size of Scotland, this is a substantial achievement,” added Dr. Yates. In an upcoming presentation at the NUS Middle East Institute, Dr. Yates will explain how the first locally-controlled military formed in 1965 grew so rapidly in size and capability to the point that by the late 1970s, the nation fielded supersonic jets, modern armored vehicles, and Exocet-equipped fast attack craft — a substantial achievement for a nation whose inhabitants lived a subsistence lifestyle with little education, health services, roads, piped water or even electricity until the early 1960s.

“I have now published two books on military history, with the chief of the UAE Navy writing the foreword for the naval book,” said Dr. Yates. “However, my major academic book is The Evolution of the UAE Armed Forces which is due out in a few months.”

While the military today is central to the nation’s development, just 60 years ago, the only security forces in the Emirates were the armed retainers of the Ruling Sheikhs and a small British-led, locallyraised Arab force, as Dr. Yates explains in his upcoming book.

“Using a combination of investment in its nationals, oversight by the Rulers, engagement of expatriates and the purchase of cutting edge military hardware, the UAE Armed Forces has become the Arab region’s most capable military.”

The UAE military has some unique characteristics which make it markedly different from other militaries, notably the direct and personal involvement of the country’s leadership, a preference for the most advanced hardware, a multi-country equipment sourcing strategy, huge investment in human capital, and the engagement of expatriates to build capability through the transfer of knowledge.

Dr. Yate’s forthcoming book, The Evolution of the UAE Armed Forces, provides “unparalleled detail on the constituent forces that evolved into the UAE Armed Forces in 1976, and how the unified force has grown since then” alongside details on the politic and command structure governing the military and its enduring roles and history. The book is due out at the end of 2019.

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

PROLIFIC PROFESSORS

Multi-disciplinary collaboration results in harnessing solar energy by doping water with minute amounts of gold nanoparticles A recently initiated collaborative project between the groups of Dr. Eiyad Abu-Nada, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. Matthew Martin, from the Department of Physics, resulted in the publication of a journal article Ultrastable Plasmonic Nanofluids in Optimized Direct Absorption Solar Collectors in Energy Conversion and Management, one of the most selective and reputable journals in the energy field (15 percent acceptance rate, Impact Factor 7.2).

This collaborative project was conceived after discussions between the two groups, where it was noticed that the highly stable nanoparticle dispersions prepared by Dr. Martin’s group, typically used for applications in nanoelectronics and biomedical engineering, could have very interesting applications in the field of solar thermal energy.

As a result of the excellent photothermal conversion properties of plasmonic nanofluids, formulated by dispersing trace amounts of gold nanoparticles (<<0.1 percent in volume) in water, the researchers used them in a novel and promising type of solar collector known as a direct absorption solar collector (DASC). DASCs circumvent many of the technical limitations in conventional surface-

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

based solar thermal collectors, paving the way for their integration in a wide spectrum of low-, medium-, and high-temperature applications, such as solar heating, concentrated solar power (CSP), absorption chillers, and thermally driven water desalination.

The collaborative project took a combined experimental and computational approach, relying on the successful nanoparticle synthesis and stabilization techniques developed in Dr. Martin’s group and the in-housedeveloped computational models developed in Prof. Abu-Nada’s group. This led to developing ultrastable plasmonic nanofluids and evaluating their utility in optimized DASCs. This paper is the outcome of a multi-disciplinary effort between the two groups, with 8 KU authors from 4 different departments: Omar Z. Sharaf, Nahla Rizk, Chakra P. Joshi, Maguy Abi Jaoudé, Ashraf N. Al-Khateeb, Dimitrios C. Kyritsis, Eiyad Abu-Nada, and Matthew N. Martin. “Ultrastable Plasmonic Nanofluids in Optimized Direct Absorption Solar Collectors.” Energy Conversion and Management 199, 112010. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. enconman.2019.112010.

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Dr. Shashikant P. Patole, Assistant Professor, has published an article in the Journal of Power Sources.

TITLE Electrochemical performance and computational analysis of an Al-based battery system using a cathode of graphene obtained from processed expandable graphite

TITLE Synthesis of Joint-Welded Carbon Nanotube Foam @ Ni(OH)2 Nanosheet-Based Coreâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Shell 3D Architecture for Freestanding Flexible Electrode for Supercapacitor Applications AUTHORS Shoaib Anwer, Ahmed Bin Ari, G. Bharath, Pei Cao, Shashikant P. Patole, Shaohong Luo, Hafiz Tariq Masood, Wesley J. Cantwell, Kin Liao, Qingwen Li, and Lianxi Zheng

AUTHORS Rajesh Thomas, Shashikant P. Patole, Pedro M.F.J. Costa.

SUMMARY Despite the success of Li-ion batteries, it is unlikely to represent a feasible option for future large-scale, high capacity applications. Two well-known limitations are short-circuiting of the electrodes and, more critical, the lack of sufficient geological reserves of lithium to keep up with the expected growing demand. Thus, the continued search for better active elements and electrode materials suitable for energy storage devices is critical. In the published paper, authors report the comparative performance of two different cathodes for an Al-ion battery system. The active materials used were a conventional graphite powder, or graphene flakes, obtained from the patented technology by Dr. Patole. The electrochemical performance, along with the intercalation process and structural stability of the cathodes, in charged and discharged states, was evaluated experimentally and modelled from firstprinciples.

Dr. Patole has also published a second paper in the Q1 Journal of Advanced Material Interfaces.

Dr. Dimitrios Reppas and Dr. Glenn Muschert have published a paper in the International Journal of Communication (IJoC)

TITLE Three Volumes on Information and Value Communication: A Review Essay According to the latest 2019 statistics from Google Scholar, IJoC ranks 2nd among all Humanities, Literature & Arts journals, and 4th among Communication journals.

Dr. Mark Dressman, Chair of English Department, has recently published a co-edited book with Wiley-Blackwell publishers.

TITLE The Handbook of Informal English Language Learning.

The book is also on the publisherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website at: https://www.wiley.com/en-usThe+Handbook+of+Info rmal+Language+Learning-p-9781119472445

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Dr. Moh’d Rezeq published a paper in Nature group journal Scientific Reports.

TITLE Photodetection Characteristics of Gold Coated AFM Tips and n-Silicon Substrate nano-Schottky Interfaces SUMMARY The paper presents a breakthrough in the field of nano photo-detection and digital imaging and will bring this technology to a new level. The paper details a new structure and mechanism for fabricating nano photo sensors that are very sensitive to light and extremely small in size. This is because the basic structure of these photo sensors is made of metal nanoparticles that are in the range 5-20 nm, also called plasmonic nanoparticles, and placed on a Si substrate. Because of the small size of these particles, the electrons can move freely within the particle and become very sensitive to light. When the light hits such nanoparticles, even with a very small energy, electrons can easily jump (tunnel) through a very thin barrier to the Si material which results in a photo electric signal. Because these nanoparticles don’t have a specific energy band gap, like the case of current photo sensors, they are very sensitive to any light wave length ranging from very low energy (infrared) to high energy (ultraviolet). Therefore, this technology will lead to the fabrication of photo-detectors with a very high sensitivity, and with a pixel size resolution at sub-10 nm scale, much higher resolution than existing technology.

Dr. Rezeq acknowledges the research team who put outstanding efforts into this work, including Dr. Yawar Abbas, Dr. Ayman Rezk, Dr. Irfan Saadat and Dr Ammar Nayfeh.

Dr. Davide Batic published a paper in The European Journal of Physics C.

TITLE Perturbing microscopic noncommutative black holes AUTHORS Batic D, Nowakowski M and Redway K. SUMMARY This paper was the sequel to the paper “Some exact quasinormal frequencies of a massless scalar field in Schwarzschild spacetime,” which was selected as a research feature for the KU News Website: https:// www.ku.ac.ae/new-wave-modes-from-black-holesdiscovered/. In that paper, we discovered new black oscillations for a certain class of black holes and we wrote there it would have been interesting to verify whether these theoretically predicted oscillations and associated frequencies can be also detected in larger classes of black holes. This question was satisfactorily answered and resulted this year in the new publication in The European Journal of Physics C.

Dr. Nayla El Kork, Associate Professor of Physics, recently published a paper in the Q1 Journal ACS Omega.

TITLE Electronic Structure Calculations with the Spin Orbit Effect of the Low-Lying Electronic States of the YbBr Molecule AUTHORS Wael Chmaisani, Nayla El-Kork, Soumaya Elmoussaoui, Mahmoud Korek

Mr. Ruikun Zhao, Senior Lecturer in the Preparatory Program, published a paper in the Proceedings of ISERD International Conference in Beijing.

TITLE: An Examination of Effectiveness of Different Approaches to Teaching Quantitative Methods in Higher Education KU TIMES

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INNOVATION FORWARD

Cutting-edge research and breakthroughs

Skin-Deep Communication: Using the Human Body to Transmit Biodata amongst Wearable Medical Devices Dr. Ibrahim Elfadel showcases the first ever successful body-coupled communication transmission at the 41st Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference in Berlin, Germany It’s been ten years since FitBit released its first health wearable, and now, roughly one in four adults uses some kind of fitness tracking device.

While most people use them to gain some insight to their sleeping patterns and daily exercise, for some, wearable data-collection tools are medically necessary. In the world of healthcare, there is huge demand for remote and continuous patient monitoring.

A research project led by Dr. Ibrahim Elfadel, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Khalifa University, with Dr. Shahzad Muzaffar, Postdoctoral Researcher, Dr. Jerald Yoo, former KU Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, now with the National

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University of Singapore, Dr. Ayman Shabra, former KU Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, now with MediaTek, MA, USA, and Dr. Mihai Sanduleanu, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has resulted in the development of a working prototype of a body-coupled communication transceiver that transmits and receives information using human skin as a communication medium. The project began in 2014, and since then, a full hardware platform showcasing the body-coupled communication link has been demonstrated. Funded in part by a grant from Al Jalila Foundation, a UAE medical foundation supporting biomedical research, the signal encoding part of the research has been published in journal articles, conference papers and book chapters. Additionally, several US patents have been filed for the technology.

“Our research aims to provide secure, ultralow-power communication between wearable medical devices such as hearing aids, vital sign monitors, and personal safety trackers,” said Dr. Elfadel. “This research also has relevance to the healthcare component of the UAE Innovation Strategy and its 2030 vision. In particular, this research enables the development of novel secure, reliable, predictive health monitoring platforms that may be used to diagnose, monitor, and treat diseases with high UAE incidence, such as obesity and diabetes.”

Individuals with high blood pressure, for example, have always been tasked with taking at-home readings to discuss with their healthcare providers. Replacing the standard blood pressure measuring device with a simple wearable tracker makes things easier.

INNOVATION FORWARD

“Wearable devices have always been the focus of active research, and technology advances have made it possible to develop sophisticated wearable electronic devices such as smart watches, smart eyeglasses, and fitness and lifestyle monitors,” explained Dr. Elfadel. “Reliable realtime communication amongst these body-worn devices plays a key role in the synchronous collection of information about the human body and its environmental conditions, and therefore, in the enablement of a new era of portable diagnosis and personalized care.”

Beyond medical necessity, there’s commercial opportunity here too: people worldwide are used to measuring their health using tools like body mass index (BMI) and resting heart rate. Advances in wearable technology have made trackers more accessible and appealing to consumers interested in measuring more variables.

Industry analyst CCS Insight says worldwide wearables sales will grow by an average of 20 percent each year over the next four years, becoming a US$29 billion market by 2022.

However, these devices are limited by their power-hungry nature. To enrich data collection, wearables— particularly fitness trackers worn on the wrist—contain multiple sensors to supply large volumes of data about location, motion, physiological condition and other metrics useful to the person wearing the device.

The more sensors, the greater the power consumption.

“Existing wireless standards are power-hungry and are known to drain the batteries quickly while wired communication is in conflict

with the stringent wearablility requirement,” said Dr. Elfadel. “The ability to transmit and receive data at a very low energy-per-bit is an essential characteristic of wearable devices as they need to remain operational during days, and even weeks, of continuous usage. An alternative to wired or wireless communication is bodycoupled communication (BCC) which uses the human skin as a communication medium.”

Human body communication involves the body acting as the communication channel for an electrical signal, with the signal transmitted primarily through the skin. Normally, devices on the body communicate wirelessly through radio frequency technology, but BCC provides a more power efficient and secure means of communication. A transmitter injects an alternating current into the skin, which acts like a wire to carry the signal throughout the body. This signal causes a voltage to appear across two receiving electrodes elsewhere on the body.

“Using human skin as a communication medium has been attempted before but prior work has used traditional signal encoding, leading to the design of complex communication circuits.

So while the medium is totally secure, such complex circuits have a high power consumption and their testing has been restricted to predictable, well-controlled signals, such as clock signals,” added Dr. Elfadel. “What makes this project unique is the use of a new signal encoding technique that facilitates the design of simple communication circuits with minimal power requirements.

The medium also lends itself to tight integration with electrode-based medical monitoring devices for the brain and heart and also smart band aids.”

Because the signal is completely contained within the human body, the performance is not affected by the surrounding environment.

However, the body is not a perfect wire and affects the signal in non-ideal ways, one of which is adding a delay and necessitating a transmission power limit. The injected current must be low enough as to not damage any nerves or tissue, especially when applied over a long time. Concurrently, the current also needs to be strong enough to withstand the effects of the electrical properties of the human body. The relative permittivity (how well an electromagnetic wave can pass through a material) of skin, fat, muscle, and bone affects the signal. Signal attenuation, where the signal strength weakens, increases exponentially with distance when transmitting over the arms and legs, with joints also increasing the attenuation.

Dr. Elfadel and his team used Pulse-Index Communication (PIC)-based BCC transceivers to facilitate successful bi-directional communication through the body by transmitting arbitrary 16-bit data words over a distance of 150cm and receiving them flawlessly in a roundtrip configuration.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the very first time such BCC transmission has been achieved,” said Dr. Elfadel. “Future work will tackle an integrated very-large-scale integration (VLSI) implementation of the PIC-based BCC transceiver along KU TIMES

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with the validation of such transceiver in the presence of link non-idealities such as multipath fading, variable-ground effect, and variable skin-electrode impedance.

“Our next step is the miniaturization of the BCC circuits to reduce their form factors and improve their flexibility for seamless integration with wearable medical devices. The main challenge we are currently facing in this research is the development of reliable and flexible electrodes that can be comfortably integrated with wearable healthcare monitors so that a robust body-area network can be established among them.

“We hope to demonstrate to the UAE medical and healthcare professionals the significant potential of homegrown biomedical engineering research at Khalifa University.

Our research may trigger further fundamental research into the electrophysiological properties of human skin on which physiologists, dermatologists, and biomedical engineers may be able to collaborate across the boundaries of their disciplines.”

Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Crisis Management Expertise Shared Khalifa University’s Dr. Ernesto Damiani Discusses the Need to Leverage AI and Big Data Analytics to Prevent Cyberattacks

As a regional expert in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), Khalifa University’s Dr. Ernesto Damiani, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of KU’s Center on Cyber Physical Systems (C2PS) and Senior Director of KU’s recently launched Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems Institute, was invited to the European Agency for Network and Information Security’s (ENISA) high-level meeting in Athens in June to discuss the pressing issue of cyber crisis management.

CORRECTIONS: WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE MISTAKE THAT APPEARED IN THE AUGUST 2019 EDITION OF KU TIMES. AN ARTICLE ABOUT DR. ERNESTO DAMIANI, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF THE AI INSTITUTE, DIRECTOR OF THE C2PS AND PROFESSOR OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING, ON THE ROLE OF AI FOR CYBERSECURITY, WAS MISPRINTED. WE INCLUDE THE ACTUAL STORY HERE.

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ENISA is the EU agency tasked with establishing a high level of network and information security within the European Union. The meeting in Athens convened AI experts from around the globe to share and debate the best practices for preventing and managing cyber-attacks.

“When a security crisis takes place in the physical world some things are certain, like who is threatening you, how and (most of the time) why. This is not the case for cybercrises, as the hand pointing the gun at you is hidden in the Dark Net and the gun itself may have been planted in your network years before. AI has become crucial for cyber-security,” explained Dr. Damiani.

A good example of a hidden cybergun is EternalRocks, a computer worm that infects Microsoft Windows machines, which was originally developed by the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA).

Once installed on the victim’s machine through a phishing email, EternalRocks’ small infecting module (or carrier) installs Tor, the notorious private network that conceals Internet traffic, to access its hidden servers.

The carrier uses Tor to connect to a remote server and downloads an entire Trojan horse that allows the remote attacker to control the victim’s machine and the networks it is connected to.

Unlike ransomware such as WannaCry, which infected 230,000 computers in May 2017, EternalRocks does no immediate harm to its hosts.

“It just hides on a disk, renaming itself to escape detection, and then stays dormant for months, even for years, until the time comes for a “soft” attack aimed at collecting and stealing information or for a generalized attack to clog the victim’s network,” said Dr. Damiani.

“Soft” attacks are especially dangerous because they can subtly impair a country’s key industries and markets, steal relevant information and weaken defenses, while going completely unnoticed.

Traditional security measures, like cyber-walls, are useless once EternalRocks “sleepers” are installed inside a system’s defense perimeter.

Sleeper modules generate traffic at random intervals, waiting for network activity bursts to hide their footprints.

This makes traditional attacks identification techniques based on fixed traffic patterns almost useless against sleepers.

However, some AI models, like Recursive Neural Networks (RNNs), can be equipped with long-term memory to find, remember and link to each other statistically rare events taking place on smartphones, computers and other devices, as well as on the network connecting them.

RNNs are trained to match these sequences to “attack graphs”, i.e. event connections that correspond to an attack.

Dr. Damiani and a team of KU researchers from the Center on Cyber-Physical Systems, the Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC), in collaboration with other UAE-based stakeholders in the telecommunication domain, are developing an AI model that will be able to identify suspicious activities trying to escape detection.

The team is automating the set-up and deployment of Big Data pipelines that ingest streams of events (like smart phones’ data connections start and end, use of apps, hand-overs from one cell to the other) coming from large-scale mobile network environments comprising millions of smartphones and other devices.

These streams are collected using a technique based on a multipleSIM probe developed by C2PS in collaboration with Purdue University’s CERIAS center, and then fed into the AI models that identifies suspicious activities.

Cyberattacks are the fastest growing crime in the US, according to a report released last year by Cybersecurity Ventures, and they are increasing in size, sophistication and cost.

Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that cybercrime will cost the world US$6 trillion annually by 2021.

Using data analytics and AI to prevent cyber threats is critical for achieving information security and better cyber resilience. This capability is critical as we shift from merely reacting to incidents to predicting, understanding and responding to complex events.

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EBTIC Wins Two Awards at Computing AI & ML Machine Learning Awards 2019 for Intuitu Project Khalifa University’s Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTC) Develops Intuitu, an Advanced AI Tool to Drive Optimized Warehouse Deployment The warehouses that pick, pack and dispatch our products and packages are getting smarter, more efficient, smaller, and even portable, thanks to recent advancements in digitalization, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI). As these “warehouses of the future” shift from massive brick-and-mortar buildings to mobile containers closer to the customer, they present unique optimization challenges for the companies that use them.

Over the summer, at the AI and Machine Learning Awards 2019 in London – a new line up of awards launched this year by Computing, the UK’s leading business technology information resource – researchers from EBTIC won two awards, including ‘Outstanding AI/Machine Learning Project’ and ‘Most Innovative use of AI/Machine Learning’ for their new cutting-edge tool for solving optimization problems related to warehouse deployment, called Intuitu.

Developed by researchers at EBTIC – an ICT research and innovation center founded by Khalifa University, Etisalat and BT, and supported by ICT Fund – and led by Dr. Sid Shakya and Dr. Rom Lee, together with BT, UK, Intuitu is an AI-based tool that optimizes the deployment of warehouses for large service organizations such as telecommunications companies. EBTIC is also working closely with its local partner Etisalat, one of the world’s leading telecom groups, to deploy the Intuitu tool to improve operational efficiency and faster service delivery of Etisalat’s mobile warehouses. They are also collaborating to leverage Intuitu’s advanced AI logic to manage Etisalat’s inventories and warehouses more efficiently.

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“Recent advancements in internet-ofthings (IoT) and connected technologies have greatly impacted warehouse design.

They are getting smaller and mobile in their nature, shifting from fixed structures to mobile containers or lockers. It is a relatively new concept and poses challenges as redeployment has to happen frequently and optimally. Placing warehouses at the right place and at the right time can reduce travel and maximize productivity for field engineers,” said Dr. Sid Shakya, a Chief Researcher at EBTIC. IoT enabled warehouses can be monitored and operated remotely. A fixed number of engineers and technicians are assigned to the warehouses based on their home location and working location. Ideally, the distance the workers have to travel to get to the warehouse and then to the client should be minimized.

These mobile storages can be quickly deployed to different locations in a very short time. More

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serves; and lastly, minimizing the number of tasks that a warehouse is expected to serve per day.

Dr. Rom from the Inutitu team elaborated on how the tool works, “The genetic algorithm starts with a population of random solutions, which in this case, are a set of random warehouse locations, and performs a distance based clustering algorithm to find the sites that will be served by each location.

It then calculates all five objectives and combines them together to evaluate the effectiveness of each solution. It then iteratively ‘evolves’ the population by applying genetic operators known as selection, crossover and mutation over a fixed number of allowed iterations, also known as generations, and consequently presents the best solution in the final population as the output.”

“Evolutionary algorithms and genetic algorithms are active areas of research in the AI community and EBTIC is at forefront of this research field,” Dr. Rom added.

importantly, they can be moved from one location to another and can be redeployed and reused, contributing to a more sustainable and eco-friendly model of warehousing.

One of the main goals of Intuitu is to determine the most ideal configuration of portable warehouses so that they are closer to consumers for faster delivery, while remaining close to technicians for optimal productivity. The tool drastically reduces the amount of time it would take for a technician to be deployed to provide a customer a requested service, which in turn will lead to significant efficiency gains.

Intuitu models the warehouse deployment problem as a combinatorial optimization problem – when mathematical techniques are applied to find optimal solutions within a finite set of possible solutions – and uses a sophisticated type of evolutionary algorithm known as genetic algorithm (GA) to find the optimal deployment design.

In this model, five key objectives were optimized: Minimizing the cumulative travel time for technicians to get spare parts; minimizing the distance from a warehouse to the served exchange sites; minimizing the distance from a warehouse to the home locations of the assigned technicians; minimizing the number of technicians that a warehouse

“To make AI models operational, you must bring together a number of components including data, problem modelling, and identification of the right AI techniques. EBTIC approached this task in an agile fashion working closely with BT’s Applied Research team, and identified the right AI techniques to model the problem,” said Dr. Sid Dr. Nawaf Al Moosa, Director of EBTIC, said: “EBTIC has a history of innovating practical AI solutions and have been leading in intellectual property generation in UAE for the past 10 years. These awards are a further testament to EBTIC’s successful history of applying AI techniques to the operations of its partner organizations, and to their effort to promote AI research in the UAE and the region.”

EBTIC is a foundational partner of Khalifa University’s new AI and Intelligent Systems Institute (AI Institute), a multidisciplinary research unit focused primarily on robotics, artificial intelligence, data science, next-gen networks, semiconductor technologies and cybersecurity. EBTIC and the AI Institute are committed to developing the key technologies required to bring the UAE significantly closer to reaching its goal of becoming a global hub for Artificial Intelligence innovation.

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EBTIC takes 3rd in GECCO 2019 Competition Khalifa University’s EBTIC Developed Hybrid Algorithms Capable of Solving Complex Computer Science Optimization Problems at Genetic and Evolutionary Computations Conference 2019

An algorithm developed by Khalifa University’s Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC), which is a key part of Khalifa University’s new Artificial Intelligence Institute, together with Spain’s University of Basque Country recently finished 3rd in a prestigious competition at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computations Conference (GECCO) 2019, held in Prague in July 2019.

The developed algorithm was designed to solve a complex multi-objective optimization problem known as Travelling Thief Problem (TTP) – a combination of the “Travelling Salesman Problem” and the “Knapsack Problem” – two classic

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The Traveling Salesman Problem involves finding the shortest possible route between a set of cities, where every city is visited exactly once before returning to the starting point. The Knapsack Problem involves determining the number of items to include in a collection (given a set of items, each with a weight and a value) so that the total weight is less than or equal to a given limit and the total value is as large as possible. Both are problems in combinatorial optimization – where you must find the “optimal” solution from a finite but very large set of possible solutions.

Problems like these arise frequently in real world settings. The number of possible solutions grows rapidly with the size of the input to the problem, making it impractical to apply an exhaustive search of potential solutions.

The aim of combinatorial optimization is to develop hybrid algorithms capable of exploring numerous potential solutions.

“We designed specific variation operators, which were applied as part of a hybrid multi-objective evolutionary search. The high computational cost of the optimization problem was addressed using an efficient evaluation scheme that reuses partial evaluations of the solution,” Dr. Shakya explained.

algorithmic problems in the field of computer science and operations research. Dr. Sid Shakya, EBTIC Chief Researcher, and Dr. Roberto Santana, researcher from the University of Basque Country and an EBTIC fellow, proposed a robust multi-objective method to solve the problem.

The pair’s solution was based on a combination of two artificial intelligence (AI) methods, known as dynamic programming and evolutionary multi-objective optimization, which maximize the coverage of possible solutions for meeting two conflicting objectives related to the Travelling Salesman Problem and the Knapsack Problem.

“This resulted in a competitive solution of high-dimensional TTP instances that was able to outperform some of the latest known solutions. One of the key motivations for this work was to address other real-word multicomponent optimization problems, such as enterprise planning, scheduling and allocation problems, which are part of some of the core research focus areas at EBTIC and its partner organizations,” he added.

GECCO is a premier AI conference for optimization, with a key focus on evolutionary algorithms. It attracts high quality research from top AI institutions working in the area of search heuristics and computational optimization.

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Pulling Salt Out of Seawater with Magnets A previously unutilized effect of magnetism observed by Khalifa University’s Dr. Emad Alhseinat may be key to energy-efficient, lowcost seawater desalination and other industrial separation processes In a world of dwindling freshwater resources and rising greenhouse gases, researchers are constantly searching for affordable, more sustainable ways to turn seawater into potable drinking water, without further straining the planet’s natural resources or increasing global greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, a team of researchers from Khalifa University’s Center for Membranes and Advanced Technology (CMAT), led by Dr. Emad Alhseinat, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, have discovered a new way to separate salt from saline water that does not rely on the traditional thermal and membrane methods, both of which can be energy intensive and expensive, particularly for small-scale desalination and desalination of lowsalinity water.

Instead, Dr. Alhseinat’s membraneless separation method uses electric and magnetic fields to pull salt ions from a stream of saltwater towards a porous electrode, where they are collected and easily removed. The new approach is described in a paper that is currently under review by the journal Electrochemical Acta and is authored by Dr. Alhseinat and Dr. Pei Shui, a Visiting Scholar at Khalifa University. The team has also filed a patent for the novel system titled “System and Method for Removing Ions and Dissolved Charged Particles from Saline Water with Magnetic and Electric Fields” (PCT patent application number is PCT/IB2019/054453).

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Research into using electric charges to separate salt ions from seawater – a process known as capacitive deionization, or CDI – is accelerating rapidly. In a paper published earlier this year in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Dr. Alhseinat provides a comprehensive overview of the evolving desalination technology and identifies ways to optimize the configuration and electrode components of CDI. Electric charge separation coupled with magnetic fields, however, is what Dr. Alhseinat believes could lead to a breakthrough in not only seawater desalination, but in many applications that rely on separation, like gas sweetening – the process of removing hydrogen sulfide from natural gas – and removing heavy metals from wastewater.

“Previous attempts to use either electrical or magnetic forces to separate ions from water have required extremely strong magnets or high electrical voltages, making their practical application quite challenging and expensive. In our invention, by coupling the magnetic and electrical forces in a novel arrangement, we manage to successfully separate ions from saline water with much weaker magnets and electrical voltage,” Dr. Alhseinat explained.

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Being able to use weaker, less expensive magnets makes the process significantly more sustainable and practical for potential use in remote areas where large-scale desalination isn’t required.

The weak magnetic fields are effective because Dr. Alhseinat is exploiting a previously unutilized property of magnetism to improve the separation process.

“The light bulb moment was when I observed some interesting behavior of certain salt ions under the effect of the magnetic field. At that moment I realized that the effect of the magnetic field is not just Lorentz forces as expected,” Dr. Alhseinat shared.

Dr. Alhseinat discovered that the magnetic field does more than apply the Lorentz force, which is the electromagnetic force that makes something, such as a wire with an electrical current flowing through, it physically move (this is how electric motors work); it weakens the bonds between the salt molecules in the water.

“The salt ions being separated from seawater are actually hydrated ions, which are crystalline salt molecules attached to a certain number of water molecules. The magnetic field weakens the bonds within the hydrated ions, freeing the salt molecule from the hydrogen atoms, which then increases the diffusion of the salt molecule inside the solution towards the electrodes,” he said.

The dehydrated salt molecules, or pure sodium chloride ions, are physically smaller than hydrated salt molecules. Their smaller size allows them to move faster towards the electrodes, and means more of them can fit on the electrode, making the CDI process significantly more efficient.

The smaller pure salt ions are also why weaker, lowcost magnets work. It is the unique configurations

of the magnetic and electric fields that causes the bonds between the hydrogen and salt ions to weaken, not the strength of the magnetic field.

“The bonds between molecules stretch, bend and twist, producing continuous vibrations. If you hit these vibrations with a matching frequency, you can break them or weaken them,” Dr. Alhseinat explained. He realized that the perfect coupling of a magnetic field with an electric field can produce frequencies that break apart the bonds between salt ions and hydrogen molecules.

After running a number of simulations to determine the ideal configuration of the magnetic and electric fields, the finely tuned prototype is able to improve salt separation by 50% compared to a conventional CDI system.

But Dr. Alhseinat’s team believes there is still room for improvement. They are constantly working to further enhance separation by altering different components of the system, such as frequencies, electrode configurations, and solution compositions. Dr. Alhseinat and an interdisciplinary team of experts, including chemists, physicists, and microscopists from KU, have planned new work that aims to fundamentally explain the observed effects of magnetic and electric fields on weakening molecular bonds, and in turn expand its application in critical areas like material synthesis.

Dr. Alhseinat’s research has significant potential impact. He has demonstrated a new way to control ion size and mobility through magnetism, giving scientists greater control over the separation process, which could lead to efficient, more sustainable methods of desalination. In a country like the UAE, where desalination provides over 80% of the nation’s potable water, reducing desalination’s hefty energy and carbon price is crucial for future development and prosperity.

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KU PhD student Ayesha AlKhoori delivered two talks on her pioneering research in the field of catalysis and separation at the 3rd ANQUE-ICCE International Congress of Chemical Engineering, held in June in Santander, Spain. Alkhoori is the first PhD student to study under the Petroleum Institute’s Center for Catalysis and Separation (CeCaS) at Khalifa University. Working under Dr. Kyriaki Polychronopoulou, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of CeCaS, Alkhoori is helping to advance catalysis as a means to produce cleaner, more efficient, and economically viable fuels and chemicals.

In her first presentation, titled “Improving Metal Oxide Catalysts for Biogas Dry Reforming: Coupling of Mechanochemical Modification with Enhanced Microwave Chemistry,” AlKhoori described a research project aimed at developing catalysts that can convert carbon dioxide and methane into syngas – a process known as ‘dry reforming of methane.’ Syngas is a mixture of hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide that can be used as a starting material for producing valuable chemicals under the proper catalytic reaction conditions.

New Low-Cost Catalysts for Cleaner Energy First PhD student from KU’s Center for Catalysis and Separation (CeCaS) delivers two talks at International Conference in Spain on her pioneering catalysis research

While the environmental and economic benefits of dry reforming of methane reactions are very high, Alkhoori explains that the main problem hindering the commercialization of this technology is the issue of carbon formation and sintering on the catalysts, which causes deterioration of the catalyst’s activity.

In this project, Alkhoori and Dr. Polychronopoulou are working with PhD student Aseel Hussein and MSc student Sara AlKhoori to synthesize

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a catalyst made from copper and the rare earth metal cerium, using a very fast synthesis method that uses microwave energy rather than typical heating.

“One of the main obstacles of the dry reforming of methane reaction is the coke deposition on the catalyst, which causes deterioration of the catalytic activity,” AlKhoori explained.

She believes that one way to tackle the coke depositions, which is the formation carbonaceous deposit on the catalyst’s surface, is to control the particle size of active material on the catalyst.

To do this, the researchers prepared the copper and ceria-based catalysts, and then modified them using different treatments.

“Traditionally, noble metal catalysts (based on platinum

system to further reduce the negative coking effect.

In her second presentation, titled “Copper-Ceria Nanomaterials as Catalysts for Low Temperature H2 Purification and CO Capturing in PEMFCs,” AlKhoori discussed a project she has been working on for over three years with Dr. Polychronopoulou. The project aims to overcome the challenge of carbon monoxide poisoning in catalysts used in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), a type of lowtemperature hydrogen fuel cell. In a typical hydrogen fuel cell, catalysts (usually made from platinum) split hydrogen gas into positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons. The electrons are used to generate electricity while the protons pass through a membrane to combine with oxygen gas at the opposite end of the fuel cell to create water.

and gold) boost the reaction in terms of activity and stability.

However, their high cost excludes them from applications of dry methane reforming.

That is why we are developing catalysts with copper, a transition metal, which has high catalytic activity and selectivity at a lower cost, which makes them good candidates for the reforming reaction,” AlKhoori said.

The project is ongoing, Alkhoori explained, as her team continues to work on optimizing the catalytic

A major challenge faced by hydrogen fuel cells today is carbon monoxide “poisoning” in catalysts. Carbon monoxide is found in commercial hydrogen gas – the fuel needed to make hydrogen fuel cells. When too much carbon monoxide collects on the catalyst, the catalyst is unable to carry out the reactions needed to split the hydrogen gas.

Alkhoori and Dr. Polychronopoulou have discovered a low-cost method to purify the hydrogen gas by developing a catalyst that oxidizes the carbon monoxide and converts it into carbon dioxide – a gas that does not interfere with the fuel cell.

They developed a nanocrystalline catalyst made from copper and

cerium oxide (an oxide of the rare earth metal cerium) using a microwave synthesis approach, which successfully converted carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide at low temperatures. Their catalyst is significantly cheaper to develop than traditional catalysts made of noble metals, such as platinum, ruthenium, rhodium, and gold, which means it is a commercially viable alternative to be used in real-world applications to eliminate catalyst poisoning and increase fuel cell efficiency.

The researchers have published five papers on this work, with a sixth currently under review. The papers have been published in Surface and Coatings Technology, Materials Research Bulletin, the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering, Molecular Catalysis, and Applied Catalysis A: General.

The ANQUE-ICCE International Congress of Chemical Engineering is organized by ANQUE, the National Association of Chemists and Chemical Engineers of Spain, in collaboration with AQUIQÁN, the Association of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Cantabria. The international congress is a reference for researchers in the field of chemical engineering and chemistry applied to the industry.

Alkhoori had the opportunity to exchange up-to-date information and connect with researchers and experts from different universities and countries.

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Learn about upcoming events at KU

DUBAI WORLD CONGRESS FOR SELF-DRIVING TRANSPORT 15TH - 16TH OCTOBER 2019 KU is participating in the Dubai World Congress for Self-Driving Transport, an event that will bring experts from the field of self-driving technology together to increase awareness and accelerate the adoption of Self-Driving Technology within the UAE, region, and world. The gathering is part of the realization of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum’s vision, the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make one quarter of transportation in Dubai autonomous by 2030.

Expect government leaders, leading car manufacturers, and technology companies, to forge essential partnerships as they compete to gain an advantage for their technological solutions. Join to witness a self-driving vehicle give demonstrations in a designated zone and showcase its versatility.

Venue: Za’abeel Hall 4-6, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai, UAE Date: 15-16 October 2019 For more information, visit https://sdcongress.com/

WETEX WETEX, the region’s leading exhibition for Water, Energy, Technology, and the Environment, will host its annual convention from 21 -23 October.

WETEX offers convention goers the ideal opportunity to see the emerging technologies and ideas from industry leaders in the fields of sustainability and renewable technology.

The exhibition’s focus this year will be to showcase emerging methods to achieve integration between all sectors of the energy industry and bring together trade and technical sectors while facilitating the creation of new trade opportunities.

Venue: Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Center Date: October 21-23 2019 For more information, visit https://www.wetex.ae/

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