King Saud University – News Portal

On Tuesday morning, King Saud University formalized partnerships with the prestigious Yale University and the Nanyang Technical University in regard to water desalination, energy and medicine. The Saudi Ministry of Higher Education’s four-day International Exhibition for Higher Education served as an extremely fitting venue for the beginning of such auspicious alliances.

One agreement provided that the American and Singaporean universities will share in the cost of the projects.  Dr. Saeed Al-Zahrani, a King Saud University professor of Chemical Engineering noted that KSU and Nanyang Technical University hope to begin a joint-research project for the development of a unique desalination process, in which sea water osmosis can be manipulated to consume significantly less energy, and ultimately create a considerably more efficient and money-saving process. The ever-increasing demands for water in the Middle East makes projects such as this indispensable, and King Saud University is taking an invaluable role in Saudi Arabia’s goal to meet the formidable challenge of improving the desalination process.

King Saud University’s cooperation with Yale University will focus on advanced research in the field of infectious diseases, of particular importance for global health, especially regarding diseases prevalent in the Saudi region. Yale and King Saudi University aim to bolster training for both male and female graduate and post-doctoral students, as an effort to make KSU a globally recognized and highly-regarded center for researching infectious diseases.

The cooperation between King Saud University and Yale began with a meeting of KSU professor of Pharmacology Dr. Amal Fatani and Yale’s Dr. Michael Cappello, a professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases. The two experts, in their discussions, identified the great need for Saudi universities such as KSU to provide Saudi students with training and experience in conducting scientific research in various medical disciplines, particularly in research on infectious diseases.