The establishment of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as an interdisciplinary university for the 21st century has taken education in the Kingdom into a new realm, especially with research and research-inspired teaching designed around four academic areas.
Why is it different? After all, research is just a search for knowledge to establish facts.
KAUST planners and academics view the new university as a new model with an innovative strategy regarding scientific research: The key word is “interdisciplinary.”
Is this something new? Not necessarily if we scroll through history. Interdisciplinary research and study is viewed as a modern concept, but the ancient Greeks put it into practice by fusing and integrating knowledge from both the sciences and arts. It is said that Greek historians and dramatists (Socrates and Plato, for example) took elements from other spheres of knowledge (such as medicine or philosophy) to further understand the natural world.
Though having historical precedence, the art of fusing disciplines — philosophy with mathematics, for example — had fallen out of fashion until the Enlightenment reinvigorated the practice. That’s not to say there weren’t precedents before that. Leonardo de Vinci was one of the few inter-disciplinarians of his time in Europe. And before that the scholars of the Islamic Golden Age were deeply immersed in interdisciplinary studies.
But in today’s interconnected world, perhaps one that could be called the “New Enlightenment,” interdisciplinary research has entered a new era, having built upon the work of ancient scholars. The digital revolution being experienced today has certainly played a profound role in sending collaborative interdisciplinary research into hyper-drive.
The shift toward modern interdisciplinary research, according to the Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar Herbert Marshall McLuhan, has been thanks to the shift from industrial mechanization to the far more rapid world of communication and discourse brought about by electronic communications.
The interdisciplinary field has united researchers, students and teachers more than ever before in the goals of connecting and integrating several academic schools of thought, professions and technologies in the pursuit of a common task of solving problems too complex for just one discipline or a small number of researchers.
Interdisciplinary study involves attacking a subject from various angles and methods, eventually cutting across disciplines and forming a new method for understanding the subject. This common, collaborative goal aims to tap knowledge and expertise from unexpected places. For example, the study of the spread of AIDS incorporates various disciplines, such as molecular biology, medicine, anthropology, sociology, psychology, even urban planning.
It is this interdisciplinary approach that KAUST has earmarked as its course that makes it stand out from other research universities. It will rely on interdisciplinary centers devoted to specific challenges, including energy research, water availability and sustainable development. It will have interdisciplinary, goal-oriented research at modern laboratories and master facilities designed with global collaborative research centers and the required infrastructure.
By tackling topics from multipronged directions, KAUST hopes to lead the way in research on major problems that require teams from different disciplines to advance science and technology, to contribute to economic diversification and to be a catalyst for transforming lives.
The model the university is embarking on is to build partnerships with other international universities and joint-tenure faculty members with permanent bases at research institutions abroad.
KAUST has already launched joint-research programs with institutions ranging from the National University of Singapore to France’s Institut Francais du Petrole to Britain’s Cambridge to Stanford University in the United States to Indian Institute of Technology in India. The initial research clusters for KAUST have been strategically selected for their relevance to Saudi Arabia’s existing industries; their ability to develop new knowledge-based industries; their significance in addressing the Kingdom’s social and economic needs; and their potential regional and international impact.
KAUST’s first four institutes will be:
Resources, Energy and Environment
• Energy research: Carbon sequestration, hydrogen and fuel cells, process design, combustion, solar energy
• Water/sustainable development: Desalination, water-use management, “green” planning for desert climates
Biosciences and Bioengineering
• Industrial biotechnology: Biotechnology for food, nutrition, public health, biodiversity, industrial processes
• Agricultural biotechnology: Sustainable aquaculture and agriculture
• Regional environmental bioscience: Red Sea marine environmental science and engineering
• Health science and technology: Regional epidemiological studies and population genomics
Materials Science and Engineering
• Polymers and membranes
• Nanomaterials: Carbon and bioprocessed nanomaterials, photovoltaic applications
• Catalytic chemistry: Materials for high-stress environments
Applied Mathematics and Computational Science
• Language software technologies and computational linguistics: Voice recognition and extraction of meaning
• Scientific and engineering computing: Computational chemistry, reservoir, regional environmental modeling
• Information and communications technology: IT security, network communication, health-care informatics.
The intellectual and organizational innovation behind KAUST thus represents what KAUST President Choon Fong Shih calls “a paradigm shift to conduct high-impact research unconstrained by disciplinary boundaries to create a new ecosystem unfettered by organizational structures, and to build meaningful partnerships across communities, cultures and continents — all for the larger purpose of serving humanity.”