No place in universities for Saudi research star

Saudi universities, including King Saud University (KSU) and King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST), failed to recruit Ali Al-Hasan, the Saudi graduate student from Northwestern University who received the International Institute for Nanotechnology’s Outstanding Research Award 2012 for innovating a method for the early diagnosis of cancer using nanotechnology.
Al-Hasan, who had filed his research with the two universities, said that the KSU had approached him two years ago, but failed to make an offer. A KAUST official contacted him and discussed the research he had undertaken but Al-Hasan rejected the university’s offer “because the university is interested in energy and industry research and did not offer to have me complete my medical nanotechnology research.”
Al-Hasan’s innovation was applied on cancer patients and showed that a new genetic fingerprint can indicate the type and degree of cancer at an early stage.
Professor Chad Mirkin, director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University, said Al-Hasan has the ability to benefit from his own experiments and observations to develop research in medical nanotechnology. The new technology may make early detection of many diseases possible and may also help with the assessment of risks and to determine treatment programs.