KAUST Associate Professor Xiangliang Zhang presented her work on mining streaming and temporal data at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-ECAI-18) in Stockholm. Her talk, "Mining Streaming and Temporal Data: from Representation to Knowledge," summarized her research on mining data streams. Zhang directs the KAUST Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering (MINE) group, which focuses on knowledge discovery from large-scale data. Why it matters: Showcases KAUST's contributions to AI research and highlights the university's growing recognition within the international AI community.
Four Saudi students mentored by KAUST Professor Kuo-Wei Huang won one silver and three bronze medals at the 50th International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO 2018) in Prague. Bader Almulhim won a silver medal, while Abdulrahman Aledrees, Ali Alasmari and Osama Alali won bronze. Almulhim and Alasmari were accepted to the KAUST Gifted Student Program (KGSP) and will study in the U.S. Why it matters: This highlights KAUST's role in nurturing scientific talent and promoting STEM education in Saudi Arabia, though the direct AI relevance is limited.
MBZUAI Professor Kun Zhang's research focuses on causality in AI systems, aiming to understand underlying processes beyond data correlation. He emphasizes the importance of causality and graphical representations to model why systems produce observations and account for uncertainty. Zhang served as a program chair at the 38th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI) in Eindhoven. Why it matters: This highlights the growing importance of causality and uncertainty in AI research, crucial for responsible AI deployment and decision-making in the region.
KAUST's Extreme Computing Research Center Director David Keyes will chair the technical program of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC18) in Dallas. Approximately 420 professional volunteers and 160 student volunteers are engaged in the technical program. During SC17, KAUST’s supercomputer Shaheen II was recognized as the fastest in the Middle East, and it is expected to retain this title at SC18. Why it matters: KAUST's leadership role highlights the university's growing influence in global supercomputing and positions the Kingdom as a key player in HPC research and development.
The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is hosting an AI seminar by Kajetan Schweighofer on October 28, 2025, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM GST. TII describes itself as a global research center focused on discovery science and transformative technologies. The seminar series is part of TII's efforts to share its developments and research. Why it matters: Such seminars contribute to the growth of the AI ecosystem in the UAE by facilitating knowledge sharing and collaboration.
KAUST hosted the fifth Rising Stars in AI Symposium, convening 25 early-career AI researchers from over 430 applicants. Discussions centered on reasoning in AI models, AI's role in addressing global challenges, embodied systems, and the necessity of trustworthy AI. Participants, including Dr. Sahar Abdelnabi from the ELLIS Institute Tübingen, emphasized the symposium's value for collaboration and identifying future AI research directions. Why it matters: The event highlights KAUST's commitment to fostering emerging AI talent and addressing critical issues in the field, with a focus on AI's real-world impact and ethical considerations.
MBZUAI researchers will present 20 papers at the 40th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) in Honolulu. Visiting Associate Professor Tongliang Liu leads with seven publications, followed by Kun Zhang with six. One paper investigates semi-supervised learning vs. model-based methods for noisy data annotation in deep neural networks. Why it matters: The research addresses the critical issue of data quality and accessibility in machine learning, particularly for organizations with limited resources for data annotation.