SAUDI AMERICAN: Woman of Substance: the Materials World of Adah Almutairi, Celebrated Chemist, Nano Engineer and Inventor

The celebrated pharmaceutical chemist, nano engineer and inventor reveals why she has spent a career focusing her mind over matter.

When the Berlin Wall came down, Adah Almutairi watched the event unfold on a television screen 5,000 kilometres away in the family living room in Jeddah.

Too young at the time to fully understand the implications, 12-year-old Adah could nonetheless tell that the moment was significant, by the reaction of her parents.

Years later, at a conference to mark the 25th anniversary of the reunification of Germany, Ms Almutairi was on a stage in Berlin talking about her ground-breaking achievements in knocking down walls in science.

Back then, public speaking made her nervous. The knowledge that  Chancellor Angela Merkel, a fellow chemist revered by Ms Almutairi, was among the 700 top international scientists and guests taking part merely compounded the feeling.

She broke the ice with a quote from the 1967 romantic comedy drama The Graduate, which earned her a laugh from the audience: “I just have one word to say,” she told them. “Just one word. Are you listening? Are you listening? Plastics.”

Ms Almutairi went on to describe herself as a plastics chemist, but she is much more besides. Her wide-ranging work combining materials chemistry with nanotechnology as well as developing tools for the future of biology and medicine makes her in great demand at conferences in the US, Europe, the Middle East and China.

The Saudi-American pharmaceutical chemist and nanomedicine engineer has won all manner of honours and recognition, including the prestigious and lucrative National Institutes of Health director’s new innovator award.

At the Falling Walls event, she gave an engaging, if sometimes faltering, presentation of her life-changing nanoparticle discovery feted in the US Congress as one of the four most important US technology breakthroughs of 2012.

“I used to be a nervous wreck before I gave a talk and would practise for two weeks beforehand,” she tells The National. “Plus, Angela Merkel is such an amazing woman, so meeting her was really special.

“She got elected just as I got my degree in chemistry and the way she spoke at that conference, and later welcomed so many Syrians into Germany, made me really respect her views on being kind citizens.”

With practice, Ms Almutairi, now 45, is much more comfortable as a public speaker. “Preparation,” she says, “is key.”

It was a lesson she learnt as a schoolgirl after a fluffed first gymnastics performance before a crowd left her sobbing on a bench. Determined never to repeat the same mistake, she rose to become the top gymnast on the team as well as the fastest 1,500-metre runner.

Preparedness forms the backbone of her professional life as she puts known scientific truths into practice while always remaining open to unexpected outcomes.

Discoveries and their effects, she and Ms Merkel wholeheartedly agree, can often surprise the scientists and engineers themselves.

“If you decide there is going to be a challenge down the road and that is going to deter you, nothing will happen,” she says. “If you go down that road anyway, you’ll solve the problem when you get there.”

No amount of planning, though, could have readied her for a year when the rug was pulled out from beneath her feet. In 2015, her beloved father died at the age of 65 and her 20-year marriage to a banker she met at university fell apart.

It was, she says, a painful time – not least because Mutlaq bin Abdul Rahman Almutairi, born into a traditional Saudi family, was his daughter’s greatest ambassador, enabling her to break free from what could have all too easily been a restrictive mould.

He was just five years old and still mourning his mother’s death when his own father packed up their goat-hair tent, strapped their few possessions to the back of a camel and made the arduous 100km journey from the Bedouin desert enclave of Al Harra to seek work and a new life in Jeddah.

Desperately poor, the family squatted on land and, when old enough, the enterprising Mutlaq enrolled himself and his younger sister in school.

His conservative father, who could not read or write, was furious and sent his daughter home. Mutlaq stood his ground and continued with his education – a moment that shaped the course of his own future and subsequently that of his five children.

“Sometimes in life, one decision changes everything,” Ms Almutairi says.

Mutlaq’s offspring have flourished in their respective fields of science and medicine. Khalid, 46, a plastic surgeon, Heba, 38, a professor in radiology, and Ahmed, 37, a dentist, still live in Saudi Arabia while Amer, 41, a professor in family medicine, is based in Houston.

Ms Almutairi was named recently on the Forbes list of the world’s Top 10 Influential Female Engineers, and often thinks of the debt owed to a father who championed her right to education.

The stance made him something of an anomaly among the Almutair tribe, whose roots can be traced back to the Quran.

“It still makes me emotional,” she says. “He was enlightened from God.

“No one around him was educated. He was the first in his entire family to learn how to read and write and go to college.

“My father and grandfather got into a lot of fights because my grandfather did not believe women should be educated.”

While she inherited drive and motivation from her father, a love of learning was instilled at a young age by her mother Najat, who, aptly enough, was a teacher.

“My family on my mother’s side were extremely well educated and my mother is very well read,” she says.

Indeed, her parents met because Mutlaq had become besotted with Ms Almutairi’s great-aunt Hilal, an intellectual who was one of the first dentists in Saudi Arabia.

Despite the 20-year age gap, he approached the family to ask for her hand in marriage but was advised instead to wed the daughter of Hilal’s brother, with whom he would build a strong bond.

“My father appreciated a smart woman,” Ms Almutairi says. “He didn’t go after the young, pretty girl. He initially went for the older woman he enjoyed talking to.

“Now when I think back, I realise how special and unique he was, and how much respect he had for women.”

Mutlaq studied criminology and justice administration in Portland, Oregon, where Adah Almutairi was born, before returning to his homeland to become a police investigator.

The young Adah attended international schools in Jeddah and Riyadh, excelling not only at sport but in maths and science.

On leaving school at 16, she was at a loss as to what to do next. Her mother was applying for teaching posts so, on a whim, Ms Almutairi submitted an application to Najd National School in Riyadh – and surprised everyone, including herself, by landing a job teaching English.

“I didn’t have a degree, and when the headmistress realized how young I was, she said: ‘Don’t tell anyone, just put some lipstick on.’

“It was the best job ever. I loved every minute of it. I had such a connection with the girls. I used to take in copies of my mother’s Reader’s Digests and make up writing exercises around them.”

A year later, she began applying to universities. King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah turned her down but she secured a sports scholarship to Occidental College in Los Angeles, Barack Obama’s alma mater.

The opportunity once again put her father at loggerheads with her grandfather and members of the Almutairi clan, who did not think a young woman should travel overseas alone. Unperturbed, Mutlaq sent her anyway, even though he and Najat had doubts about her choice of subject.

The couple wanted her to be a doctor but Ms Almutairi chose maths as her major before switching to chemistry in her second year.

The lightbulb moment came when her tutor, the widely loved chemistry professor Tetsuo Otsuki, told her she was “a diamond in the dirt”.

“He made me feel smart and capable, and worth being taught,” she says.

“I have twice been told the phrase: ‘You remind me of myself’. It is one of the nicest things you can say to a young person if they look up to you. It really sat in my heart.”

Chemistry appealed because it was based on “concepts where once I wrapped my head around them, I could use them in so many ways”.

A scholarship to continue her studies at the University of California, Riverside, led her to create lightweight plastic polymers, or molecules, capable of conducting electrons that had uses in everything from robotics to space research.

“Around that time,” she says, “Hideki Shirakawa was winning the Nobel chemistry prize for his work with conductive polymers, and both Nasa and Walt Disney were funding and supporting that work.”

She may not have become a doctor of medicine as her parents had wished, but Ms Almutairi did turn her attention to the field during postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked with Jean Frechet, a chemist innovating in the area of in-vivo imaging to diagnose disease.

After being turned down for jobs in Saudi Arabia, she took up a post at the University of California, San Diego, going on to lead an interdisciplinary research group at the Centre for Excellence in Nanomedicine and Engineering.

Perhaps one of Ms Almutairi’s proudest moments was collaborating with an ophthalmologist for a decade to come up with a way to regenerate failing retinas and prevent blindness.

“That particular innovation is now commercialised and makes me feel really good about myself,” she says. “I enjoy all sorts of application materials but medicine is especially rewarding. I like to solve problems and have a positive impact on the world.”

Her work with lanthanides – popularly classed as rare earth elements but actually, she says, abundant – involves a chemical reaction that could be applied to the delivery of drugs and diagnostics in medicine but also solar energy harvesting.

She has more than 100 patents registered, including one with her brother Khalid to use gold molecules in liposuction.

“My work is very rewarding,” Ms Almutairi says, “and my father was very proud of me. When I became well known in the US, it was a big moment because the people who were criticising him for sending his daughter away were the same people congratulating him.”

A strong proponent of the “health is wealth” philosophy, she may no longer run, but she does lift weights regularly and spends time in the garden with her 10-year-old son cultivating avocados, figs, and citrus trees, and growing aubergines, tomatoes and cucumbers.

She has visited Saudi Arabia many times to see her family and speak at conferences. One in particular that has stayed with her was a graduation speech at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh.

There was no film quote for these graduates of the largest women’s university in the world. In a clear voice, without a hint of nerves, she instead passed on the words of that staunch defender of her own access to education.

Remain forever curious about the world, she told the audience, and live a meaningful life with impact.

It was clear that the woman of substance standing before them had been shaped by her father’s advice. She didn’t need to ask if they were listening.

source/content: thenationalnews.com (headline edited)

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The Saudi Arabian-American pharmaceutical chemist and nanomedicine engineer is in great demand at conferences in the US, Europe, the Middle East and China. Photo: Adah Almutairi

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AMERICAN / SAUDI ARABIA

SAUDI ARABIA: World’s First Commercial Shipment of Blue Ammonia leaves Saudi Arabia for South Korea

A consignment of blue ammonia has left Saudi Arabia for South Korea, representing a new milestone in the development of decarbonization solutions.

The development was first announced during the recent Saudi Green Initiative conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, and Vessel Seasurfer, carrying 25,000 metric tons (25 KMT) of low-carbon blue ammonia, is expected to reach its destination between Dec. 9 and 13 in the world’s first commercial shipment of its kind.

The accomplishment, which is an alternative to conventional gray ammonia, is part of a collaboration between Saudi Basic Industries Corporation Agri-Nutrients and Aramco.

Lotte Fine Chemical, which has a long-standing relationship with SABIC AN, will receive the low-carbon “cradle to gate” blue ammonia.

Abdulrahman Shamsaddin, SABIC AN CEO, said: “This shipment is another milestone in our journey toward carbon neutrality.

“We are proud to be a part of this pioneering solution, paving the way for further decarbonization efforts.

“Looking to the future, we are constantly working on breakthrough solutions to decarbonize our assets and deliver low-carbon solutions to our customers.”

Yong Suk Kim, LFC CEO, said: “We are delighted to enter this meaningful agreement with our long-term supplier, SABIC Agri-Nutrients, to receive the world’s first certified blue ammonia cargo. 

“Building on our shared history, we are looking forward to moving forward together into a new era for ammonia. We believe that this shipment of blue ammonia will help lay the foundations for a global supply chain.” 

Earlier this year, SABIC AN and Aramco received the world’s first independent certifications, recognizing blue ammonia and blue hydrogen production, from TUV Rheinland, a leading independent testing, inspection and certification agency, based in Germany.

The shipment of blue ammonia to South Korea will be the first to capitalize on this major certification achievement. 

The new developments are aligned with Saudi Vision 2030, which focuses on low-carbon fuels, products, solutions and clean energy. 

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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SAUDI ARABIA: UNESCO adds Saudi Khawlani Coffee, Camel Heda’a to Intangible Cultural Heritage list

  • 11 of Kingdom’s historical practices, items recognized
  • Arabic music, art, dance registered with world body

UNESCO on Wednesday added Saudi Khawlani coffee, and the skills and knowledge associated with its cultivation, and Camel Heda’a to this year’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The decision was taken in Morocco during the annual meeting of the UN’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The Kingdom, in cooperation with Oman and the UAE, led the joint application to register Camel Heda’a, which is an oral tradition where herders communicate with their animals. The communication includes guiding camels to safety during sandstorms, instructing them to open their mouths to feed and having them drop onto their knees to be mounted.

The registration of Saudi Khawlani coffee involved the efforts of several bodies including the Heritage Commission, Ministry of Culture, the National Committee for Education, Science and Culture, the Permanent Saudi Delegation to UNESCO, the Culinary Authority, and the Saudi Society for the Preservation of Heritage.

Khawlani coffee is one of the most luxurious and famous types in the world and has been cultivated in the south of the Kingdom for more than eight centuries. It is associated with the customs, poetry and songs of the people of the region.

With these new additions, Saudi Arabia has now registered 11 cultural elements with UNESCO including the Majlis, Arabic coffee, the Najdi Ardah dance, the flute, falconry, the Asiri cat, the palm tree, the Sadu weaving craft and Arabic calligraphy.

This registration forms part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 that aims to document the nation’s rich heritage for future generations locally and abroad.

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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Khawlani remains an integral part of Saudi culture, so much so that the government has designated 2022 as ‘The Year of Saudi Coffee’. (File/AFP)

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SAUDI ARABIA

SAUDI ARABIA: ‘Prehistoric Rock Art of Northern Saudi Arabia’ – The Book that drew the World’s Attention to Saudi Arabia’s Prehistoric Rock Art 

  • Rare first-edition copy of “Prehistoric Rock Art of Northern Saudi Arabia” was on sale at Sharjah International Book Fair
  • There was little or no recognition of the Kingdom’s ancient past before Majeed Khan’s book was published in 1993

In May 1976, Majeed Khan, a young graduate of the University of Sindh, Pakistan, traveled to Saudi Arabia to join the Ministry of Tourism as an archaeological consultant, advising on the development of museums and the conduct of archaeological investigations in the country.

It was to prove an inspired appointment.

Back then, with Saudi Arabia riding the wave of the first great oil boom and focused necessarily on its rapidly evolving future, archaeology in the Kingdom was in its infancy.

But in Khan the country had found a champion for one of its greatest heritage treasures — ancient rock art, thousands of examples of which are strewn across the landscape and which attest to a history of human culture that stretches back 10,000 years.

Khan, who lives in Riyadh, and at the age of 80 still works as a consultant to the Ministry of Culture’s Antiquities Department, has devoted his entire working life to a subject that continues to fascinate and surprise him to this day.

He received another surprise last month when he learned that his seminal book, “Prehistoric Rock Art of Northern Saudi Arabia,” published by the Saudi Ministry of Education’s Department of Antiquities and Museums in 1993, was now considered a collector’s item.

A first-edition copy was offered for sale for £1,250 ($1,448) by a specialist London book dealer at the UAE’s Sharjah International Book Fair, which ran from Nov. 2 to 13.

That, Khan felt, was a lot of money. But on the other hand, “it was the first research book on rock art published in any Arab country,” he said. At the time it came out, “there was no rock art taught in any Saudi university and no real rock art research in Saudi Arabia.”

Furthermore, there was little or no recognition in the wider world of Saudi Arabia’s ancient past — a past that is now being embraced enthusiastically as the backbone of major tourism projects, such as AlUla and Diriyah, designed to bring in millions of visitors a year to the Kingdom.

For example, in the supposedly comprehensive 1998 Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art, published in 1998, there was not a single mention of Saudi Arabia — an oversight that would be dramatically exposed by Khan’s work.

To describe Khan as a pioneer in his field is to understate the impact he has had on the understanding of the extent and importance of the ancient past of the Kingdom.

Over the past four decades he has published dozens of research papers. The first, which he co-authored, was on “The Lower Miocene Fauna of Assarrar, Eastern Arabia,” published in Atlal, the Journal of Saudi Arabian Archaeology, in 1981.

His first book, which came out in 1993, shortly before his groundbreaking work on the prehistoric rock art of Saudi Arabia, was “The Origin and Evolution of Ancient Arabian Inscriptions,” also published by the Ministry of Education.

But it was to petroglyphs that he would devote the greater part of his energies, an academic commitment that in 2015 culminated in the rock art in the Hail region of Saudi Arabia being inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Along with two colleagues from the then-named Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, Jamal Omar and vice-president Prof. Ali Al-Ghabban, it was Khan’s name that appeared on the nomination text that saw the twin sites near Jubbah and Shuwaymis in the northern province of Hail recognized by UNESCO as being of “outstanding universal value.”

As Khan told Arab News in January 2021, “it was for me the most emotional moment of my 40 years of research.”

Not that he is resting on his laurels. Hail is not the only region in Saudi Arabia where rock art can be found, and “these days I am working on the rock-art site of Hima, Najran, to see it, too, placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.”

There are more than 2,000 rock-art sites around Saudi Arabia. But the greatest concentration of Neolithic petroglyphs, or rock carvings, and the oldest known examples, dating back 10,000 years, is to be found in the north of the country at two sites 300 kilometers apart in the Hail Province.

The ancient forebears of today’s Saudis had no paper, pens, or written language with which to record their time on earth.

But with the rocks of their dramatic landscapes as their canvas, thousands of years ago the ancient peoples of the land that would become Saudi Arabia found a way to leave their mark on history, with an astonishing pictorial representation of a now forgotten world, painstakingly pecked, chiseled and engraved out of the sandstone rocks of the region.

The first of the two Hail sites is at Jabal Umm Sinman, a rocky outcrop to the west of the town of Jubbah, some 90 kilometers northwest of the city of Hail and 680 kilometers from the capital, Riyadh.

The town’s origins date back to the dawn of Arab civilization, when the hills of Umm Sinman overlooked a freshwater lake, which eventually would be lost beneath the sands of the surrounding Nefud desert some 6,000 years ago.

It was on these hills, in the words of the UNESCO nomination document co-authored by Khan, that the ancestors of today’s Saudi Arabians “left the marks of their presence, their religions, social, cultural, intellectual and philosophical perspectives of their beliefs about life and death, metaphysical and cosmological ideologies.”

The rock art of Jubbah, said Khan, “represented all phases of human presence from the Neolithic, 10,000 years before the present, until the recent past,” and reflected a time when the climate and landscape were very different from today.

Etched upon the rocks, often at mysteriously inaccessible heights, are the trappings of a lost world: A parade of dancers, long-forgotten gods and goddesses, mythological figures, half-human, half-beast, and animals including sheep, ibex, camels, horses, wolves, ostriches and — reflecting a time when prey roamed abundant on the once lush plains of Arabia — lions.

“The type of animals (pictured) suggested changes in climate and environment,” said Khan. “Large ox figures indicated a cool and humid climate, while the absence of ox figures and the appearance of camel petroglyphs represented hot and dry conditions..

“Both at Jubbah and Shuwaymis this change in fauna and flora clearly represented gradual but drastic change in society and climate in the prehistoric and pre-Islamic era.”

Importantly, he said, similarities in themes and depictions in other parts of the world, including Africa, India, Australia, Europe and America, showed that “Saudi Arabia was part of world heritage and cultural traditions.”

Like other peoples around the world, “ancient Arab artists were drawing the animals with which they were living and depicting their social activities, like dancing and religious rituals.”

The second of the twin Hail sites is at Jabal Al-Manjor and Raat, 220 kilometers southwest of Jubbah near the village of Shuwaymis. Remarkably, its treasures were discovered only 20 years ago, a remarkable story in which, naturally, Khan played a leading role.

In 2002, Aramco World, the magazine of the Saudi national oil company, reported that in March the previous year a bedouin grazing his camels had stumbled on strange marks on a remote cluster of rocks. He happened to mention his find to a teacher from the local town of Shuwaymis. He alerted the authorities and they called in Khan.

“Yes, the story is correct,” Khan said. “I met both the bedouin and Mr. Saad Rawsan, the director of archaeology in the Hail region, who took us to the sites for further investigations and research.”

Together, he discovered, the twin sites told the story of over 9,000 years of human history, from the earliest pictorial records of hunting to the development of writing, religion and the domestication of animals including cattle, horses and camels.

As the UNESCO documents record, these sites justify their inscription on the World Heritage List because they feature “large numbers of petroglyphs of exceptional quality attributed to between 6,000 and 9,000 years of human history, followed in the last 3,000 years by very early development of writing that reflects the bedouin culture, ending in Qur’anic verses.”

Furthermore, the Jubbah and Shuwaymis sites comprise “the world’s largest and most magnificent surviving corpus of Neolithic petroglyphs.”

Neolithic rock art is found at many locations across Eurasia and North Africa, “but nowhere in such dense concentration or with such consistently high visual quality” as in this remote part of northwestern Saudi Arabia.

Peter Harrington, the London specialist book dealer that brought Khan’s book to Sharjah for the book fair, described it as “a pioneering monograph … the first and sole edition of this seminal work, which addresses a hitherto neglected subject, challenges the received wisdom that influences in rock art in the region originated from Mesopotamia, the Levant, and the Nile Valley, helped to put the Kingdom’s ancient past on the map of modern knowledge, and paved the way to the listing in 2015 of the rock art of the Hail region as a UNESCO World Heritage site.”

“I am extremely surprised to see the cost of my book,” Khan said after Arab News broke the news to him of the price being asked for the out-of-print volume at the Sharjah International Book Fair, although he had some news of his own.

“The ministry is printing it again.”

That, however, is unlikely to prove a deterrent for collectors always keen to snap up rare first editions of books dealing with the region’s history — and there are few histories as fascinating as that of the rock art of Saudi Arabia, and few books as significant in the growing appreciation of the Kingdom’s past as Khan’s 30-year-old volume.

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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SAUDI ARABIA: Saudi Red Crescent Receives Guinness World Record for ‘Saving A Soul’ Campaign to Save lives

More than 9,000 people signed up online to learn first aid within 24 hours of the campaign launching.

 The Saudi Red Crescent Authority has received a Guinness World Record for its “Saving a Soul” awareness campaign after 9,836 people signed up to learn first aid within 24 hours.

More than 9,000 people signed up online to learn first aid and how to use automated external defibrillators within 24 hours of the campaign launching, Saudi Press Agency reported.

Spokesperson for the Saudi Red Crescent Authority, Abdulaziz Al-Suwaine, said the campaign was held at Riyadh Front and witnessed a big turnout from both citizens and residents who showed true willingness to learn first aid and ways to use AEDs.

The authority has installed defibrillators in several public places to help save lives, he added.Al-Suwaine said the campaign’s success in attracting such a large number of people in a short amount of time shows how responsible Saudi society is and the will of its individuals to be influencers at the humanitarian level.

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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The Saudi Red Crescent Authority receives a Guinness World Record for its “Saving a Soul” awareness campaign. (SPA)

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SAUDI ARABIA

SAUDI ARABIA: Middle East’s Largest SuperComputer ‘Shaheen III’ Switched On at King Abdullah University for Science & Technology (KAUST) by the 6 Mega Power Units Provided by Rolls-Royce 

 British firm Rolls-Royce has fired up the first six Kinetic PowerPacks to provide an energy supply for the Middle East’s largest supercomputer facility located in King Abdullah University for Science and Technology. 

The firm has shipped 12 of the huge batteries, known as maximum transmission units, to KAUST from its factory in Liege, Belgium, in order to aid its Scientific Computing Data upgrade and power the supercomputer known as Shaheen III. 

A maximum transmission unit sets the amount of data that can be transmitted in bytes over a network. 

The devices have a power output of 1.6 MW each, and should a power outage occur, the systems – which are designed for humid conditions and temperatures as much as 50 degrees Celsius – will secure critical load and ensure the starting of the diesel engine via their continuously rotating sturdy kinetic energy accumulators. 

The first six are now switched on, with the remaining switch to be activated at a later date. 

“The mtu Kinetic PowerPacks are state-of-the-art, uninterruptible electrical power systems that are designed for operating in extreme environments and provide the highest reliability of back-up power for the most critical and essential systems,” the statement said, citing the Vice President of Facilities for KAUST, Matthew Early. 

The systems include healthcare facilities, airports, data centers, and Shaheen III.  

Projected to be the Middle East’s most powerful supercomputer, Shaheen III will enable KAUST to further enhance its ability for scientific discovery and artificial intelligence innovation, the vice president added. 

Shaheen III is set to be operational in 2023, and is set to be 20 times faster than KAUST’s current existing system. 

Earlier this year, KAUST partnered with the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority to increase human capacity and innovation in the field of AI in Saudi Arabia and the region. 

“The SDAIA-KAUST Center of Excellence in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence will focus on educational development and upskilling the new generation of Saudi citizens in AI,” KAUST President Tony Chan said. 

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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Rolls-Royce shipped the devices from its factory in Liege, Belgium (Shutterstock)

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SAUDI ARABIA

SAUDI ARABIA: Breakthrough: Saudia Buys 100 Electric Vertical Take-Off & Landing Planes to Revolutionize Domestic Travel from Germany’s Lilium. First Airline in MENA Region towards EVTOL.

Saudi Arabian Airlines has agreed to buy 100 innovative electric vertical take-off and landing planes as it seeks to connect Jeddah with the Kingdom’s leading tourist destinations, according to one of the firm’s leading officers.

Speaking to Arab News on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Group Chief Marketing Officer Khaled Tash said Saudia — the airline operated by his firm — will be the first in the region to make use of the technology.

The deal has been struck with German company Lilium, which is in the final testing phase for the aircraft, with operations expected to start in two years.

Tash said Saudia will be using the aircraft to improve access to destinations alongside the Red Sea and Makkah.

“That will actually be our first priority in the next few years to connect to the airport with Makkah whereby some of our premium passengers can land in Jeddah airport, take one of these small planes and go to Makkah and back in a few minutes. That will be a breakthrough,” he said.

The executive insisted the announcement shows air mobility in Saudi Arabia is set to move into a different era.

“When we think about what’s happening in the country, Vision 2030 is about a lot of transformation that is happening in the Kingdom and maybe today’s announcement, that we made with Lilium, is probably a testimony to how Saudi national champions like Saudi airlines are walking the talk,” Tash said.

“We want to be at the forefront of innovation, EVTOLs — or electric, vertical, takeoff and landing aircrafts — are the future of air mobility, I think in especially short distances. For us to be the first Middle Eastern and North African within that region, the first airline to make this step towards EVTOLs, I think that means a lot for us,” he added.

Tash used the example of seaplanes connecting the islands of the Maldives as delivering economic benefits to tourism — something he hopes will be replicated in Saudi Arabia.

The commitment to 100 vehicles will also offer value for money for his firm, he added, saying: “By moving by big players like Saudia moving into early adoption of such a technology or such an innovation, that will have, hopefully a very good impact on the cost.”

“So if we start with Jeddah to Makkah and then with with Jeddah to the Red Sea or Jeddah to AlUla URL, or Jeddah to King Abdullah Economic City, the more use cases we can find for this, the more commercial opportunities we will have and the less cost it will be,” he said.

“So if I have an aircraft that goes 20 times between Jeddah and Makkah each day, it will definitely be cheaper than going six times a day,” he added.

As well as the economic case for buying the aircraft, there is also a clear environmental benefit.

Tash was clear that while sustainability is a very important topic under the Vision 2030 umbrella, it is also for Saudia. 

“We think that electric, in terms of these kinds of EVTOLs, is the future for aviation, and we believe that our sustainability initiatives will be further strengthened,” he said.

“It’s not the only sustainability initiative that we’re doing. We’re working on so many different fronts. We have one of the youngest fleets in general in our entire fleet that also has less emissions. We are committed to work on sustainability, more and more,” Tash added.

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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Saudi Arabian Airlines Group Chief Marketing Officer Khaled Tash speaking to Arab News on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh

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SAUDI ARABIA

SAUDI ARABIA: Building Bridges: Saudi Designer Nawaf Al-Nassar discusses the Inspirations behind his Work

Interior design has a much deeper meaning for Nawaf Al-Nassar than for many others out there. For the Saudi designer, looking to the outdoors is what allows him to create the indoors.

Growing up in Jeddah, Al-Nassar travelled to London for his studies, where he was mentored by design icons including Zaha Hadid, Philippe Starck and Gianfranco Ferré. “It was amazing,” he tells Arab News.

After graduating in 1990, Al-Nassar returned to his hometown to work as an interior designer, starting his studio, 3N Jeddah (the three Ns being his name, his father’s name — Nahar — and their family name). It quickly gained popularity, acquiring residential and commercial projects in Jeddah, Riyadh, Cairo, Beirut, London, Paris and the south of France.

In 2017, Al-Nassar established Tasmeem Fair — a Saudi-based art platform for young designers to showcase their creativity. The fair became an instant hit, attracting 9,000 guests in its first week alone. He describes it as “my favorite — and the best — project of my life so far.”

His family’s origins — from a small village north of Riyadh in the center of the Kingdom — played a major role in Al-Nassar’s inspiration. He remembers his grandfather taking him out into the deserted Saudi countryside as a child.

“These were our family gatherings,” he says. “When I used to look at old houses in the beautiful desert, it attracted and relaxed me. When I’d go inside old palaces or any interior space, I always felt more relaxed.

“Since I was young, I’ve always felt more like I’m talking to myself when I’m inside an interior,” he continues. “Then, when I went to high school, I always felt comfortable sitting inside a space that was complete. All of us live in an interior space, but sometimes when we look around, we don’t feel comfortable. When I’d feel that in my youth, I’d find out it was because it was not made by a designer, but by a person who has expertise with walls and ceilings. not with proportion.”

Soon after, he attended a couple of summer schools in the United Kingdom to dive deeper into the world of interior design. And his calling towards the industry only grew. “When I sit with people, I love to know their interior, the outside doesn’t mean anything to me,” he explains. “The interior is the core to know the person more. So I started wanting to know more about the interior of things, which helped me a lot with product design. I really do believe that if the interior of where a person works or lives is not reflecting their character, they can never be themselves.”

For Al-Nassar, an artist should reflect his surroundings and his feelings towards them. As such, he began infusing local Saudi motifs into his designs to pass on to generations to come. “I love the space of my studio,” he says. “It really talks to me. As an interior designer, I use soft materials for the interior, such as fabric furniture, and I deal a lot with European companies.”

Although he owns many fabrics with European motifs, he had been longing to find a Saudi designer with his own design on a fabric. He collaborated with manufacturers to print the first Saudi design on a French fabric company’s products.

“It’s very important when you go inside a space and you see details around you that reflect the surrounding of the city where you are,” Al-Nassar says. “Paris, Cairo and others have that, but in Saudi Arabia, I didn’t see any Saudi motifs, so I started to create this line of fabric design and we started manufacturing pieces.”
In May, he designed some furniture for the Kingdom’s Misk Institute. His brief was to use inspiration from a historical building in the country, so he turned to the historic Salwa Palace — the original home of the Al-Saud royal family, located northwest of Riyadh.

“I started to enjoy its smooth elements and I looked at it as an architectural designer,” he says. “It’s as if I was in an orchestra, it was like silent music and it was so beautiful to see.”

From that visit, he created “Takkei” (meaning ‘Let’s sit’), inspired by the stones that form the base of the palace. He used new material to achieve a more industrial look that he believed would be more attractive to younger generations. “It’s about speaking their language,” he explains.

Al-Nassar’s creative process happens in the outdoors. Whenever he is struggling for inspiration, he jumps in his car and drives to the mountains, two-and-a-half hours away from Jeddah. He is revitalized by the surrounding landscape and old houses, some of which date back 200 years.

“I can almost read the culture and the type of life they used to live there,” he says. “I’m definitely inspired by Saudi Arabia — but also by everywhere. You have to go to the location and smell old places to be inspired.”

He mentions the picturesque village of Qaryat Al-Dehin, which is made up of 49 houses built from white mountain marble and quartz. After much research, he visited with a friend who came from Qaryat Al-Dehin. Four hours of driving later, he was immersed in its beauty. He compares it to a moment when he was 16 and he and his father watched the great opera singer Luciano Pavarotti sing in Milan. “Honestly, the same feeling came to me when I looked at these 49 beautiful houses on top of this beautiful mountain,” Al-Nassar says. “It was the same energy — the same music; it was amazing.”

His passion for the outdoors has also extended to his teaching as a guest lecturer in universities. He will often take the students on field trips — something he deems vital for today’s youth. “They have to go there themselves and see the reality on the ground,” he explains. “I have done field trips everywhere in Saudi Arabia for students, and lately it has become for others as well.”

Al-Nassar sees great potential and talent in young Saudi architects and interior designers. He admires their creativity, but suggest they need the right curator.

Ultimately, he hopes such people can build a bridge between the Kingdom and the rest of the world. “Design and art are a message of peace,” he concludes. “I’m already building that bridge, and hopefully it will be finished soon.”

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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Growing up in Jeddah, Al-Nassar travelled to London for his studies, where he was mentored by design icons including Zaha Hadid, Philippe Stark and Gianfranco Ferré. (Supplied)

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SAUDI ARABIA

SAUDI ARABIA: 5 Researchers from Saudi University Named in Stanford’s ‘World’s Top 2% Scientists’ list

Stanford University, one of the world’s leading research and teaching institutions, published its annual “World’s Top 2% Scientists” list — featuring the most widely cited scientists in different disciplines — this week.

It included five faculty members from Riyadh’s Imam Mohammad bin Saud Islamic University: Dr. Rafiq Muhammad Choudhry and the late Dr. Hisham El-Dessouky from the department of engineering; Dr. Kamal Abdul Jawad Buradah and Dr. Ahmed Al-Khayyat from the department of science; and Dr. Qaisar Abbas from the department of computer science.

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Highlight:

The ‘World’s Top 2% Scientists’ list includes Dr. Rafiq Muhammad Choudhry and the late Dr. Hisham El-Dessouky from the department of engineering; Dr. Kamal Abdul Jawad Buradah and Dr. Ahmed Al-Khayyat from the department of science; and Dr. Qaisar Abbas from the department of computer science.

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The university’s president, Dr. Ahmed bin Salem Al-Amri, said that the university’s recognition is a sign of the support that education and research receives from the Kingdom’s leaders.

“The leadership gives special attention to scientific research as a key pillar of the university’s success and a developmental and community-based necessity to transform universities into (places) that serve the development of the knowledge economy, by improving scientific research and its quality and outcomes in order to positively impact the economy and society,” he said.

In recent years, the university has dedicated “specialized programs and quality initiatives as part of its strategic plan to achieve the goals of scientific research and innovation,” and to improve the Kingdom’s ranking in the Global Competitiveness Index, thus achieving the goals of Saudi Vision 2030, Al-Amri explained.

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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Stanford University, one of the world’s leading research and teaching institutions, published its annual “World’s Top 2% Scientists” list. (Reuters/File Photo)

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SAUDI ARABIA

SAUDI ARABIA: Community Heroes Honored at the ’10th Princess Seetah bint Abdulaziz Awards 2022′ Ceremony for ‘Creativity and Innovation in Social Work’

Fourteen Saudi individuals and two organizations were honored at the 10th Princess Seetah bint Abdulaziz awards for excellence in community upliftment work in Riyadh.

This year’s event was titled “Creativity and Innovation in Social Work,” which also, for the first time, honored students and principals for their social responsibility initiatives.

Dr. Fahad Al-Maghlouth, secretary-general of the Princess Seetah organization, said the aim of the awards was to “discover talent” as part of the Saudi government’s programs to develop the nation.

Princess Nouf bint Abdullah bin Saud Al-Kabeer Al-Saud, chair of the organization’s executive committee and member of its board of trustees, said that community upliftment projects were essential for a healthy society.

In the category “Responsible Citizenship,” several students were honored.

The winner of the elementary schools’ section was student Ayed Al-Ruwaili from Turaif in the Northern Borders, followed by Rima Al-Faris from Riyadh in second, and Hisham Al-Maarafi from Madinah in third.

The middle school winners were Sally Al-Harbi from Qassim in first place, followed by Adeeb Khadawardi from Makkah and Noura Al-Wadi’i from Jazan.

The high school winners were Samira Al-Maghlouth from the Eastern Province, Hanadi Karani from Madinah and Amr Al-Baraq from Jazan.

Also for the first time, as part of its “Tanseeq” platform linking government, non-government, non-profit, and private organizations in the field, two community bodies were honored.

The Osraty Association from Madinah and the Tawad Association from Al-Jouf won for their family development and counseling programs.

The winners of the Umm Al-Joud Initiative prize, for innovation in media and education, were also announced.

First place, for creating general awareness of social responsibility needs in society, was Dr. Abdullah Al-Alawai, who had his biggest supporter — his grandmother — take to the stage and accept the award on his behalf.

In second place was Dr. Mushawah Almushawah, who was honored for creating awareness of mental health issues.

In third place was Khattaf Al-Khattaf for highlighting technological and digital communication developments.

In fourth and fifth were Sultan Al-Kulaib for human development awareness, and Majid Al-Ghamdi for social media awareness.

Established in 2012 by royal decree, the Princess Seetah bint Abdulaziz Foundation for Excellence in Social Work encourages and supports community upliftment programs.

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

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Fourteen Saudi individuals and two organizations are honored at the 10th Princess Seetah bint Abdulaziz awards for excellence in community upliftment work. (@seetahaward)

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SAUDI ARABIA