Jeddah: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) support for programs in several fields of science has yielded outstanding results, and helped it carry out research and apply technological development.

Six academic programs implemented by the Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering (BESE) Division stand out: Environment Systems, Epigenetics, Functional Biology, Genomics, Structural Biology, and Marine Sciences.

These programs offer multi-disciplinary research areas, and the possibility to study the mechanisms by which living organisms interact with their environment, and improve this interaction through new technologies.

The Biological Sciences program provides courses in cellular biology and biophysics through two specialized courses consisting of lectures, seminars, and practical laboratory training.

The Environmental Sciences and Engineering program prepares students to work in fields that pose urgent challenges to the world by focusing on studying water purification and
reuse methods, and reducing the water pollution, thus helping address global concerns about scarce drinking water.

This program helps study the impact human beings have on the environment thorough resource exploiting and overconsumption, soil degradation, and air and water pollution. Studies in this field may help provide solutions to these problems, and address some issues related to climate change.

The university’s location on the Red Sea helps study various forms of marine life, with the sea serving as a living laboratory where focus is placed on studying the local marine life, and compare it with other marine ecosystems.

The Plant Sciences program helps understand how plants grow in harsh environment conditions, such as much of the Kingdom’s, their basic biology and molecular and functional composition, as well as their interaction with other living organisms and adaptation mechanisms.

Researchers will thus be able to improve the ability of plants to tolerate and grow in any environment and under any
conditions, and help attain sustainable agriculture in dry regions of the world.

KAUST has achieved significant progress through its Biomedical Engineering section, advancing engineering concepts, principles and methods, and applying them to biological systems by modeling, monitoring, and addressing hindrances to living organisms, as well as by creating algorithms that help understand biological systems and improve their performance.

Source: Saudi Press Agency