KAUST Announces Inaugural Division Chair Positions for Earth and Environmental...

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) (http://www.kaust.edu.sa/) today announced Professor David E. Keyes (http://www.kaust.edu.sa/about/bio-keyes.aspxnav=slt) as division chair of Mathematical and Computer Sciences and Engineering and Professor Brian Moran (http://www.kaust.edu.sa/about/bio-moran.aspxnav=slt) as division chair of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Engineering. Professor Keyes assumes official duties in May 2009 and Professor Moran will begin September 1, 2008.

Professor Keyes and Professor Moran will be responsible for leading efforts to provide opportunities and facilities for researchers (http://www.kaust.edu.sa/research/at-kaust.aspx) to address important scientific issues (http://www.kaust.edu.sa/about/institutes-centers.aspx) pertaining to each division. Both positions will report to KAUST's Provost Fawwaz T. Ulaby (http://www.kaust.edu.sa/about/provost.aspx).

Commenting today, President-designate Shih said, "Each Division of KAUST will have its own unique opportunities and challenges. As such, each chair must possess the leadership qualities that will drive success and offer our students the very best research experience they can have immersed in each particular area of focus. We are thrilled that Professors Keyes and Moran will join KAUST and step into their roles to create world class departments that will attract the best and brightest students and faculty from across the globe."

"Both Professors Keyes and Moran have award-winning histories as researchers, scientists, and published authors. Their work as pioneers of many notable projects coupled with their experiences as student supervisors and mentors makes both of them a perfect fit for their respective positions," said Professor Ulaby.

With an extensive background in engineering, applied mathematics, and computer science, Professor Keyes, 51, is currently the Fu Foundation Professor of Applied Mathematics at Columbia University, an affiliate of several laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the vice president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Professor Keyes works at the algorithmic interface between parallel computing and the numerical analysis of partial differential equations, across a spectrum of aerodynamic, geophysical, and chemically reacting flows.

Professor Keyes began his career at Yale University, where he taught for eight years, prior to joining Old Dominion University and the Institute for Computer Applications in Science & Engineering at the NASA Langley Research Center in 1993. Between 1999 and 2008, he served part-time as the director of the Institute for Scientific Computing Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

A pioneer in the development of large-scale simulation, he currently leads a mathematical cyberinfrastructure center for the U.S. DOE under the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing initiative, and has previously led the Grand, National, and Multidisciplinary Challenges center of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), as well as one of DOE's Accelerated Strategic Computing centers. Professor Keyes was recognized with the Sidney Fernbach Award of the IEEE Computer Society in 2007 and an ACM Gordon Bell Prize in 1999, received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1989, and has won teaching prizes from Columbia, Harvard, and Yale Universities. Professor Keyes graduated summa cum laude with a bachelors of science in engineering in Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences from Princeton, and earned a doctorate in Applied Mathematics from Harvard. He completed his post-doctoral studies in the Computer Science Department of Yale University.

A native of Limerick Ireland, Professor Moran, 49, joins KAUST following a distinguished 20-year career at Northwestern University, where he served most recently as professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Prior to his current position, he served as chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern. In the area of Mechanical Engineering he established a research trust in neural engineering in conjunction with Biomedical Engineering and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago where he led the department through program review and accreditation. In Civil and Environmental Engineering, he chaired an Advisory Board in developing a program in Architectural Engineering and Design.

Professor Moran is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and was elected a member of the board of directors of the Society of Engineering Science where he presently serves as secretary of the society. In addition, he co-chaired the Seventh World Congress on Computational Mechanics in Los Angeles in 2006. He was twice elected by students to the Northwestern Faculty Honor Roll for Teaching and he received the W.M. Keck Foundation Award for Engineering Teaching Excellence. He has published more than 100 technical articles.

Professor Moran earned his bachelors of engineering in Civil Engineering and later his masters of engineering in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Ireland, Galway. He earned a masters of science in Applied Mathematics and doctorate in Solid Mechanics from Brown University. He received the National University of Ireland Bursary in Civil Engineering for study abroad. Professor Moran spent a year as an IBM Research Fellow at Caltech before joining Northwestern in 1988.

About KAUST:

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is being built in Saudi Arabia as an international, graduate-level research university dedicated to inspiring a new age of scientific achievement in the Kingdom, across the region and around the globe. As an independent, merit-based institution, KAUST will enable top researchers from around the globe and across all cultures to work together to solve challenging scientific and technological problems. The KAUST global research and education network will support diverse talents both on its campus and at other premier universities and research institutions through collaborative research agreements, grants, and student scholarship programs. The core campus, located on more than 36 million square meters on the Red Sea at Thuwal, is set to open in September 2009. For more information about KAUST, visit http://www.kaust.edu.sa.

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