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KAUST Launches Pioneering Centers of Excellence to Address Key National, International Priorities

Officials are seen at the launch of the Centers of Excellence (CoEs). (SPA)
Officials are seen at the launch of the Centers of Excellence (CoEs). (SPA)
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KAUST Launches Pioneering Centers of Excellence to Address Key National, International Priorities

Officials are seen at the launch of the Centers of Excellence (CoEs). (SPA)
Officials are seen at the launch of the Centers of Excellence (CoEs). (SPA)

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) announced on Sunday the launch of four pioneering Centers of Excellence (CoEs) to drive research and development in priority national and international fields.

The move brings KAUST further in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and is fundamental to its Accelerating Impact strategy that strengthens its position as a "global leader in applied science", said KAUST in a statement.

The newly established CoEs, each led by renowned experts, will tackle issues concerning health and wellness, sustainable environment and essential needs, energy and industrial leadership, and economies of the future. They are crucial to KAUST’s goal of providing impactful solutions that support national economic objectives.

The Center of Excellence for Generative AI, led by professors Bernard Ghanem and Juergen Schmidhuber, will spearhead the development of general-purpose AI models that can be tailored to meet the unique demands of the Kingdom’s research, development, and innovation (RDI) priorities.

The center aims to become a leading force in Generative AI research, driving advancements in various sectors.

Prof. Husam Al Shareef, an expert in battery technologies and material science, along with chemistry professor Zhiping Lai, will lead the Center of Excellence for Renewable Energy and Storage Technologies, which focuses on cutting-edge renewable energy and storage technology development and deployment.

It will play a critical role in Saudi Arabia's shift to sustainable energy by “prototyping and commercializing innovations that enhance the Kingdom’s industrial competitiveness”.

The Center of Excellence for Sustainable Food Security, led by Prof. Mark Tester, an expert in plant science and agriculture in arid environments, and co-chaired by professors Brande Wulff, a leader in crop genetics, and Peiying Hong, an expert in environmental microbiology and wastewater treatment, will focus on advancing technology-driven agricultural solutions.

It will address resource efficiency, crop improvement and sustainable biosystems, to boost food security in Saudi Arabia and beyond, with minimum negative impact.

Prof. Imed Gallouzi, an expert in RNA biology and mRNA processing, along with Professor Xin Gao, an expert in computational biology and AI, will lead the Center of Excellence for Smart Health, which focuses on developing and deploying digital and AI-driven technologies with the goal of transforming healthcare in Saudi Arabia through precision medicine, promoting innovation, entrepreneurship and education to revolutionize the Kingdom’s healthcare system.

Commenting on the launch, KAUST President Prof. Edward Byrne AC stated: “The establishment of these new Centers of Excellence exemplifies our commitment to pioneering scientific leadership and discovery.”

“By Focusing on AI, renewable energy, sustainable food security, and smart health, we are not only addressing the Kingdom’s most pressing challenges but also positioning KAUST as a global leader in these critical fields,” he added.

“I am excited to collaborate with our exceptional teams to turn ideas into solutions that enhance the quality of life and create a sustainable future for the Kingdom and beyond.”

These CoEs were launched because they strongly align with national priorities, are interdisciplinary in nature and have the potential to create tangible economic and social impacts.

“They will play a vital role in leading pioneering research, in line with KAUST’s Accelerating Impact strategy, and will be integrated with KAUST’s National Transformation Institute to drive research excellence and innovation,” said the statement.

“KAUST’s Accelerating Impact strategy was launched by Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Prime Minister, and Chairman of KAUST Board of Trustees. This strategy focuses on aligning research with national priorities and supporting the Kingdom’s economic diversification through impactful RDI projects,” it added.

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Indonesia Fires Burned Over 1.9 Mn Hectares Through September, Says Monitor

A drone view of a palm oil plantation area shrouded in haze from wildfires in South Arut, West Kotawaringin Regency, Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia, October 18, 2026. (Reuters)
A drone view of a palm oil plantation area shrouded in haze from wildfires in South Arut, West Kotawaringin Regency, Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia, October 18, 2026. (Reuters)
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Indonesia Fires Burned Over 1.9 Mn Hectares Through September, Says Monitor

A drone view of a palm oil plantation area shrouded in haze from wildfires in South Arut, West Kotawaringin Regency, Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia, October 18, 2026. (Reuters)
A drone view of a palm oil plantation area shrouded in haze from wildfires in South Arut, West Kotawaringin Regency, Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia, October 18, 2026. (Reuters)

Fires in Indonesia burned through over 1.9 million hectares between January and the end of September this year, a monitor analyzing satellite imagery said on Monday.

The figure, an area nearly 12 times larger than London, is a conservative estimate in part because haze has complicated satellite verification, said David Gaveau, founder of deforestation monitoring site Nusantara Atlas.

Indonesia's government has not provided official figures for areas burned since announcing 202,000 hectares had been razed by the end of July.

Gaveau said the true scale of the burning was likely to be even higher than the 1,916,588 hectares his organization has detected so far.

"Our burned-area estimates are conservative for two reasons. First, we exclude individual burn scars smaller than 6.25 hectares... Second, we prioritize avoiding false detections," he said.

This year, the calculation has also been impacted by heavy haze, which has obscured satellite images at times.

"The total reported burned area therefore underestimates the true area burned," he said.

Even so, Nusantara Atlas data shows the area burned by the end of September this year was 38 percent higher than the same point in 2019.

The satellites the monitor uses were not available during severe fires in 2015, so comparable data is not available.

But Gaveau said it was likely this year would be similarly bad.

"My intuition is that it probably is as bad. If you look at the sheer number of hotspots, it's still trending up and up," he said.

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Beijing’s Population Expected to Become Super-Aged by 2035

People cross the street at a busy intersection in Beijing, China, 19 October 2026. (EPA)
People cross the street at a busy intersection in Beijing, China, 19 October 2026. (EPA)
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Beijing’s Population Expected to Become Super-Aged by 2035

People cross the street at a busy intersection in Beijing, China, 19 October 2026. (EPA)
People cross the street at a busy intersection in Beijing, China, 19 October 2026. (EPA)

The ‌Chinese capital Beijing is expected to become "super-aged" by 2035, with around one-third of its population aged 60 and above, the official Beijing Daily reported.

Chinese policymakers have made population planning a key part of the country's economic strategy, and this year the government faces a total potential ‌cost of around ‌180 billion yuan ($26.92 billion) ‌to ⁠boost births, according ⁠to Reuters estimates.

One in every three residents of the Chinese capital will be aged 60 or above by 2035, the Beijing Daily reported on Saturday.

Beijing had ⁠5.29 million permanent residents aged ‌60 and above ‌at the end of last year, ‌almost one-quarter of its population, the ‌newspaper said.

The city's government is stepping up support for elderly residents, including raising the basic pension, the report added.

China's population has been shrinking since 2022 and is ageing ⁠rapidly, ⁠complicating government plans to boost domestic consumption and rein in debt, with hundreds of millions of people set to leave the workforce at a time when pension budgets are already stretched.

Demographers and economists argue that fewer children today could mean fewer households and slower consumption growth over time.

Varieties

The Painstaking Task of Cataloguing the World’s Species

A harlequin poison dart frog (Oophaga sylvatica) is pictured at the Tesoros de Colombia (Treasures of Colombia) sustainable farm in Nocaima, Cundinamarca department, Colombia, on July 9, 2024. (AFP)
A harlequin poison dart frog (Oophaga sylvatica) is pictured at the Tesoros de Colombia (Treasures of Colombia) sustainable farm in Nocaima, Cundinamarca department, Colombia, on July 9, 2024. (AFP)
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The Painstaking Task of Cataloguing the World’s Species

A harlequin poison dart frog (Oophaga sylvatica) is pictured at the Tesoros de Colombia (Treasures of Colombia) sustainable farm in Nocaima, Cundinamarca department, Colombia, on July 9, 2024. (AFP)
A harlequin poison dart frog (Oophaga sylvatica) is pictured at the Tesoros de Colombia (Treasures of Colombia) sustainable farm in Nocaima, Cundinamarca department, Colombia, on July 9, 2024. (AFP)

A bumblebee-like insect that was last seen in France 150 years ago was spotted again in the Paris region in 2025.

Had the creature, known by its scientific name Pocota personata, disappeared and returned after all those years? Or did it simply fly around unnoticed this whole time?

The mystery illustrates the challenge facing scientists seeking to catalogue the world's biodiversity, as so much of nature remains poorly understood.

The gap in scientific data on the state of species could feature prominently at the UN's COP17 biodiversity summit opening Monday in Armenia, where countries will take stock of progress in commitments to protect nature.

In order to close that gap in France, the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) launched a project in June to build a database of the country's plants and invertebrates.

"We know biodiversity is declining, but we are sometimes quite helpless when it comes to quantifying it due to a critical lack of data on the current and past monitoring of species," Rodolphe Rougerie, head of the Dynabiod project, told AFP.

- Staggering unknown -

The scale of the unknown is huge.

A 2011 study estimated that 86 percent of terrestrial species and 91 percent of marine creatures had yet to be formally described.

Even among identified species, their status is often poorly understood. In 2025, scientists had assessed the extinction risk of only about eight percent of known species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The tools used to identify species include field observations.

While spotting large mammals or certain birds can be relatively simple, the exercise gets trickier when it comes to smaller species, such as insects, fungi or microscopic organisms.

The job can be painstaking.

Every week, MNHN researcher Fanny Kratz checks large white tents that serve as insect traps at the Jardin des Plantes, a botanical garden in the heart of Paris, and 16 other sites. She then uses their DNA to fill gaps in the data.

The task is "very, very long" and "very, very complicated", she said.

A single trap can contain as many as 261 types of DNA, but those genetic traces do not necessarily correspond to 261 different species.

And there are always a few "unknowns" -- DNA that does not match with anything in existing databases.

- 'We are stuck' -

"The difficulty with biodiversity is having reference databases that are rich enough ... so that field work or genetic identification can actually be effective," Kratz said.

The smallest details can make all the difference when trying to identify a specimen, from the size of a leg to the shape of the wing.

And there are relatively few experts in this field.

Researchers often turn to citizen science, enlisting amateur naturalists and the public to put more eyes on the ground.

But that cannot replace scientific expertise and can introduce biases. Observations tend to be concentrated in easily accessible locations while others remain unexplored.

That is particularly true in tropical regions, where areas can be hard to reach and data is scarce despite their extraordinary biodiversity, Kratz said.

While artificial intelligence can analyze enormous quantities of data, it is only as good as the information it has been trained on.

"If we don't have the reference database, we're stuck," Kratz said.

- Muddled message -

It's not just the amount of data that matters. Scientists also need to be able to compare data collected in different places and at different times.

Different monitoring methods can make that difficult.

Rougerie said the result can be a muddled scientific picture.

When data are sparse, scattered or collected using different methods, separate studies can sometimes reach conflicting conclusions about what is happening to the same species.

That can, in turn, fuel claims that the biodiversity crisis is being exaggerated or is difficult to prove.

Without reliable reference databases, Kratz said, "we cannot know what is happening ... what we are capturing or what is disappearing or not ... and therefore how to combat a possible decline or protect this or that species".