KAUST was a refreshing change for Dr. Ibrahim Hoteit, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences and Engineering and Applied Mathematics and Computational Science. Prior to joining KAUST, he had worked for seven years at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in San Diego, one of the most prestigious oceanographic institutions in the United States. It was the multidisciplinary atmosphere at KAUST which encouraged him to consider different applications for his expertise.

At SIO, Ibrahim's research was devoted to the development of data assimilation systems for ocean monitoring and prediction. Increasing the speed and efficiency of data assimilation enables a better understanding of the historic and current state of the sea and, from this, the ability to predict natural and manmade forces that will affect it in the future.

Data sets of both historic and real time data, such as ocean temperature, salinity, sea surface height, circulation, atmospheric and climatic information from multiple monitoring sources (satellite, ocean arrays of buoys or deep water floats, etc) are merged with a dynamic model of the ocean to produce best possible estimates of the state of the oceans. This is then run forward to predict what will happen in the future. Just as the accuracy of a meteorologist's weather prediction improves the closer to the predicted day we are – so the veracity of the prediction increases as new data is acquired.

It sounds straightforward until you consider the magnitude of the data. Without KAUST's supercomputing and visualization capabilities such as Shaheen and Cornea, the task of forward modelling would be impossible.

At KAUST, Ibrahim is working with graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to apply this expertise to reconstruct the 4D picture of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf and study their variability.

Now established at KAUST, Ibrahim is taking advantage of the opportunity to begin to work with colleagues on new applications such as studying and predicting the weather and climate over the Saudi Arabian peninsula, developing forecasting capabilities for storm surge modelling and for reservoir modelling in the petroleum industry. He welcomes the chance to work "outside the box".