Chemical and Life Sciences and Engineering Division

Facilities

KAUST boasts the largest collection of best-in-class research laboratories, facilities, and equipment of any university in the world. Students and researchers have unparalleled access to these resources, all of which will enable major scientific breakthroughs.

The Chemical and Life Sciences and Engineering (CLSE) Division provides access to a number of cutting-edge facilities, including:

  • The Shaheen supercomputer is one of the world’s fastest in an academic environment. Developed with IBM, it is capable of 222 teraflops, or 222 trillion floating point operations per second. It also offers:
    • A 16-rack IBM Blue Gene/P system with 65,536 independent cores
    • A 1,500-node Linux cluster with two quad-core Nehalem processors per node
    • 64 terabytes of aggregate memory capacity
    • Petaflop/s capability expected within the next two to three years, with scalability for future demand
  • The CORNEA visualization center is a fully immersive, six-sided virtual reality facility that turns data into 3D structures that students and researchers can interact with and examine as part of their work. Additional features include:
    • A Mechdyne-build VL-6 with the world’s highest resolution (100 million pixels) and brightest (10,000 lumens) visualization environments
    • 24 Quad HD Projectors, the highest native resolution (4096x2160 pixels) projectors
    • An advanced spatial/surround sound audio system that adapts to match visual images - the only known research center of this type in the world
  • Biosciences and bioengineering facilities feature advanced equipment in the world for genomics, proteomics, microscopy, nanofabrication, and nuclear magnetic resonance studies, including:
    • A suite of 10 advanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers and facilities up to 950 MHz for scanning, transmission, confocal, and Raman microscopy, small- and wide-scale XRD, FITR, and magnetic and thermal measurements
    • The genomics and proteomics facility is equipped with robots and laboratory automation
  • Chemical science facilities for studies in any area of chemistry, with advanced equipment for the full range of characterization techniques  including:
    • Microscopic techniques (e.g., TEM, AFM, Environmental SEM)
    • Surface analysis techniques (e.g., ESCA, Auger, BET)
    • Electrical and electrochemical measurements
    • TGA
  • Nanofabrication laboratories and clean-room environments equipped to support research in advanced materials, biotechnology, electronics and photonics, and MEMS/NENS. Features include:
    • 2000 m2 Class 1000 clean room and multiple bays at Class 100
    • Confocal optical, atomic force, and electron microscopes as well as spectrometers and probe stations
    • Microsystems analyzers
    • Tools for sputtering, including chemical vapor, atomic layer, and pulsed laser disposition
    • Vibrating sample and alternating-gradient magnetometers
    • Kerr-effect and magnetic force microscopes
  • The Coastal and Marine Resources Laboratory, which facilitates research on the Red Sea, provides:
    • The capability to build and deploy modern oceanographic instrumentation
    • Operational services to support research vessels for marine exploration, diving, and sampling
    • Indoor and outdoor seawater facilities to culture marine organisms
    • High-bay areas and specialized spaces in the Innovation Cluster and Research Park facilities that will be available for pilot testing and industrial collaboration as opportunities emerge

Other research universities in the Kingdom, region, and world will link to the University’s supercomputer and laboratory facilities via the 10 gigabytes per second (Gbps) Saudi Arabian Advanced Research and Education Network (SAREN).

This unique blend of facilities means that experimental studies at KAUST will be almost unconstrained by physical resources.