Four students who dream of turning their ideas and discoveries into thriving businesses are among the first to be awarded financing and support from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology’s Seed Fund Program.

They and four others from the KAUST community will share almost $1 million in the initial round of Seed Fund payments and will receive additional finance from the university to help cover their administration costs. Three members of faculty and a member of staff will also receive grants.

The students’ innovative proposals include a scheme to provide continuously updated data on the Red Sea, software that streams the results of CT and MRI scans via a web browser, and an internet solution aimed at the Arabic-speaking market that combines a range of online functions.

The names of the winners, who were selected from a shortlist of 31 applicants, were announced at a gala dinner at KAUST. The distinguished panel of judges and the university authorities were so impressed by their proposals that all eight finalists were awarded grants.

Between them they will receive a total of $988,000 and the money will be used to fund the first steps towards turning their concepts into viable commercial products. The program is one of a number of initiatives run by KAUST’s Economic Development Department to nurture prospective entrepreneurs at the university and help them to develop new technologies and establish businesses.

“The Seed Fund Program acts as one of the key initiatives of Economic Development,” Professor Choon Fong Shih, President of KAUST, told guests at the dinner. “The program is designed to stimulate a continued ‘deal flow’ – a continuous pipeline of new products and novel business ideas.”

The program was set up by Dr Charles Kingdon, Director, Research Park and Industry Collaboration, at the Economic Development Department. He said: “We are delighted that Professor Shih has shown such great support for our Seed Program and we are convinced of its potential as an agent of change, driving economic development within the local community.”

Students who receive funding are allowed to devote a maximum of two hours each weekday – plus the whole of the weekend – to their businesses. All recipients are required to base their fledgling ventures at the Innovation Cluster and are provided with wide-ranging incubation and entrepreneurship support including online procurement, visa processing, accounting and budgeting and mentoring and coaching. Successful applicants may be awarded up to $250,000.

Applications are now being accepted for the second round of grants and should be submitted through the University’s portal. Inquiries about round two and the Seed Fund Program should be sent to and further information can be found within the Seed Fund web page.

Seed Fund Program Manager Beate Kerlis said: “This initiative is at the core of our mission in Economic Development. We are all very hopeful that we’ll see yet more interesting start-up opportunities in this next round.”

The eight awarded grants in the first round are:

• Staff member Raju Thupran, from India, for his Date Palm Tissue Cultivation scheme. Thupran was awarded $75,000 from the Seed Fund plus $97,000 for administration costs. He aims to refine tissue culture protocols and improve elite date palm varieties through systematic investigations of morphological, chemical and molecular profiling methods. Read More..
• Dr Alyn Rockwood, faculty, US, ScapeUp, $210,000 from the Seed Fund plus $30,000 for administration. Technology that passes a surface through unconnected curves to model important features of a terrain such as valleys, ridges, peaks and walls.
• Gamal Amin, student, Egypt, Wireless Fencing Apparatus, $52,000 plus $54,000. A scoring system for three types of fencing weapon – saber, foil and epee.
• Fahmi Machda, student, Indonesia, Red Sea Biogeographic Information System, $54,784 plus $23,000. A web-based environmental management tool that provides continuously updated data.
• Dan Lecocq, student, US, WebGlot, $169,000 plus $45,000. Software that exploits the power of modern graphics cards to perform computationally intensive visualization techniques within a web browser, streaming results as they run and interactively visualizing CT and MRI scans.
• Dr. Vladimir Bajic, faculty, South Africa, Dragon Exploratory System, $215,000 plus $33,000. Software that enable fast fact-finding in the biomedical field and the inference of potentially new facts.
• Dr. Kuo-Wei Huang, faculty, Taiwan, Portable Hydrogen Delivery Device, $155,734 plus $25,000. An electricity generator based on a hydrogen production device integrated with a fuel cell and membrane separation component.
• Nedhal Mourad, student, Syria, Manarah, $57,000 plus $57,000. A web-based software solution aimed at the Arabic-speaking market that will allow students to use several online functions such as social networking, academic progress and career development.

Bookmark this page and check back over the next few weeks to find out what inspired the first winners’ ideas and learn of their hopes for the future of their ventures.