Creating the innovators of tomorrow

​STEAM grew out of the recognition by KAUST and the IDB that some of the challenges facing the Kingdom are issues of local, regional and global significance. Addressing these challenges requires the best work from the brightest minds, students the STEAM challenge aims to identify and develop.

Teams of between four and five members presented solutions that were technically feasible, financially sound, economically viable and environmentally friendly. The winning presentations considered the needs of Saudi Arabia, with scalability beyond the Kingdom as a key factor in the selection of the winners.

"We are delighted with the involvement levels and ideas that came out of the first STEAM Innovation Challenge," said Gordon McConnell, head of the KAUST Entrepreneurship Center whose team designed and delivered the program. "The two-day event was designed to give students a view of real world problems and to help them understand the process of ideation and framing their ideas so they could be communicated to the judges and audience, all the while working with team members they had never met before and under very tight time pressures. The feedback from the students and the visiting faculty members, as well as from the IDB, was tremendous, and we believe that all these students left the event with a new view of the world and how they could make an impact in it."