Three students from Grade 10 participated – along with 35 others – in the 1-day KAUST Smart Hackathon, to celebrate two years of the KAUST Central app… and they won! Teams of 6 learnt more about the concept of the ‘user experience’ and learnt how you translate ideas into wireframes that can be implemented in end-user mobile applications – using Figma. Taking a gamify approach, teams went through different stages of ideation to propose solutions for a challenge statement they were given. The judges said of the winners… “they demonstrated dynamism and sharpness to learn the concepts, worked collaboratively to develop their solutions to the challenge, and used a great storytelling technique to present their work”.
As part of their learning in exploring patterns to make real-life connections in the world, the Grade 10 students visited the ESM Lab and were able to apply what they had learned in the classroom to better understand how data is collected and analyzed. Thanks to Professor Daniele Daffonchio, PostDocs – Elisa Garuglieri and Alan Barozzi, and the Lab Manager, Taskeen Begum and the team for hosting the students in the Lab.
As the Grade 11s start to think about their Extended Essays and Research Projects, researchers and students from the university took part in a panel discussion to share their experience with undertaking research and writing their theses. The panel consisted of Brian Parrott – a Masters alumni of KAUST, who worked as a researcher at Aramco for 10 years and has now returned to KAUST to study for his PhD, Dr Huda Alfardus – a PostDoc in Material Science & Engineering, Amani Alonazi – a KAUST alumni, now working as an AI Scientist at Boeing Research & Technology, and Abullah AlShehri – a current KAUST PhD student. The panel were able to provide information about good sources for quality academic publications, advice on developing research questions and hypotheses, and tips and tricks for managing large amounts of information, and organizing the research paper.
The KAUST university takes part in the global Falling Walls initiative, which provides a unique international platform for leaders from the world of science, business, politics, the arts and society to share their own research and scientific breakthroughs. Winners from the KAUST Falling Walls then go on to represent KAUST at the global Falling Walls Science Summit. As TKS is part of the KAUST community, school students had an amazing opportunity to also take part in the internal Falling Walls competition – held in September 2022. Two Grade 11 students – Sai Katuri and Bayan Kharbatia took to the stage to pitch their scientific solutions – Sai talked about the global nutrition crisis, and Bayan talked about coffee grounds methane production. Their 3-minute pitches can be found here.
Grade 7 students are looking at how sound pollution in the world’s oceans and seas affects the residents of these habitats. Using Distinguished Professor Carlos Duarte’s interview where he talked about driving a change in the marine ecosystem to one of net positive conservation value as their inspiration, they have composed soundscape music that encourages the listener to question and reflect on the relationship they have with these environments.
The students have been flexing their ‘deep listening’ muscles and have undertaken ‘Sound Walks’ to record and document the sounds around us. This work will continue as the students collaborate with the OceanX team as part of the Red Sea Decade Expedition, to use sounds that have been recorded from the Red Sea to compose their music.
Grade 8 students, as part of their unit on plants, have recently undertaken a project in the lab of KAUST’s Professor Gyorgy Szekely (Physical Science & Engineering Division) where they learned how to extract essential oils from orange and cinnamon plants.
Scientists from the lab of the Dean of the BESE Division (Professor Samir Hamdan) worked with the Grade 12 students to conduct gel electrophoresis.
Faisal Wali, Strategic Partnership and Lab Operations Manager from the KAUST Solar Center presented to the Grade 7 students on solar cells and renewable energy at KAUST.
Graduate students from the Red Sea Research Center, Earth Science & Engineering and Environmental Science & Engineering formed the panel for the TKS Sci-Café in February 2022 – Monitoring the Planet.
TKS Secondary students heard from Aislin Dunne (PhD student) who is studying marine ecosystems to understand how human impact influences them, Maria Perea Barreto (PhD student) who spoke about her work with remote sensing and geological hazards, and Fabio Veiga de Carmargo (Master student) who is focusing on satellite sensing of terrestrial and ocean ecosystems.
