Under the patronage of His Excellency, Dr. Sahel N. Abduljauwad, KFUPM Rector, the winning research proposals for the academic year 2018/2019 were announced, in a ceremony organized by the Deanship of Research, on Wednesday, April 3, 2019 at KFUPM Conference Center. The ceremony was attended by the Vice Rector for Applied Studies and Research, Dr. Nasser bin Mohammed Al-Aqeeli, deans of colleges, supporting deanships, directors of RI centers, heads of academic departments and a large number of faculty members and researchers.
HE Dr. Abduljauwad expressed the University’s pride in its researches and their outputs. He stressed the role of KFUPM in supporting scientific research by providing a suitable environment and enabling research activities such as authoring of books, translations, scientific visits and participation in international conferences. He also discussed a number of future challenges and ways to confront them.
Dr. Abdullah bin Saad Sultan, Dean of Research, thanked KFUPM administration for "the generous and continuous support of scientific research." He also highlighted the efforts of the Deanship to facilitate the procedures for the researchers, improve the performance efficiency and clarify the research results. The number of research published annually in international scientific journals had exceeded 1262 researches. Last year, the institutional impact factor (IIF) has also increased by more than 67% compared to 2009. The percentage of Faculty members who actively participated in the scientific research constitutes about 79%.
KFUPM Rector and Vice-Rector for Applied Studies and Research honored five faculty members who published high quality books namely Dr. Baker Yalbis, Dr. Magdy Mahmoud, Dr. Abdullatif Al-Shuhail, Dr. Wail Mousa, Dr. Anwar Ul-Hamid, Dr. Mohammad Mehboob Al-Islam, Dr. Tawfiq Sal, Dr. Hassan Qudrat-Ullah, and Dr. Munther Al-Alfredan.
Names of the winners and the research proposals were announced. All the academic colleges and the research institute had winning proposals. The Faculty of Engineering Sciences had the largest share. The total of proposals, submitted this year to the Deanship of Scientific Research for Evaluation and Study, were 199 proposals. These proposals were fruits of various support programs such as internal support program, grants for the new faculty, the fast track grants and others. The general acceptance rate exceeded 50%.
For the fourth time, the Deanship of Research organized this ceremony to announce the winning proposals. The Deanship has adopted a new plan to evaluate and support the proposals based on comparative differentiation between the proposals of each support programs.