Fifteen postdoctoral fellows from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) were recognised as the 2014 Sabic Postdoctoral Fellowship Awardees at a ceremony held at the university campus in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, recently.

This is a fourth year of fellowships as part of the company’s support for the university’s academic innovative research efforts, said a statement.

Dr Jean-Lou Chameau, president and Dr Ernesto Occhiello,  Sabic executive vice president, Technology and Innovation congratulated the winners and ceremony attendees, which included senior management from both organisations.
 
The postdoctoral fellows will be conducting research in several areas of interest to Sabic including nanomaterials, catalysis, novel polymer synthesis and computational modelling.

“Sabic is committed to a long-term successful association with KAUST. With innovation lying at the heart of SABIC’s 2025 strategy, we continue to plan for increased collaboration with KAUST to develop technologies that could not only drive our competitiveness, but yield significant societal benefits as well,” Dr Occhiello.

“The Sabic-KAUST collaboration continues to deepen and foster breakthrough innovation in several research areas critical both to the company as well as the country. We are proud to join together with Sabic to continue leading a successful industry-academia collaboration within the kingdom,” said Dr Chameau.

Prof Jean Fréchet, KAUST vice president of Research, said: “The scientific problems faced by society today require that industry and academia find newer ways of collaborative research.  With Sabic’s support, we are moving forward on two fronts: innovations in science and novel ways of collaboration. We view Sabic a key long term collaborator for commercialising the innovative ideas from KAUST into successful industry applications.” - TradeArabia News Service