Ramadan Mubarak. In my last letter I spoke about the new sectors and touched on the new programs KFUPM has created over the past four years. I switch gears here again and discuss research.

First, I must tell you that KFUPM considers itself a research university – a research university that does academic education, and not the other way around. Some of you may not like this, but it is what it is. Education is key to building the future talent, who are destined to build new sectors and help achieve prosperity for the Kingdom and the globe. Research, on the other or same hand, achieves prosperity by devising new techniques, tools, and inventions that lead to prosperity for humanity. In fact, it extends beyond prosperity into even basic survival, some at the personal level, and some at even the planet level. (One must admit, however, that sometimes research is used for destruction and wars, which is regrettable).

Two or three years ago, we overhauled our entire research program, and rebuilt it on three pillars.

Research objective: The first thing we did when rebuilding our research endeavor was to ask: What is the purpose of research? What should be the purpose of research? In our view, that purpose is primarily to make a positive impact on humanity. In other words, to improve the human condition, to allow humanity and society to prosper, etc. This should be the first and foremost purpose. The purpose is not directly publications and citations. These are important measures, but not an objective. The purpose to be making an impact, whilst publications and citations attempt to measure that impact. They are not always the best measures, of course, but they are practical, objective, and easy to track. They are hence a byproduct rather than an objective. But what happens to a byproduct when the main product is useful? As the papers become more impactful and relevant and tackle grand challenges, they are cited more. In fact, the total KFUPM citations increased over three folds, from 58,563 in 2019 to 176,228 at the end of 2023! 

Declaring that the purpose of research must be to make an impact on humanity has practical implications, amongst them is that what we research must in the end – in the end, whether in one or twenty years, depending on whether the research is abstract or applied – result in something tangible that touches humanity, be it an equipment, chemical, material, apparatus, procedures, or the like. It cannot be just a publication that is never translated into useful “stuff”. In fact, the word “stuff’ is very useful (though it may be slightly colloquial) in that our research must in the end produce “stuff’’ – stuff that is of benefit to humanity. We dubbed this Research-for-Humanity.

It is also for this reason that we challenged all the research centers to focus on grand challenges, and not on incremental research. To buttress this, the University has supplied each center with a relatively healthy baseline budget, such that our research is not completely controlled by external funders and in time directed to do incremental technical-services-type-of-work, that has limited global impact. Don’t get me wrong, though. We encourage all research centers to seek external funding and to establish and continue to maintain a very strong and thriving link with the industry. But we also want to give the centers the freedom to think big, to tackle grand challenges affecting humanity, and to be able to balance both externally funded programs with those that seek to redefine science and engineering – through baseline funding.

Research participation: The second important issue in research is to be all inclusive. Meaning that every (professorial-rank) faculty member ought to be jointly appointed with a Research Center, in order to mix with other disciplines, participate in joint projects, get project funding, attract postdocs, etc. Although not all faculty members currently are jointly appointed with research centers, the vast majority of them, over 82%, are. Unfortunately, those who are not will find it difficult to get access to funds and to push their research (though we have left several existing incentive programs intact, even outside the centers, for now). It is important to know that becoming jointly appointed to a research center does not limit your research freedom; it enhances it. We have explained several times to the research center directors that jointly appointed faculty need only touch lightly the mainstream of the center’s agenda; the need not be fully in the main stream.

Interdisciplinary work: The third very important pillar of our research programs is interdisciplinary work. I believe, very strongly, that knowledge is created at the intersection of disciplines. If you are a monodisciplinary researcher, you will quickly plateau and find that there are not many novel ideas that you can pursue. The intersection with other disciplines, however, opens grander, greener pastures, in which you can truly plant and harvest many new and novel ideas. Interdisciplinary work, whether it is interdisciplinary teaching, or, as in the context here, interdisciplinary research, is at the crux of being able to make something useful.

I have seen this firsthand when I was in the graduate school, I learned about Prof. Enders Robinson, who was practically the founder of geophysical signal analysis (and who passed away last year). He essentially invented seismic deconvolution and broadly seismic signal analysis, and wrote and authored over twenty books on this topic. I was fortunate that he taught me and was later part of my thesis committee, and I learned many things from him. But what I learned foremost is the importance of interdisciplinary research. He said (loosely quoting; it was over 25 years ago): Muhammad, do you know how I came to Geophysics? I was actually studying Economics, and I noticed the economic pulses (i.e., influx of money into the economy, change of fiscal policy, and so on...) result in a reverberating signal that causes secondary effects, and those cause further, tertiary effects, and so forth. And if you look at them you will find these clearly depicted as a signal. The first time in the 50s that I saw a seismic trace (what geophysicists now use to map the earth’s subsurface), I said, “Oh my God! This is exactly how the economic reverberations look like.” Because the signal travels into the earth, gets reflected and then transmitted from one layer, and then reflected from another, and another, and another. So, I just simply applied what I already learned in economic theory to geophysical signals, and the rest is history.

Well, sorry about this long-winded digression, but it is important to keep in mind that to be an effective researcher, one has to be an interdisciplinary researcher. And that ethos is one that we are trying to spread, not just to our esteemed faculty but also to our students, so they can learn this, not just in their MX and CX programs, but also in their senior design projects as well (but more on that later on).

Two final thoughts about research. First, postdoctoral fellows (postdocs). The postdoc period of a researcher perhaps represents the peak research energy of that individual. This is why it is very important that we attract an increasing number of postdocs and integrate them with our research programs, for their own benefit and for the benefit of our faculty members. In fact, the number of postdocs at KFUPM increased from only three in 2019 to over 200 currently. But we are not satisfied with this number. We want, over the next few years, to increase that number to 1,500 and maybe even beyond. And I would like you, our faculty, to help us achieve this, because in doing this, you are actually helping yourself by surrounding yourself with postdoctoral colleagues that will contribute to the success of your research. Help us in recruiting these postdocs.

The second point is that the University has availed several research-supporting opportunities. I mentioned them in an earlier email and will not repeat them here (they include expanded conference participation, numerous types of special grants, editing services, etc.). These also include the Summer Outbound Scholarship, wherein the University supports a faculty member to conduct research in the summer at an international destination. Imagine getting paid for tickets and an additional salary to conduct your research in summer at a prestigious institution. Several of your colleagues have taken advantage of this opportunity and others (see list below), but more could as well.

Research with Humanity: Aah – one final thing. I described above our goal of Research for Humanity. However, we have now another important goal: Research with Humanity. It is not enough to just ensure what we do is good for humanity, we must engage humanity at large, especially those in developing countries, and extend a hand to collaborate with them to solve their local and global challenges. This is especially pertinent that many of us come from such countries, and we owe it as a debt not only to the world, but to our own original communities to help them. And, actually, when you think about it, we will be helping ourselves (yourself) as well. As many of these countries have professors and researchers with fantastic minds who would be great collaborators.

I am therefore formally announcing this Research with Humanity endeavor. It goes basically something like this: Research with Humanity Microgrants will be available, whose aim is to empower researchers in developing countries to address critical and global challenges faced by their communities through innovative and impactful research projects. Each grant will be to a joint application between a KFUPM faculty or researcher and a counterpart (or more) at an international university in one of the initially designated countries. This partner is encouraged to use part of the microgrant for travel to KFUPM (and vice versa). Each microgrant is for SR 20K, and no deadline for the application. You would be wrong to scuff at the size of the grant – this amount goes a long way in many developing countries.

OK, getting to the tail-end of this message now. Students take notice: in the next email I intend to talk about our exciting undergraduate research opportunities. Do not miss it!