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Left to right, top row: Eduardo Torres, Professor Abdulkader Afifi, Jakub Fedorik, and Miliausha Petrova.

Bottom row: WISE students Sajedah Kharbatia, Erika Nishitani, Kirsty McCulloch, and Lojayn Ghryani.

Over the summer, ANPERC hosted nearly a dozen interns from multiple programs. They came to KAUST from institutions in Saudi Arabia and around the world, and some are even students at the KAUST School. Their work ranged from simulation to sample preparation, doing lab work and other research activities under the guidance of ANPERC faculty. This is only a small glimpse into the busy summer they have spent working in the center.

Postdoc Jakub Fedorik in Dr. Abdulkader Afifi's Arabian Plate Geology group mentored four students in the WISE program, some of whom are graduates of the KAUST School. Three WISE students, Lojayn Ghryani, Kirsty McCulloch, and Sajedah Kahrbatia worked in the ANPERC lab on preparation of polished thin sections of rock samples for study under the petrographic microscope. Kharbatia is planning to go to medical school, and completed a volunteering internship at KAUST Medical Center last summer. Now she is preparing samples in the lab. "I'm a very hands-on person so I like working in the lab… It amazes me that we can go from a boulder to a micron-thick slide."

Kharbatia is not the only intern to come to ANPERC from a non-geological background. KAUST School alumna Kirsty McCulloch finds that her background in chemistry has served her in surprising ways "When polishing samples we needed a way to get aluminium oxide onto a silk canvas using a solvent that wasn't water soluble, but also not an aromatic that would be unsafe for lab use. It was chemically quite complicated."

Erika Nishitani works with GIS and other software to create models for a CO2 sequestration project. "At university, I'm not just working on my own project. But here I'm getting valuable hands-on experience and responsibility. Next year I can show off what I've done with GIS." She has also audited classes at KAUST conducted by Dr. Volker Vahrenkamp.

Meanwhile another group of interns has been working with Dr. Hussein Hoteit's ARMS research group. Albaraa Mirdad is studying how AI can be used to image rock fractures in seconds, and Abdulaziz Jami is working on enhanced oil recovery through the innovative use of polymers. According to Mirdad: "I didn't know much about KAUST before, just that it was something new and different… I was amazed by the labs. And the faculty comes from everywhere in the world, with different backgrounds." Mirdad's vision is to integrate AI into other fields as well.

Jami took part in an Aramco enrichment program in 2017, and now hopes to gain more expertise in petroleum engineering.  "For a student who wants to be a professor, KAUST was the best choice in the Kingdom because of the faculty."

These are only some of the students to work with ANPERC faculty over the summer of 2019. Dr. Shehab Ahmed's MERGE research group hosted KGSP interns Abdullah Adill Albakry and Abdullah Hatem Abu Alshour, as well as summer interns from universities around the Kingdom. The thumbnail photo on our news feed features Abdullah Alsinan, another SRSI student who worked with Dr. Hoteit in April.

Left to right: SRSI students Abdulaziz Jami and Albaraa Mirdad.