KAUST reaches further than any team from the Middle East and North Africa region, against competition from all over the world.

Just like last year ANPERC was honored to host two talented SRSI students, Mohammed Suleiman and Anass Alzomaili. Both students were supervised by Professor Hussein Hoteit and worked on projects specially designed for them. We asked Mohammed Suleiman about his experience as an SRSI-student in KAUST.

Dr. Carlos Santamarina represents KAUST in Atlanta and Lausanne, joined by Rached Rached and Marco Terzariol of ANPERC.

Confractus CEO and Illinois State Geology Survey consulting geologist Sherilyn Williams-Stroud will conduct a 3 day course for ANPERC and PSE students and faculty.

SEG Honorary Lecturer Maria Capello warns: "We have become very much secluded in our science."

This year's faculty speaker at the 9th academic convocation will be ANPERC's Associate Center Director Dr Carlos Santamarina.

ErPE, a new academic program offered by the Physical Science and Engineering Division, will open new opportunities for students interested in studying at KAUST and ANPERC.

This May, ANPERC Professor Volker Vahrenkamp and Postdoctoral Fellow Pankaj Khanna visited the AAPG/SEPM Annual Convention Meeting in Salt Lake City, USA. This meeting, organized by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, aims to bring together the best geoscientists on the planet to see the latest science and technology in the geoscience world.

Recently, ANPERC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Leoben University in Austria to promote collaboration and student exchanges between the two universities. In April, ANPERC welcomed the first exchange student from Leoben. Christian Wimmer works as a Visiting Student in the EGEL group under the supervision of Professor Santamarina. We asked him about his experience as a Visiting Student in KAUST in a short Q&A

The KAUST SPE PetroBowl team qualified in the 2018 MENA (Middle East North Africa) competition to participate in the PetroBowl Finals held during the September 2018 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Dallas, Texas, USA. In the PetroBowl competition SPE Student Chapter teams play against each other in a series of quick-fire rounds, answering technical and non-technical gas and oil-industry related questions.

Dr. Luis Alberto Torres Cruz has commenced his five month sabbatical with the EGEL group. Dr Torres Cruz is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa where he lectures in Strength of Materials and Geotechnical Engineering.

KAUST and ANPERC regularly host exceptional undergraduate students as Visiting Students to conduct unique research and explore graduate opportunities. It is one of the best-in-class strategies for encouraging bright young minds from Saudi Arabia and around the world to pursue graduate education. One of ANPERC's recent Visiting Student interns is Aseel Alsantely, who is completing an internship in the EGEL lab under supervision of Professor Carlos Santamarina.

ANPERC members Dr. Victor Torrealba and Wardana Saputra attended the 2018 ATS&E conference in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. They presented a paper and spoke in the Young Professional's panel.

Visiting Professor Clayton Radke spent five months working together with staff and students at ANPERC. Radke, who is Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California Berkeley and a member of the prestigious US National Academy of Engineering, came to KAUST to teach a variety of courses within applied surface and colloid chemistry. He's also working on various research projects.

At ANPERC Senior Research Scientist Thomas Finkbeiner is leading the Rock Geomechanics Reseach Group. We asked Thomas about his background and research.

The EGEL group hosted a seven-member Turkish Academic Delegation from April 18 – 19. The delegates from Istanbul University, Bogazici University and Middle East Technical University viewed KAUST research facilities and met with EGEL team members and ANPERC faculty.

During the celebration of Earth Day on Thursday April 19, ANPERC was awarded the very first KAUST Certified Green Lab Award with the highest score in sustainability. The Green Lab award, given to ANPERC by the KAUST Sustainability Group, is an indication of how green the labs of the centers are.

This March ANPERC welcomed Postdoctoral Fellow Pankaj Khanna. At KAUST Pankaj joined the growing Carbonate Reservoirs Geology group of Professor Volker Vahrenkamp.

The days of easy oil extraction are dwindling across the globe, bringing an imperative for careful and inventive ways to utilize the Earth’s remaining fossil fuel resources. Tadeusz Patzek at KAUST is a leading expert in onshore and offshore oil recovery processes. He is committed to maintaining oil and gas production at sustainable levels to give scientists and engineers the opportunity to find replacement fuels for the future.

Over the next 30 to 50 years, the oil and gas industry will face a number of challenges. Chief among these is the difficulty of meeting growing global hydrocarbon demand as energy and feedstock within 21st century constraints. The industry must achieve a balance between environmental sensitivities, market pressures and rising costs. During the recent KAUST Research Conference: Recovery of Difficult Hydrocarbons organized by the Ali I. Al-Naimi Petroleum Engineering Research Center (ANPERC), attendees wrestled with these and other questions. The conference, which was held from February 12 to 14, also examined technical solutions to enhance environmentally sound recovery from complex oil and gas fields at low cost within the Middle East.