21 NURTURING TALENT
WINTER ENRICHMENT PROGRAM DRAWS GLOBAL AUDIENCE IN VIRTUAL SETTING Connectivity takes center stage While KAUST’s annual Winter Enrichment Program (WEP) is traditionally held in a packed auditorium, social distancing and other health measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic made such an event impossible in 2021. The theme for this year’s WEP was connectivity, and ironically, the pandemic restrictions vastly expanded its reach. Around 7,000 participants from 10 countries signed in to watch 72 speakers from 15 countries, and 1,670 participated in networking sessions. The keynote addresses, seminars, podcasts, film screening, performances and other events held in conjunction with the program continued to grab attention after the closing session, with recorded events logging 540,000 combined views on KAUST’s Facebook and YouTube channels. KHALED NABIL SALAMA Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Associate Dean for Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering
CONNECTIVITY IS NOT ONLY ONE OF KAUST’S CORE PILLARS, IT IS ALSO A CENTRAL PART OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
Participation is mandatory for students once during their studies, but WEP has proven to be a popular event in its own right as it allows students to take a step back from their daily activities and pursue creative approaches to issues beyond their typical areas of expertise. Themed discussions balanced technical and artistic components in an environment that welcomed participation from beyond the KAUST community. The university provided about one-third of the speakers at the event, while the others were from universities and non-academic institutions in Saudi Arabia and beyond. WEP Faculty Chair for 2021, Khaled Nabil Salama, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Associate Dean for Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering at KAUST, led the opening remarks. Other KAUST speakers included Associate Professor of Computer Science Dr. Basem Shihada, whose work aims to bring the internet underwater via wireless technologies. Divers currently communicate with hand signals, but in the future connectivity could be possible with radio, acoustic or light signals. Dr. Shihada and his team realized that if there is a clear line of sight between
