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Growing Pains in the Desert

A 3-year-old graduate research university in Saudi Arabia is nding that it will take more than money to create a global research powerhouse
TONY EASTHAM WASNT PLANNING TO FINISH HIS ACADEMIC career in Saudi Arabia. And David Ketcheson didnt think his rst faculty job would be at a new, graduate-only research university in the Middle East. But in 2009, both Eastham, a British physicist with an international CV, and Ketcheson, a U.S.-born-and-bred applied mathematician, wound up working at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). The countrys octogenarian monarch gave his nameand an estimated $20 billionto what he hoped would be a Bayt al-Hikma, a house of wisdom, in the grand tradition of Islamic scholarship (Science, 16 October 2009, p. 354). The money, in addition to providing KAUST with a huge endowment to be tapped for operating expenses, has bought what Eastham describes as resources not available to any other university in the world. For many faculty members, the job has exceeded their expectations. The funding opportunities are astounding, and Ive had the chance to do things that wouldnt normally be possible for someone at my level, says Ketcheson, born and educated in the United States, who was hired at age 29 right out of graduate school as an assiswww.sciencemag.org/extra/global tant professor. Coming here also appealed to my sense of adventure, he adds, noting that his wife This is the fourth in a series of artiand three small children also enjoy living within cles on global research universithe gated community that surrounds the campus. ties. Previous stories have examined The British-born Eastham, now 67, has had the role of student and faculty a different, and ultimately much less satisfymobility (7 September, p. 1162), the ing, experience. There was a tremendous sense phenomenon of satellite laboratories of camaraderie the first year, recalls Eastham, (28 September, p. 1600), and efforts who agreed to run KAUSTs core labs after havby France and Germany to strengthen ing spent the previous 13 years managing research research at a handful of elite univerand technology development at Hong Kong sities (2 November, p. 597). University of Science and Technology, an institution whose rapid rise KAUST hopes to emulate (Science, 7 September, p. 1162). We were all part of this pioneering experiment. But for Eastham, the initial excitement gave way to frustration, disappointment, and, nally, disillusionment. In December 2011, Eastham left what he had begun to call the King Abdullah University of Stress and Tension and retired to his beloved Vancouver. (He had spent more than 2 decades as a Canadian academic before going to Hong Kong.) The atmosphere had become poisoned, and KAUST was no longer a comfortable place to work. After 3 years, I decided I had had enough. Eastham is one of several senior administrators who have left KAUST in the past year. All still embrace the kings vision but believe that it is being undermined by management decisions that have trampled upon the openness, collegiality, and transparency common at Western institutions. Those decisions include sudden changes in admissions standards to increase the share of Saudi students, revisions in the rules governing internal funding, and a failure to uphold agreements with international collaborators. Compounding the problem, current and former staff members say, is a work environment that discourages any airing of these concerns. Without a change in leadership, they worry, KAUST will fall short of its quest to become a global research university. More than a vision KAUST owes its existence to King Abdullahs belief that the country needed a top-rated research university. In 2007, he assigned the task of building one to his oil ministeran ironic choice given that one of KAUSTs goals is to wean the kingdom from its dependence on oiland the minister chose Saudi Aramco to make it happen. Deploying a round-the-clock crew of 30,000 and up to 50 cranes poking skyward, the stateowned giant oil company completed the 36-million-square-meter campus in only 2 years. And in September 2009, the king himself pre-

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Looking ahead. Provost Stefan Catsicas (standing, right) meets with KAUSTs senior academic management team.

500 400 300

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333

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M.S. degree Ph.D. degree

along with the proportion of Saudi students.

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35% 24% 15% 200910 14% 14% 19% 25%

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What theyre studying

Applied math and computer sciences

Mechanical engineering

Chemical sciences

Computer science

Materials science

9% 6%

Environmental sciences

Electrical engineering

Happier times. King Abdullah greets James Luyten, a founding research center director who last year resigned in frustration.

15% 12%

Chemical and biological engineering

eralize about how most faculty members and administrators feel about their employer. Even so, Science has learned that some have tried to express their concerns through private channels, with uncertain results. In one notable case, several senior KAUST ofcials and scientists responded to a request last fall from the kings inner circle for information on KAUST management practices. Their statements, which Science obtained after agreeing not to identify the authors, provide a frank assessment of what they regard as pressing problems. And the same themes recur. The current atmosphere in the administration and nance of the university is one of brutality, notes one writer, adding that dedicated talents who believed in the dream of the university from the start are leaving because they can no longer tolerate this hostile climate. The author ends with a plea: The management of a university must be in the hands of academic professionals. Eastham was at rst reluctant to speak out and says he decided to do so only because he believes KAUSTs fate is important to the scientic community. (Several persons requested anonymity as a condition of talking to Science, saying that they feared reprisals.) Another former senior administrator who has come forward publicly is James Luyten, who resigned last December as founding

3% 0%

Student demographics. This years entering class is much smaller than in previous years, although a larger proportion is planning to earn doctoral degrees. The share of domestic students has risen steadily each year.

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director of KAUSTs Red Sea Research Center. Luyten is a former head of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, which in 2007 became KAUSTs rst international research partner. Saudi ofcials made a splash when they inked a 3-year, $25 million agreement with WHOI to carry out a range of marine activities that included ve 16-day cruises on the Red Sea. But even with a 2-year extension, fewer than half the cruises were conducted, and on 31 October the partnership ended with a whimper. Luyten believes that KAUST hasnt provided the mutual respect and transparency needed to carry out world-class, collaborative research. His repeated efforts to address those problems while he directed the Red Sea center were thwarted by his superiors, he adds.
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sided over a gala opening celebration for foreign dignitaries and scientic luminaries. In retrospect, however, building the institution was the easy part. Making it work like a research university is proving to be much harder. In addition to Eastham, the list of senior academics who have left KAUST in the past year includes the director of admissions, the heads of two of the universitys nine initial research centers, the founding provost, the rst dean of life sciences and engineering, and the head of university communications. Without exception, these former employees are still rooting for KAUST to succeed. They believe that a world-class university in Saudi Arabia would strengthen global science, provide technology-based solutions to pressing problems in the region, and perhaps even ease political tensions in this volatile part of the world. And they agree that the unprecedented investment in equipment and facilities has attracted talented scientists from around the world. KAUSTs tight control over information makes it hard to gen-

The Student Body

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I have to say that every promise that has been made to us has been broken, except for the payment of our actual salaries, he says. ble for those people, says David Keyes, an applied mathematician who left a tenured professorship at Columbia University to join KAUST in 2009 as a founding dean. They were very much impacted by the unexCalling the shots pected difculties in starting supply chains and getting clearances. One fundamental problem, Luyten, Eastham, and others say, is that Keyes has spent the past 3 years dealing with those problems as Aramco has retained a prominent role in running the institution it head of two of KAUSTs three academic divisionsone spanning built. Its top-down management style may be ne for operating an the physical sciences and engineering and the second encompassing oil-production facility, they say, but that style is ill-suited to a gradu- applied mathematics and computer science and engineering. But he ate research university. Theres a lack of trust at the top. They just doesnt fault the university or Aramco. Any start-up has challenges. dont trust anybody, says Alyn Rockwood, a professor of applied Id like to see General Electric run a university, he says. Maybe mathematics and associate director of the Geometric Modeling and Google could do it and get it right the rst time. But for a company Scientic Visualization Center, who this fall announced that he would that is used to ordering valves to suddenly be asked to order specbe leaving KAUST in January. trometers and textbooks, everything is likely to go wrong. Critics are particularly unhappy with the management style of Al-Nasr acknowledges the slow start but doesnt think there one senior KAUST administrator, Nadhmi Al-Nasr. Hes a former was much that KAUST could have done differently. It was a big Aramco vice president for engineering services whose title at KAUST shock to the system, he admits. Our demands were way more than is executive vice president for administration and nance. Although the kingdom has ever seen before, in terms of both our focus on he reports to KAUSTs president, Choon Fong Shih, Al-Nasr is widely research and the absolute amount of research that faculty wanted viewed as the de facto head of the university. (Al-Nasr was interim to do. People had come from all over the world, and we wanted to president before Shih arrived in 2008 meet their expectations. It was pretty frustrating as the much-admired president of the for faculty. But I think most of those problems National University of Singapore, and have been worked out. Shihs pending retirement, announced Keyes certainly hopes so. Once his succesin May, appears to have further sors are in placein August, Yves Gnanou of strengthened Al-Nasrs hand.) the cole Polytechnique in Paris became dean of Personally, I like Nadhmi. But physical sciences, and the appointment of a dean he does some strange things, says for math and computer sciences is imminent Rockwood, who notes that his pendKeyes can return to his rst love: research. Hes ing departure gives him greater freecurrently working on algorithms for extreme comdom than other faculty members to puting applications. express his opinions. And hes from Arguably the universitys most prominent a culture where fear and intimidaactive scientist, Keyes believes that KAUST tion are part of the way you do busihas survived the worst and is starting to make ness. Hes not an academic. Hes an oil real progress. People here still have faith in the manager, and I guess that you have to unique opportunity represented by an interdiscibe pretty hard-nosed to be successful plinary, graduate science and engineering instiin that eld. tution with 5-year funding for research, he says. Al-Nasr, who has never before been So the things that made it distinctive in the rst a university administrator and who place are still there. holds a bachelors degree in chemiOne area where KAUST has been able to hit cal engineering, acknowledges that he the ground running is in the mathematical and was jumping into the deep end when computer sciences and engineering, which are he joined KAUST. Learning how less dependent on good supply chains. Keyes says to work in an academic culture was a that the division has carved out a niche of develtotally new game for me, he explained NADHMI AL NASR, oping enabling technologies while continuing to during an interview in which he was by KAUST EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT FOR do good research. In turn, Ketcheson says that turns combative, cagey, and cajoling. ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE Keyes is the reason he decided to start his acaIn industry, business decisions are all demic career in the Arabian desert after earning top-down. The corporation decides, and the staff executes the plan. a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Washington. Academia is different. The ideas of people at all levels count, and you Davids famous in the eld, Ketcheson says. He mentioned need to learn how to listen. KAUST when I called him about possible positions at Columbia A successful academic administrator needs to be patient, Al-Nasr while I was still in graduate school. At rst I shrugged it off. You adds. Faculty debate things for a long time, he notes. In industry, dont go to the Middle East if you want a tenure-track position at a top time is money, so you dont have that luxury. university, because that caliber of institution doesnt generally exist There was no template for Aramco to follow for building such a there. But once I looked into it, I was really impressed. well-endowed graduate research university from scratch. And even if there had been one, it probably wouldnt have applied to a country Admissions reversal without such institutions. Academics like to say that a university is only as good as the graduAlthough the administrative and classroom buildings opened on ate students it attracts. That truism also explains why the researchers time, equipping the labs to do science took much, much longer. The who spoke with Science are so troubled by how the 2011 entering delays were especially hard on researchers with wet labs. It was horri- class was chosen.

Learning how to work in an academic culture was a totally new game for me.

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KAUSTs reputation among future applicant pools, Catsicas says that quality is more important than quantity. And he doesnt think that KAUST had been hurt: This is a young institution, and Im sure we will make mistakes. But it is not an arbitrary process, and the objective is quality. Building global ties When it comes to luring prized senior faculty members like Rockwood, KAUST is willing to pull out all the stops. At least, thats how it looked at rst to Rockwood, whose career in computer graphics and geometric modeling has straddled industry and academia. Full professors were promised an annual research budget equivalent to a NSF [National Science Foundation] center, he saysin his case, $1 millionand we were told that, if we needed more, we could write a two-page grant to the provost and it would be approved. Rockwood says he wasnt surprised when the second promise never materialized: It just seemed too easy. But he was disappointed when his package was suddenly trimmed back to $800,000. And he was annoyed to discover the hidden costs within his budget, such as being charged up to $70,000 a year to support a doctoral student. And then there were just silly things, like having to pay our own phone bills. Al-Nasr declined to discuss KAUSTs operating budget (its believed to be roughly $750 million a year), explaining that KAUST doesnt share its nancial information with anyone except our board of trustees. But he says that there havent been any budget cuts affecting research that Im aware of. He says the endowment provides the biggest portion of the funds needed to operate the university, although ofcials are hoping a growing share will come

Core labs. KAUSTs facilities include nanofabrication and nanobiology labs, NMR machines, and a supercomputer.

from industry, philanthropic organizations, and private donors. At the same time, he says, KAUST has reduced its nonacademic expenditures by 20%. Those cost-saving measures may annoy faculty members, Keyes says, but they are hardly unique to KAUST. Now that the global economy is much less secure, we are striving to live within a budget that will not require breaking promises, he says. That means every new faculty members requests for start-up funds and equipment is getting more scrutiny. In addition to growing its own talent, KAUST decided early on that institutional collaborations with global heavyweights would be a good way to jump-start its research activities. So KAUST inked dozens of deals using an array of mechanisms. The rst one, with WHOI, covered research in three areas: coral
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Ive had the chance to do things that wouldnt normally be possible for someone at my level.

KAUST has no shortage of applicants thanks to its full scholarships, generous stipends, subsidized housing, and outstanding facilities. And while one of KAUSTs missions is to train the next generation of Saudi scientists, KAUST hasnt been able to nd enough high-quality candidates from the kingdom to ll all the available slots. I realize that this is a sensitive topic, says the provost, Stefan Catsicas, a neurobiologist who came to KAUST in January 2011 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. But we are a uniDAVID KETCHESON, versity in Saudi Arabia. At the same time, Catsicas says, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, KAUST KAUST does not want an entirely domestic class and believes that a good mix of international students is essential. So the university has tried to strike a balance without imposing a quota. The 15% share of Saudi students in each of the first two classes, out of a total of roughly 360, was lower than desired, however, Catsicas says. Even more troubling for a university hoping to become a predominantly doctoral-granting institution was the fact that only 10% of the arriving students seeking doctoral degrees were from the kingdom. (A majority of the students in the rst two classes were aiming for masters degrees.) So in late winter of 2011, KAUST decided to boost the Saudi representation in the next class to 30%. That decision was made so late in the admissions cycle, however, that it forced ofcials to take the unusual step of sending an update to 125 foreign students who had already received acceptance letters. The students were told that they faced one more hurdlean interviewbefore they could enroll. The questions were very casual, about my family and my future plans. They could have gotten most of the information from my CV, says one African student who requested anonymity. Two months later, most of the students were told that the offer had been withdrawn. Others discovered that they could not obtain a visa to study at KAUST. Although faculty members had recruited some of these students, they were shut out of the nal selection process. When they learned what had happened, many pleaded with Catsicas to reverse the decisions, and KAUST agreed to welcome back some 30 highvalue students. The reshufing created more slots for Saudi students. In the end, 24% of the entering class of 2011 was from Saudi Arabia, including one-third of those seeking masters degrees. This year, KAUST upped the percentage of Saudi students to 35% of the whole, including 51% of those seeking masters degrees. But ofcials did it by reducing the overall size of the entering class. The number of new students plummeted from 383 to 245, and the size of the Asian contingent dropped by more than half, from roughly 120 in each of the rst three classes to only 54 in the newest class. Asked if he thought last years admissions process had damaged

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reef ecology, marine resources and fisheries management, and biage about the need to adapt to climate change, there wasnt much physical oceanography. Each was designed to take advantage of going on substantively with respect to food and water needs, she KAUSTs location along the Red Sea, a body of water with special explains. There are many inefciencies in how we do agriculture in characteristics. It promised to be a boon to scientists around the terms of water, nutrients, and land use. And the reason I came here, world who had been prohibited from working there because of its in a nutshell, was to see if we could make progress in those areas. strategic and military importance to the countriesEgypt, Sudan, This is exactly the kind of thing they should be doing, Somalia, and Ethiopia, as well as Saudi Arabiaalong its shores. says biochemist Barry Halliwell, deputy president for research The cruises, across all seasons, were designed to generate the and technology at the National University of Singapore and a rst large-scale, top-to-bottom hydromember of a blue-ribbon Intergraphic survey of this poorly explored national Advisory Council that sea. But only one came off as origiadvises KAUSTs president. Its nally planned, says Amy Bower, a highly relevant to the kingdom, and senior scientist at WHOI and project its quite an exciting area. People leader. (Fortunately, it yielded what have messed around with it for Bower calls an unprecedented data awhile. And the place that could set on nutrient ows into the sea from really tackle it, and one with unlimthe Gulf of Aden.) ited solar energy, is Saudi Arabia. The rst cruise was pretty much Another type of collaboration a debacle, Bower says, after WHOIs at KAUST begins with competitive ship was blocked from working in research grants of up to $10 million Saudi coastal waters and rerouted to to scientists from around the world study brine pools in the middle of (Science, 28 March 2008, p. 1748). the sea, fed by an unknown hydroThe hope is that these scientists would thermal vent. A second cruise was Rough seas. WHOIs Amy Bower and her co-chief scientist, Yasser nd a way to involve KAUST faculty moved to the Caribbean. WHOI scien- Abualnaja of KAUST, had hoped to do more cruises aboard the Aegaeo. members and students in their work. tists also complain about being left in Ted Sargent, a professor of nanothe dark as to why certain decisions were made. The one thing Ive technology at the University of Toronto in Canada, says he has been learned is that there are always 10 more reasons than youve been told, blown away by what he has seen at KAUST since receiving one of Bower says. these global research awards in 2008. Summing up her experience, Bower says I wouldnt say it was Its been an incredible partnership because KAUST has hired a failure. But it was a big disappointment. KAUST was poised to faculty at the top of their game, Sargent says. People have chobecome a major player in oceanography; they had water access and sen KAUST over MIT [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] or lots of money. They could have done a lot for Red Sea science and Cornell, and I think its fast becoming one of the worlds top universifor research throughout the region. Instead, this [shift in priori- ties. KAUSTs microscopy facilities, which he calls outstanding, ties] makes them a limited, parochial coastal lab, of which there are have been essential for his work on quantum dots, and Sargent shares many around the world. students and postdocs with Ghassan Jabbour, who directs the Solar & Xabier Irigoien, who a year ago succeeded Luyten as director Photovoltaics Engineering Research Center at KAUST. of the Red Sea center, sees things quite differently. He says the colAnother grant recipient, computational biologist Anna Tramontano laboration was awed from the beginning because it was not a good of the Sapienza University of Rome, says her 5-year, $5 million award match with the research interests of KAUST faculty members. We has ushered in the most productive period of her career because do not consider physical oceanography to be a priority, Irigoien it has allowed her to says. We are moving toward a focus on marine biology and the pursue a broad, longunique systems on hand, here in the Red Sea. Pure basic mapping range research prois less of a priority. gram. The scientific atmosphere is very Looking for answers good there, and I think Such shifts in research focus are easier to make at a small university its going well, says KAUST now has about 120 faculty members and 700 studentsthat Tramontano, who has is still wet behind the ears. And the more collaborative the research, also helped KAUST the better: Instead of departments, faculty members are clustered in evaluate faculty memEnergy saver. KAUST has earned a three large divisions and carry out most of their research at centers bers and programs in green building designation for its that cover broad interdisciplinary topics such as desalination, catalysis, her eld. sustainable architecture. clean combustion, and solar engineering. KAUST also has no tenure At age 88, King system, instead offering faculty members 5-year contracts that can be Abdullah probably extended indenitely after annual reviews. wont be around to see whether his vision is realized. But senior Those features appealed to plant geneticist Nina Fedoroff, a KAUST administrators believe KAUST can become an example of renowned academic scientist. After completing a 3-year stint as how to create a global research university attuned to, and serving the science adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State, Fedoroff postponed needs of, the Middle East. retirement and accepted an invitation last year to create a desert Am I worried what will happen after the king dies? A big no to agriculture research center. that, Al-Nasr says. Why should we worry? Things are going well, I realized from my experiences at State that, despite all the ver- and KAUST is moving ahead as planned. JEFFREY MERVIS
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