On September 23rd, Saudi Aramco will proudly inaugurate the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), located around 80km north of Jeddah.

The opening ceremony will be hosted by the custodian of the two holy mosques King Abdullah ibn Abd al-Aziz and will be attended by heads of state, global business leaders and some of the world's leading academics.

KAUST has been designed to usher in a new era of technological innovation and development in the oil and gas industry and other key national sectors such as medicine, bioengineering, communications technology and clean energy.

"We have set our sights on reaching the brightest students, brimming with potential, from around the world, ready to learn from their mentors and from one another, ripe to begin making a contribution to the progress of humanity," said minister of petroleum and mineral resources Ali al-Naimi.

In a separate announcement, Saudi Aramco also confirmed that the company's EXPEC Advanced Research Center is working with KAUST to pursue long-term research and development programmes in fields such petroleum engineering, geophysics and computational modelling.

Getenergy event for GCC countries November 2009