Without a decent forecast, extremes of weather can be disastrous. Heavy rains can lead to flash floods; droughts can lead to famine. If we know such events are coming, we can prepare, and mitigate the damage.

In the water-scarce UAE, it is particularly important to be able to estimate the amount of water that is needed for irrigation and the amount that is readily available through ground water (which is recharged by rainfall).

The UAE has over 100 dams that store water for irrigation. In order for them to be most effective, it is helpful to know how much rainwater they will be able to capture and provide for agricultural use.

Flash floods, like the one in Fujairah in October 2011 that claimed the life of a young man, are another threat. After sudden heavy rainfall, dry wadi riverbeds can fill up, and pose serious risk of drowning to anyone caught in the resulting currents. Knowing such flash flood are coming can improve disaster management and prevent loss of life.

The temperature also has a huge impact on the health and economy of the region. Severe heat waves can be dangerous to health, resulting in dehydration, heart attack, stroke and respiratory disease.

And a long hot spell can dry out the soil, making it harder for desert plants and shrubs – our front line of defence against desertification – to survive.

It’s easy to see, then, why an weather forecast is valuable. If only it were that easy.

For that reason the Masdar Institute has embarked on the first advanced statistical study of the “teleconnections” that influence the UAE’s weather and climate.

“Teleconnection” is defined as “the link between fluctuations in climate variables in one region to circulation changes in another location”. It includes the influence of dynamical circulation changes at one location on the climate in other remote areas. In general, teleconnections can be used for seasonal forecasts.

We examined various oceanic circulation patterns and their link to the variability in rainfall, temperature and soil moisture over the UAE.

And we found that two major oceanic circulations, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), have a strong influence on the climate of the region.

The phases of these oscillations can be used as predictors of these three important climate variables.

This means that depending on the phase of the oscillation in the previous year, predictions on the increase or decrease of the climate variables for the following year can be made.

We also looked as the relationship between rainfall and soil moisture, and temperature and soil moisture.

Rainfall obviously influences the moisture of an area’s soil. What is not obvious is the effect of soil moisture on temperature.

We found that the ENSO can be used to establish the relationship between soil moisture and rainfall, while the NAO can be used for the same in the case of temperature and soil moisture.

This research provides a foundation for further studies of the UAE and wider region’s climate. Through such research efforts, we are contributing to the greater understanding and long-term climate forecasting for the region that encompasses the UAE.

By being able to better predict the UAE’s climate, the country can more effectively and efficiently manage its water resources, agricultural sector, infrastructure planning, and climate policy and provide advanced warning ahead of extreme climate events to reduce risk to human life.

Alisha Chandran is a water and environmental engineering graduate of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, working with post-doctoral researcher Ghouse Basha and Dr Taha Ouarda, head of the Institute Centre for Water and Environment.

In 2010, global power consumption from all energy sources amounted to 17 terawatts. Amazingly, this is less than 0.02% of the power available from the sun.

Despite the sheer magnitude of energy presented, solar energy reaching the earth’s surface is typically considered ‘low grade’.

Fortunately, a number of solar concentrating devices are available to help convert solar energy into a more potent form. But once that energy is concentrated, we need to be able to capture and store it.

Current methods of capturing solar energy typically use flow receivers. The concentrated solar energy falls on a tube through which a fluid is flowing. It heats the fluid, which can then pass that heat on elsewhere, and eventually be used to generate electricity.

A more promising capture method for concentrated solar power plants, called volumetric absorption, uses the material both to capture and transport concentrated solar energy.

Because of this dual function, volumetric absorption presents an opportunity to reduce the energy losses and improve energy efficiency above that of current flow receiver methods.

The challenge is how to get the volumetric absorption material to absorb as much energy as possible, without impinging on its other necessary functions.

Nanoscience offers some enticing possibilities. Nanofluids – suspensions of nanoparticles in fluids – have great potential as volumetric solar absorbers.

The nanoparticles, if selected correctly, can convert light energy from the sun to thermal energy within the fluid that contains them. Even very small quantities of nanoparticles are able to absorb nearly all of the incident solar radiation.

Employing nanofluids in volumetric receivers would provide flexibility in that the optical properties can be tuned to ensure optimum absorption of light energy.

As part of my thesis research at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, I am exploring ways to optimize nanofluid-based volumetric solar receivers.

Volumetric receivers can be separated into two broad components: the absorbing medium, and the housing that contains it.

We are looking to improve energy efficiency in both by assessing the impact of various alterations.

In the housing component, we are looking at how changing the shape and changing the materials affects the overall performance.

We also have found improvements when we tune the optical properties by adjusting the fraction of nanoparticles within the absorption material.

It is our hope that this research will contribute to enhancing humankind’s ability to capitalize on the ready supply of solar energy our planet receives.

We are continuing our research in this regard with experimental characterization to find the best nanofluid for solar absorption with the goal of providing insight into properties that current theories can’t predict.

We are also looking at developing nanofluids that can efficiently absorb solar energy, as well storing the resulting thermal energy.

Our vision is to use nanofluids to harness and store the immense energy presented by the sun, thereby contributing to Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy goals, and the clean energy needs of the world at large.

Luqmaan Habib is a master’s student of mechanical engineering at the Masdar Institute. Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim Hassan Ali is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. Dr. Youssef Shatilla is professor of mechanical engineering and dean of academic programs at the Masdar Institute.

In the not so distant future, renewable energy will be integrated in our power grids. But for it to provide the benefit we greatly need, we’ll need new smart grid infrastructures and systems.

The smart grid of the future is expected to be far more complex than our current power grids.

This presents a number of security and infrastructure challenges. To overcome them, the current power grid needs to be transformed into an easily reconfigurable and resilient Internet-like smart grid.

It will need a different kind of financial infrastructure, too – one that is decentralised, with interoperability between entities that support electricity and emissions trading at the optimal price, while being both private and secure.

That in turn will require smart meters that can negotiate prices and trade in a decentralised environment, common electricity and emissions trading exchanges, and trading currencies offer solutions.

From simple to more complex transactions, advanced smart meters should be able to trade without reliance on a centrally determined price, hardwiring to a particular smart grid or disclosure of trading history and pricing.

On that basis, both the smart grid and the carbon emissions marketplace, which is being developed to reduce the carbon emission impact on global climate change, can evolve in tandem.

The Strategic Requirements and Systems Security Group at the Masdar Institute, to which I belong, is currently working on creating the decentralised service-oriented architecture needed for the smart grid financial infrastructure with high privacy and security built in at the architectural level.

The project includes a number of major elements, including: a new currency design based on Bitcoin; enabling smart meters to perform necessary price discovery without reliance on a central price signal; bidding and trading; and specification of other entities like smart grid currency exchanges and banks, which will be necessary for the overall smart grid financial infrastructure to function.

We plan to link the new currency to carbon emissions trading as an incentive to its adoption.

There are two main challenges facing our research. The first is to design a proper carbon emissions credit generation protocol, or ideally, multiple protocols that might lead to multiple competing carbon emission trading currencies.

The second is designing smart meters with enough computation power and trading intelligence to allow for automated bidding, buying and selling in a decentralised infrastructure.

They will need to obtain or calculate appropriate carbon emission trading prices without relying on a centralised price signal, which might be achieved through carbon emission credit exchanges.

Once specified, the carbon emissions trading infrastructure and smart grid financial infrastructure can be integrated. Energy and services trading will be tightly coupled with the carbon emissions trading, thus achieving seamless integration, transparency, privacy and security.

We are working to overcome these challenges so that the smart grid currency and financial infrastructure has no central point of trust/failure, to make it easier for so as to facilitate easier for the various components of the financial infrastructure to integrate and operate with each other.

For example, a future smart car from the UAE should be able to consume and supply power to a microgrid in Oman, without a need for currency exchange, centralised pricing and so on.

It must also have proper incentives and an economic system, to motivate users to take part. For example, if currency unit generation is linked to renewable power generation, it could help lead to more power production from renewable sources.

The system must also ensure predictable money supply, divisibility and fungibility, versatility, openness, and vibrancy, so as to allow for wider currency acceptance and more complex smart grid financial transactions and services development. Fulfilling these goals will also ensure easier smart grid expandability and interoperability with other systems such as web services.

It is our hope that this research project and others can help ensure the privacy and security necessary for the future smart grid financial system’s resilience and reliability, and the smart grid itself.

Security, privacy and functionality are critical to the success of renewable energy integration in a meaningful way and can help Abu Dhabi meet its renewable energy goals.
 
Dr. Davor Svetinovic is an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. His full article on the topic can be found at: http://smartgrid.ieee.org/february-2013/795-incorporating-a-secure-decentralized-financial-infrastructure-into-the-smart-grid

 

There are altogether too many problems in the world. They range from “wicked” problems of immense size and complexity, such as global warming, to everyday problems such as where to park the car.

Sometimes, though, two problems can be matched in a way that solves both. In the same way that combining complementary angles makes a right angle of 90°, combining complementary problems can make things “right”.

An interesting example was described at a conference at Aalto University in Helsinki last month by Dr. Mikko Kosonen, president of the Finnish Innovation Fund (Sitra).
Finnish schools were discarding the equivalent of three million meals a year, incurring disposal costs and unnecessary purchasing expense, not to mention the waste of food in a hungry world.

The Finns were able to match this problem to the expensive problem of feeding the poor by channeling excess school meals to the homeless, creating a single solution for two independent problems.

Another example in the field of technology innovation is provided by a new partnership between Masdar Institute and WMS Metal Industries in Dubai.

The gradual withdrawal of corporations from early stage technology research, and the related scarcity of venture capital funding in many industries, makes it increasingly difficult to commercialize promising new technologies.

A seemingly unrelated problem is that universities are increasingly challenged to connect their students to potential jobs and to problems relevant to the society in which they live.

Masdar Institute integrated an innovative idea from WMS for an interactive recycling bin into the Institute’s graduate engineering and technology management courses, providing students with an opportunity to develop business planning and prototyping ideas that WMS is now carrying forward into a commercial product. Each partner bears its own costs.

A single project provides both outsourced R&D and action learning. Here, too, complementary problems combine to form a solution.

Not all problems may have a complement, but many do. So how do we identify the problems that could complement each other?

First, we need to be open about them, which can in itself be difficult. Often it’s embarrassing, even career-threatening, to reveal problems.

So we must try to be nonjudgmental, focusing on solutions rather than on blame. We should recognize that if we don’t know about problems, we can’t find solutions.

Good communication is vital. Complementary problems may exist in different departments, corporations, and other stakeholders in the society.

They may even involve stakeholders in other countries. The owners of these potentially valuable problems must think creatively about who might hold a complementary key to a solution.

Trust and goodwill are important. Many solutions will involve new institutional relationships. With trust comes the ability to defer many issues and allow experimentation with a solution to proceed.

WMS and Masdar Institute agreed on broad principles with many details to be worked out later. The trust and goodwill implicit in this arrangement has provided speed and low cost.

Many solutions require policy innovation and a social willingness to change. The UAE has both of these assets.

Stakeholders must also allocate the benefits of solutions and the costs of implementing them.

This requires negotiating ability as well as the ability to cooperate. The UAE’s heritage is rich in both of these skills.

The UAE has built new cities, and indeed a new country, by integrating the talent of its citizens with talent imported from around the world.

This is a single solution to the problem of how to invest enormous wealth, which is faced by very few countries, combined with the problem that all countries face of creating good jobs.

In theory there is no limit to the power of complementary problems. The UAE could scale up the talents it has developed. For example, it might help create global consortia to address universal problems of underemployment and economic development, building new cities around the world under innovative investment and political structures.

The UAE has developed skill in solving complementary problems at the national level, a new and unusual skill that may be important to economic success and sustainability in the 21st century. Let’s think creatively about how to apply it.

Dr. Bruce Walker Ferguson is professor of practice in engineering systems and management and head of the Institute Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Masdar Institute

Turn your smartphone around in your hand. The display will change accordingly from landscape mode to portrait mode or vice versa, thanks to sensors that detect its motion and adapt to its new position, trajectory, or context.

Such sensors are everywhere – in phones, cars, wearable medical instruments, and very soon watches, clothing and shoes. And that’s just the start. In the future, we could expect to see them in skateboards, tennis rackets, baseball bats and soccer balls.

These tiny devices, also known as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are made in the very same semiconductor wafers that are used for our electronic chips.

The “system” in their name is especially appropriate because although their dimensions are in microns, each such device is in fact a system of its own, with mechanical and electrical components co-existing in the most intimate combination to execute a well-defined operation, be it of detection, measurement or actuation.

For instance, mechanical motions within MEMS accelerometers do not exceed a few nanometers in range, yet their properties and the sensitivity of their circuits make each MEMS device an engineering marvel that is orders of magnitude smaller than the beautiful precision mechanisms crafted by master European watchmakers.

But unlike handmade wristwatches – and very much like our electronic microchips – MEMS are mass-produced using fully automated fabrication methods that pattern the bulk and the surface of the silicon wafer to produce the static and moving components of the device.

Those fabrication methods also provide the contacts that enable these components to interface with the integrated circuits built off the same silicon wafer.

Such tight integration between the mechanical and electrical means that they are cheap to make, a key reason for the recent explosive growth of MEMS sensors in smartphones and tablets, from a US$600 million (Dh2.2 billion) market in 2009 to US$2.57bn last year and a projected $6.4bn in 2019.

With that in mind, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology has embarked on a research program that aims to address some of the major integration challenges that the MEMS industry faces.

The MEMS activities at the Institute Centre for Microsystems Research are being conducted under the framework of a TwinLab with Singapore’s internationally renowned A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics.

They are being guided by GlobalFoundries Singapore with the support of Mubadala’s technology and industry unit, and the MEMS activities involve motion sensing, energy harvesting, ultrasound sensing, optical sensing and computer-aided design for MEMS devices.

This research focus is expected to help produce better MEMS devices across a spectrum of technologies including smart gadgets, healthcare and telecommunications.

In the area of digital cameras, the quality of the devices might improve significantly by including features such as MEMS-based zooming, autofocusing and thermal imaging.

Optical MEMS technologies might be integrated into smartphones to turn them into projectors, allowing us to display our slides or digital photos on walls, notepads, or airplane food trays.

MEMS are also expected to revolutionize the touchscreen of our smartphones by making them touchless!

Piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transduction, a new low-power MEMS technology that Masdar Institute is researching, would enable human-machine interfaces that could recognize hand gestures, identify fingerprints, and respond to three-dimensional spatial information.

Such technology could deliver medical-quality, ultrasound imaging into our smartphones and consequently help lower healthcare costs.

We expect that the successful execution of these research tracks through the bilateral Twinlab projects would not only position Masdar Institute’s students at the forefront of MEMS technological advances worldwide but also contribute to Abu Dhabi’s goals of building up the highly-skilled human capital to diversify the UAE’s economy.

Dr. Ibrahim Elfadel is professor of electrical engineering and computer science and head of the Institute Center for Microsystems (iMicro) at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology

The 19th-century builders of bridges, skyscrapers, metropolitan railroad stations, and deep-water harbors had no supercomputers, desktops, laptops, or tablets.

Instead, they had armies of draftsmen whose sole function was to produce the blueprints, layouts and elevations that field engineers and construction workers would later transform into a bridge, a tower, or a dam.

 

The advent of the computer has changed all this. It has become the drawing board, and the designers – be they architects, engineers, or inventors – have acquired new skills and become their own draftsmen.

 

This transformation has resulted in a new field of engineering called Computer-Aided Design (CAD), turning the computer into a virtual machine shop or workbench where the engineer can iterate between concept and construction until all design specifications are satisfied.

 

More important than aiding design, CAD facilitates re-design and therefore opens up the creative field and presents engineers with possibilities that were never before possible.

 

CAD is not just about large-scale structures. It is also about our micro-scale designs, our micro-electronic chips, micro-sensors, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). With CAD, we can use computers to design better computers and microchips to design more complex, faster microchips. CAD doesn’t just help us design structures, it allows us to analyze how they will behave.

 

While the drafting table and its blueprints are spatial constructs, the computer and its graphics interface are both spatial and temporal. Objects can be visualized in space, and their behavior over time examined. This latter aspect is what engineers call simulation, and it is crucial in gaining a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the design in responding to external forces or internal changes. This aspect is particularly important in the simulation of MEMS, which often encompass more than one physical domain, thus making the analysis and verification of their behavior quite challenging.

 

While CAD for electronics has just to deal with flows of electrons through electrical components and electronic devices, CAD for MEMS has to also deal with masses, velocities, and accelerations. It has to deal with both the mechanical domain and the electronic domain. With some of the more complex MEMS sensors, it has also to deal with the fluidic, thermal, and optical domains.

 

MEMS CAD has to run complex three-dimensional computer simulations, not unlike the simulations that civil engineers conduct for bridges and high-rise buildings or the simulations that aerospace engineers run for aircraft fuselage, wings, and engines.

 

To help advance MEMS CAD so that it is able to continue to serve as an enabling tool for innovation in engineering and design, the Masdar Institute is focusing the attention of its Institute Centre for Microsystems (iMicro) addressing some of the most important challenges in MEMS design and simulation and on developing student skills and mastery of cutting-edge MEMS CAD tools. The research and training at Masdar Institute are being conducted under its TwinLab framework with Singapore’s A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics. The strength of Masdar Institute’s CAD research is that it closely parallels the MEMS devices currently under design within TwinLab, including MEMS for motion sensing, energy harvesting, ultrasound sensing, optical sensing and computer-aided design for MEMS devices.

 

Through this partnership funded by Mubadala Technology, GlobalFoundries and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), Masdar Institute is both acquiring and contributing to the technical expertise required to develop the advanced MEMS CAD tools of tomorrow.

 

Dr. Ibrahim (Abe) Elfadel

High-speed information to run your factory, produce energy efficiently, maintain safe infrastructure and monitor your vital health signs are just a few examples of how sensors can be used in industries such as biomedicine, manufacturing, renewable energy and aerospace.

The smaller and cheaper these devices can be made, the easier it is to incorporate sensors throughout the structure of your building (or factory), distribution network, environmental resources and phone.

We are part of a team of Masdar Institute researchers looking to achieve that in an affordable and flexible manner by advancing sensors based on optical microelectromechanical systems, commonly known as optical MEMS.

MEMS are high-speed, low-powered, sand-sized machines. They can be found in your pocket (motion sensors in your smartphone), in your car (to trigger airbags), and in your inkjet printers (microfluidic ink valve).

Some of them – optical MEMS – react to light, with uses such as the mini projector common in most cinemas today. In addition to display technology, optical MEMS could be used for high-speed, high-resolution sensing, since slight changes in the properties of light can be correlated with subtle changes in material strain, temperature, and gas composition.

How do you decrease the cost and size while increasing the capability of optical MEMS sensors? The answer is to integrate on the same chip with photonic circuits.

Photonic circuits are a collection of microscale devices that detect, interact with and manipulate light. We are exploring a promising new platform for building and standardizing these sensors called the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform.

Several of our students at the Nano-Optics and Optoelectronics Research (Noor) Laboratory at Masdar Institute have already designed a few photonic circuits using such a material platform.

The appeal behind using SOI technology is that it is well suited and thus used by industry for all three types of microsystems: photonic, MEMS and electronic circuits.

Therefore you can potentially build all three types of devices on the same physical layer, opening the possibility for a whole new level of sensor functionalities and performances.

However, most foundry processes are optimized solely for a single type of microsystem.

The Noor team is working with two research entities in Singapore – GlobalFoundries Singapore and the Institute of Microelectronics (IME) – to develop a set of new sensors using the IME SOI opto-mechanical foundry platform, integrating MEMS and photonic devices.

Our team is mainly working on the photonics design, modelling and optical validation.

This collaborative research leverages complementary know-how from Masdar Institute and IME, with overall guidance from GlobalFoundries, to push the cutting-edge development of MEMS and enhance Abu Dhabi’s leadership in this burgeoning industry, which is expected to play a significant role in the UAE’s knowledge economy in the future.

Dr. Marcus Dahlem, Dr. Anatol Khilo and Dr. Clara Dimas are assistant professors of microsystems engineering at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and are members of the Nano-Optics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratory. This op-ed is the third in a series covering the research work under way at the Masdar Institute in the area of micro-electromechanical systems.

Computers and smart devices are quick, but sometimes dumb.

They can process calculations far faster than the human mind, and complete functions that we can only dream of. But they have struggled in some areas to mimic and supersede the range and complexity of human ability – particularly when it comes to responding to the world around us.

The human mind is adaptable, responsive and intelligent. Our gadgets, not so much.

That presents an opportunity for innovation. The more capable and autonomous we make our technologies, the more they can do for mankind, freeing us up to do other important things.

But that sort of independent function will require better enabling technologies, particularly in the area of navigation, orientation, and tracking by using information from various types of sensors.

In response to this need, Masdar Institute is working with Singapore’s Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR) and the international semiconductor giant GlobalFoundries to use microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to develop an advanced inertial measurement unit (IMU), which combines multiple types of sensors in a single platform.

An IMU is an electronic device that integrates accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers to report how fast it’s going, how much gravity is acting on it, and which way it’s pointing.

The accelerometer detects the rate of acceleration, the gyroscope detects changes in the device’s rotational orientation and the magnetometer detects three-dimensional orientation and calibrate against orientation drift.

These mini-devices come together in a single unit to facilitate self-navigating, self-focusing, self-tracking and self-piloting in a number of applications.

Uses so far include the Segway personal transportation system, spaceship navigation and motion capture technology.

Existing IMUs are relatively costly and somewhat limited. Even the best of them has limited bandwidth, sensitivity, signal-to-noise ratio, packaging, etc.

Product designers are crying out for better, smaller, cheaper IMUs that would let them make smaller, cheaper and – crucially – smarter devices.

We are working to leverage Abu Dhabi’s growing MEMS expertise to develop IMUs that are cheaper to produce and able to be integrated into far more types of technologies and industries, like sports, gaming, personal electronics and more. In particular, we are looking to leverage our optomechanical MEMS expertise to build more dynamic IMUs.

Optomechanics involve the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with mechanical systems via radiation pressure. Converting a mechanical signal into and optical one provides a robust platform against electromagnetic interference, while giving a usefully wide dynamic range, and low signal distortion.

These IMUs can transform mechanical motion of an inertial mass into an electric signal.  

Optomechanically-integrated MEMS-based IMUs perform very well at low frequencies, and are usually capped in a special gas environment to make them sensitive, stable, shock-resistant, and good at carrying a signal without too much ‘noise’.

Additionally, MEMS-based gyroscopes are small, not too power-hungry, and relatively cheap to make.

All this isn’t without challenges, though. MEMS-based gyroscopes don’t perform as well as others. We are using our diverse areas of expertise – including cutting edge microsystems, optomechanics and materials science – to address that problem and others to develop a small, accurate, low-power gyroscope.

We are confident that our work towards an IMU-based on micro/opto/nanotechnology will enable a number of power, size and resolution applications for IMU that the current cutting edge cannot meet, providing Abu Dhabi with the intellectual property and expertise for a growing and high value industry.

According to IndustryARC, the market for IMUs is expected to grow from US$2.2 billion in 2013 to US$3.2 billion by 2018. This MEMS-related research will help Abu Dhabi develop its microsystems expertise necessary for its knowledge-economy transformation, and help it become a leader in technological innovation.

Dr. Daniel Choi is an associate professor and head of the department of mechanical and materials engineering at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology; Dr. Irfan Saadat is professor and Dr. Mahmoud Rasras is associate professor of microsystems engineering. This piece is the fourth in a series covering MEMS research at the Masdar Institute.

 

Collaborations between private, public and academic organisations bolster the development of technology-based innovations. They are the foundation of the knowledge economy. That is why the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology is involved in cross-sector collaborations, the most notable of which is with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As the Masdar Institute’s core academic partner, MIT has established robust research activity, including nine active flagship research projects. These projects bring together faculty teams from both institutes to address key strategic research areas. The intention is to build critical mass and have a sizeable research impact, which would help to establish the UAE as a leader in research, while developing capacity and expertise.

These projects have generated knowledge and innovations with wide-ranging applications in renewable energy, water, health and technology. All of these are priority sectors targeted by the UAE National Innovation Strategy. Launched in October, the National Innovation Strategy is an ambitious initiative that seeks to stimulate innovation across seven priority sectors in order to achieve UAE Vision 2021, and aims to make the UAE the most innovative nation in the world by 2021.

A few notable technology-based innovations produced by the flagship research projects include the development of high-efficiency multiple-junction solar cells, combined solar power and thermal energy storage, efficient water purification membrane technology and a detailed model of climate variability in the UAE. The Masdar Institute team was led by Dr Hassan Arafat, associate professor of water and environmental engineering. It managed to design, and develop membranes for water treatment with better permeability and excellent mechanical strength. It used novel fabrication methods, which can be scaled up to cover large areas.

Another project investigated ways to increase the efficiency of solar cells and produced results that may ultimately have a positive impact on the UAE’s solar power industry.

The project aims to produce solar photovoltaic technology that can capture different portions of the solar spectrum and achieve efficiency as high as 50 per cent.

Led at Masdar Institute by Dr Ammar Nayfeh, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, the team recorded results that suggest that efficient solar cells can be developed with the potential to greatly affect the solar industry if produced on a larger scale.

Organised at Masdar Institute by Dr Taha Ouarda, professor of water and environmental engineering and head of the Institute Centre for Water and Environment, a team also developed a hydro-climate model that is the first of its kind in the UAE. It models the inter-annual variability – or variability from one year to the next – of hydro-climate variables, including precipitation, temperature, soil moisture and solar Irradiation.  

This information can be used in many different fields, including agriculture, water management and health. Climate variability impacts not only the UAE’s precious water resources, but also human health and agricultural production.

All nine projects established over the past two and a half years are currently active, but the above mentioned projects conclude this year. While these projects have produced knowledge and innovations of significant value to the UAE, more research is required in these fields. Therefore, new projects will be developed from the excellent results obtained so far.  

The progress of the active projects will be presented at the forthcoming Masdar Institute and MIT Collaborative Research Conference, which is taking place at a time when research and innovation are at the top of the UAE’s agenda.

In many ways, the flagship projects serve as a springboard for new ones that build on the results obtained and ensure that the efforts invested have maximum near and long-term benefits. We believe that our projects are generating knowledge and technology in the key sectors targeted by the National Innovation Strategy.

Thus, we look forward to continuing such collaborations with MIT as well as other local and international partners.

Dr Steve Griffiths is executive director of the Office of Institute Initiatives at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology

Dr Youssef Shatilla is Dean of Academic Programmes at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology

First PhD graduate Faisal Al MarzooqThe UAE will achieve a significant milestone in its year of innovation with the graduation of its first doctorate of advanced and sustainable technology. The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology Class of 2015 will include the university’s first PhD graduate – who is an Emirati – an achievement of particular value given the impact of doctorate holders on advanced knowledge economies.

Graduate education is known to play a significant role in prosperous economies.

Data from the British National Institute of Economic and Social Research credited graduate skill accumulation with 20 per cent GDP growth in the UK from 1982 to 2005. Educated workers enhance productivity. The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said that PhD holders are one of the “key actors behind the creation of economic growth”.

The term of study for a PhD graduate is typically from three to five years. By the end of a student’s studies, he or she will have evolved into an expert in a particular field. During their studies, the PhD students will have pushed the boundaries of science through their deep investigations, gained valuable research expertise, acquired advanced communication skills and created valuable networks across industry and academia through their collaborative engagements.

Their many years of advanced research may result in valuable intellectual property, which, with support from the technology transfer office, can be leveraged commercially. The finished product is a capable individual who possesses the understanding, abilities and awareness needed to produce valuable societal contributions – either as professors, industry experts or entrepreneurs. Masdar Institute developed its unique Interdisciplinary Doctoral Degree Programme (IDDP) in recognition value of PhD graduates, to provide the greatest impact on the UAE’s knowledge economy.

Instead of developing rigid doctorate programmes that could quickly grow outdated, Masdar Institute created the IDDP to allow PhD students to develop a customised degree programmes. The resulting degree programme draws on all of the various technical disciplines that are required to achieve true knowledge and innovation. Additionally, IDDP students benefit from Masdar Institute’s relationship with one world’s leading science and engineering universities – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An MIT faculty member is one of at least three research supervisory committee members for each Masdar Institute doctoral student, providing valuable guidance and mentorship.

The student who will become our first PhD graduate encapsulates all the best qualities and ideals of Masdar Institute’s IDDP. Faisal Al Marzooqi is an ambitious young Emirati who intends to use his doctorate to help his country reach the next level of its prosperity.

An Imperial College of London Master’s degree holder, Mr Al Marzooqi was previously a member of Masdar Institute’s Young Future Energy Leaders programme and is currently a member of the UAE Government Leaders Programme.During his studies at Masdar Institute, Mr Al Marzooqi worked with a team of professors from the microsystems, mechanical and water and environmental engineering programmes at Masdar Institute and MIT. His dissertation combined water desalination research and advancements in nanotechnology to produce a device that can desalinate water in a sustainable, energy efficient way.

He expects the device can be commercialised, and a patent application has been submitted for it.Following his graduation, Mr Al Marzooqi is eager to answer the call of the UAE leadership to build an innovation ecosystem. He intends to contribute to that by helping to bridge the gap between research institutions and those who require their innovative solutions – namely government and industry.

With Mr Al Marzooqi and other passionate and highly-trained Masdar Institute doctorate holders set to enter the UAE workforce, the country is one step closer to achieving its innovation goals. We are all very excited to see what they will help the UAE achieve.

Dr Youssef Shatilla is Dean of Academic Programmes at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology