ITS INFRASTRUCTURE: The 36 sq km Kaust campus with state-of-the-art facilities is located along the shores of the Red Sea, 80km from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's second-largest city. The multi-billion dollar campus includes a marina for boats and villa apartments for faculty.

Its facilities include a nanofabrication laboratory with a level 100 clean room (no more than 100 particles per square foot) - used for materials research and development - and Shaheen, the world's 14th largest supercomputer.

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It also boasts a fully immersive, six-sided virtual reality facility called Cornea. Officials say Cornea, for example, can allow researchers to visualise earthquakes on a planetary scale.

ITS PEOPLE: It has attracted top researchers and students. Currently, it employs 71 professors, with several originating from the United States, Germany, Canada and China. At maturity, the faculty is expected to number approximately 225. Currently there are only four female professors.

Kaust received more than 7,187 applications and to date has accepted 800 students from 61 countries. Some 374 students began classes in September.

Former president of the National University of Singapore Shih Choon Fong heads the university, which is governed by a board of trustees headed by Saudi Arabia's Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi. Dr Tony Tan, chairman of the National Research Foundation in Singapore, sits on the board.

ITS OFFERINGS: Kaust is a postgraduate institution offering degrees in nine fields of study, including bioscience, earth science, and environmental science and engineering.

The master of science degree will take students 18 months to complete. Doctoral students, meanwhile, are expected to conduct original research over three to four years.

It has also opened a number of strategic research centres and launched projects in areas such as water desalination and re-use, and plant stress genomics, with researchers studying the molecular mechanisms underlying plant tolerance to drought and salt stress conditions. They will also develop technologies to improve the drought and salt tolerance of crop plants.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.