InterPore Saudi-Arabia Meetings – InterPore Saudi-Arabia Kick-off Meeting

The InterPore Saudi Chapter kick-off meeting was held by Zoom on May 12th, 2020, Tuesday, 13:00-15:20, Saudi Time (GMT+3). More than thirty (30) founding members of the Saudi Chapter, from various government agencies, universities, and companies in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, attended this meeting. In addition, the meeting invited a number of representatives from the InterPore headquarter, including Professor Majid Hassanizadeh (InterPore Managing Director), Professor Michel Quintard (InterPore President-Elect) and Professor Moran Wang (InterPore Honors & Awards Committee and InterPore National Chapter Committee). The meeting was moderated by Professor Shuyu Sun from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the nominated President of InterPore Saudi Chapter.

Screenshot showing a partial list of the attendees at the kick-off meeting

The meeting started with a welcome speech from Professor Sun. The distinguished guests, Professor Hassanizadeh, Professor Quintard, and Professor Wang then all gave general remarks and congratulated the creation of the Saudi Chapter. Professor Quintard delivered a 25-minute talk presenting various aspects of InterPore including mission, key aims, membership benefits, InterPore conference, awards, industrial relation, general organization, and the Headquarter Committees and Officers. Professor Sun then took over and introduced the structure and goals of The Saudi National Chapter and the general operation. Then 12 nominated steering members, coming from various industrial and academic organizations in Saudi Arabia, made their self-introduction. The founding members then approved the chapter organization as well as the steering committee nomination after friendly discussions. In the meeting, Professor Majid Hassanizadeh highly appreciated the involvement of young researchers in the organization and encouraged more participation of industrial representatives. Later, Dr. Jun Li, the Saudi Chapter Event and Program Officer, introduced the plan on the 1^st InterPore Saudi Chapter Annual Meeting (2021), and the attendees discussed the venue and agenda of this meeting. Professor Hassanizadeh suggested that this annual meeting could be a Middle-East regional meeting with more involvement of researchers with various directions in porous media (hydrology, biology, etc…), while Professor Quintard suggested that the scheduling of the chapter annual meeting should not conflict with InterPore annual meeting in time, and he also suggested that January might be a suitable time to hold the meeting. Representatives from government agencies and companies, Dr. Ahmad Kadoura (Dow Chemical), Dr. Ahmed Zawawi (Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources), Dr. Tameem Almani (Saudi Aramco), and Dr. Abdulrahman Almana (Saudi Aramco) introduced the researches on porous media outside universities in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Arun Narayanan Nair, the Saudi Chapter Honors, and Awards Officer introduced the plan on bi-annual honors and awards for student leaders and distinguished researches. Dr. Tameem Almani, Saudi Chapter Vice President, introduced the possibility of requesting sponsorship of the chapter activities from Saudi Aramco (this is yet to be discussed with Saudi Aramco management, and is subject to their approval). Professor Furati from KFUPM had quick comments on welcoming the Saudi Chapter members and their role in satisfying the Chapter’s goals, and he expressed his proudness of having all those young researchers in KSA working on the field of Porous Media research.

Screenshot showing active discussion during the kick-off meeting

Dr. Ahmed AlZawawi (Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources) gave an invited presentation on “Collaborative Research among Academic and Industrial Researchers in Saudi Arabia” and Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Manea (Saudi Aramco) delivered an invited presentation on “Large-scale High-Performance Scientific Computing”, and highlighted the role of exascale and GPU computing in advancing porous media research at different scales. Finally, Professor Sun concluded the meeting and Professor Quintard congratulated again on the successful meeting and establishment of InterPore Saudi Chapter.

After the kickoff meeting, the InterPore President Professor Laura J. Pyrak-Nolte sent a congratulation email to the Saudi Chapter and conveyed that “the Executive Committee of InterPore gave unanimous approval for the Saudi Chapter because of the strong support from the founding committee, and the many academic and industrial partners.”