The new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) , a science and technology university near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia will open next year, and will house one of the world's largest supercomputers.

The campus will allow male and female students to attend classes there, which is highly unusual in Saudi Arabia, where female students are strictly segregated from classrooms in other parts of the country.  The new university is a part of King Abdullah’s attempt to open up learning to all students and to provide a center for research in biosciences and bioengineering, material sciences and engineering, applied mathematics and computational sciences.

The supercomputer is known as Shaheen, named after the peregrine falcon.  It reaches speeds of up to 340 kilometers per hours and is expected to reach 222 teraflops, which would make it the sixth most powerful computer worldwide. Shaheen is planned to create simulations of the Red Sea and to model three-dimensional oil fields. Shaheen will be used by KAUST and other university partners, including Stanford University, Cornell University, the University of Oxford, and Texas A & M University.

"The supercomputer is the cornerstone of this knowledge-based economy that we are seeking," according to Majid Al-Ghaslan, who is in charge of the acquisition, design and development of Shaheen. "KAUST is a remarkable addition to the world's resources in high-end computing," according to David Keyes, Chair of the Mathematical and Computer Sciences and Engineering Division, at Columbia University.  Keyes is relocating to KAUST from Columbia University.

KAUST has received a $10 billion endowment from King Abdullah, no small change for an educational institution, and will have huge, nearly unlimited resources for research work. Even though Saudi Arabia has enormous financial resources, its existing schools and universities are carefully governed by religious restrictions and many subjects are off limits for study, particularly to female students.