In
advance of KAUST's scheduled opening in 2009, a diverse extramural
research strategy was envisioned as an engine to power the accelerated establishment
of KAUST, a new and ambitious university in the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia. Three start-up programs – the Global Research Partnership, the
Special Academic Partnerships, and the Academic Excellence Alliance –
were designed and implemented in 2007 to lay the foundation for the
University's launch and ramp it up as an institution with the power to
transform research in the Kingdom, the region, and the world.
Each
of these programs was initiated aggressively to accomplish specific
goals before KAUST opened, with an explicit plan to continue into the
early years of the university's operations to assure that certain core
functions, facilities, and research were deeply embedded in KAUST.
In early 2009, in anticipation of the next
phase of KAUST's development, these three programs were merged under
one management umbrella, the KAUST Office of Economic & Technology
Development. While the distinctive attributes of the start-up programs
remained, this merger created an integrated operation with a single team
of professionals under one organization - Global Collaborative Research
(GCR). The GCR team focused on institutionalizing a culture of global
collaboration, excellence in education and research, and merit-based
competitive research funding at KAUST.
In 2011, GCR
was renamed as the KAUST Office of Competitive Research Funds (OCRF)
and moved under the umbrella of the Office of the Provost, reporting to
the Vice President for Research. This realignment further demonstrated
KAUST's commitment to the development of bold and collaborative research
and deepened the relationship between the academic and research
operations of the University. In addition to the ongoing management of
the start-up GCR programs, OCRF administered internally-focused
competitive research funding programs, created to facilitate
collaborations initiated by KAUST faculty for research activities
primarily performed on the KAUST campus as well as programs to support
KAUST-hosted conferences and workshops, and the purchase of research
equipment.
In 2015, OCRF merged, but still keeping
its distinctive role, with the Office of Research Services (ORS), and
the Office of Research Evaluation under the umbrella of the newly
created Office of Sponsored Research (OSR). OSR gather all those
functions to support KAUST in its ambitious to be the major provider of
it research resources and the executor of its own research strategy.
This rare circumstances leaves OSR with unique responsibilities. This is
de facto one of the distinctive features of KAUST compared to other
universities in the world: the capacity to have virtual complete control
of its research destiny.
