Overview

Technology Leaders Program aims to address the gap in national human resources on the level of technical leaders by training and qualifying a generation of leaders and decision makers in the vital technical fields in the Kingdom. KACST promotes research partnerships with international leading research and industrial institutions and universities, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and Boeing Company through the Technology Leaders Program Initiative, which is part of the National Transformation Program 2020. KACST has established 14 centers, distributed throughout the world, in collaboration with big research institutions and universities in the field of scientific and applied research. These centers work on research in the strategic areas that are important for the development and prosperity of the national economy. The program is offering training and research opportunities, in order to introduce students and Saudi Scholars to research and scientific exploration, and help them acquire the needed practical experience. The program is offering a set of specialized training programs to gain research skills in specified fields, concerning the Kingdom’s strategic techniques, including scholars training program, the advanced training program and the students training initiative. Over 80 of our researchers of both genders, enrolled in the program, were accepted to complete their master’s and Ph.D. studies in a prestigious university such as Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT), University of Oxford, and University of Bordeaux and others. In addition, two of our centers co-directors are Nobel Prize winners: (1) Professor James Fraser Stoddart, the co-director of the Joint Center of Excellence in Integrated Nanosystems at KACST and Northwestern University, has won, with two other scientists, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2016, for their research in design fabrication of micro machines, and (2) Professor Shuji Nakamura, the co-director of the Joint Center of Excellence in Solid State Lighting, has won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014.

Mission

To provide a world-class venue for conducting research in different strategic areas and technologies while enabling the Saudi researchers to become more technologically competitive as well as being a primary source for innovation and IP generation in the Kingdom, thus catalyzing start-ups and the commercialization of technologies.

Vision

Creating world-class research centers which encourage and promote research into a wide range of technologies that will contribute to steering the Kingdom's economy towards a knowledge-based economy.