About BESE
At BESE, we are driven by KAUST’s mission to be a global leader in knowledge and innovation. Our focus is on advancing scientific excellence and tackling the pressing challenges that face our planet. We believe in research that not only deepens our understanding but also leads to practical solutions with real-world impact.
Our dynamic environment at KAUST keeps us at the cutting edge of science. We nurture top talent and produce pioneering research, building strong collaborations both within KAUST and with partners around the world. I invite you to join us in using science and engineering to drive positive change.
Darwin Lab
These ideas lay the ground for the current project to investigate the huge microbial world on our planet
In honor to Charles Darwin and his discoveries made on the voyage of the HMS Beagle, the project was named DARWIN21 for revisiting the planet in the 21st century. The overall aim of the project is to establish a global knowledge base of desert rhizosphere microbes and their use in re-establishing sustainable agricultural systems in arid lands. The identification of the rhizosphere microbes that are associated with pioneer plants that live under extreme heat, drought and/or salt conditions could lead to new metabolic pathways and compounds with applications in medicine, chemical engineering and synthetic biology and could result in new strategies to replant desert areas to transform them into sustainable agricultural systems.