Healthy soils are teeming with life, including bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microbes, collectively known as the soil microbiome. Now, global research suggests that when this biodiversity is reduced, soil-dwelling human pathogens may be more likely to gain a foothold. As climate change makes many regions warmer and wetter, those risks are likely to grow, particularly in intensively managed agricultural landscapes. This insight comes from a comprehensive global assessment of soil-dwelling pathogens that provides important information to help guide pathogen surveillance, risk prediction and land management strategies aimed at reducing disease outbreaks.

KAUST’s Fernando Maestre was part of the study, led by the University of Western Australia, which analyzed 1,602 soil samples from 59 countries. The team identified 80 bacterial taxa classified as potential soil-inhabiting human pathogens^[1]. Among these, 25 taxa were identified as dominant because they were widespread, present in at least 80 percent of samples, and highly abundant within the pathogen community.

Using the data, the team produced global maps of how the bacteria are currently distributed and how they are likely to be distributed under predicted climate change scenarios.

Soil biodiversity and global warming

The broad trends are concerning. The results showed a positive correlation between temperature and relative abundance of dominant human pathogens, indicating a possible increase of these soil-dwelling bacteria under global warming scenarios. Pathogens were found to be more common in wet ecosystems in tropical and temperate regions and particularly abundant in cropping soils.

The analyses also showed links between pathogen prevalence and global patterns of mortality from infectious diseases. For example, the predicted global map of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex showed a pattern comparable with the global tuberculosis map estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Our models suggest that many dominant soil-inhabiting bacterial pathogens are likely to increase in relative abundance under future climate scenarios, particularly in regions that become warmer and wetter,” says Maestre, who coordinated samples from a global dryland survey, an important component of the global soil dataset analysed in the project.

A significant finding was not just where the pathogens were most prevalent, but also where they were scarce. Areas with more diverse soil microbiomes were associated with lower pathogen abundance. This pattern suggests that increasing soil microbial diversity can potentially reduce the proliferation of plant and human pathogens, such as E. coli.

These patterns of pathogen distribution have profound implications for disease prevention that extend well beyond the public health sector.

“An important message from the study is that protecting soil biodiversity, improving soil health and monitoring environmental reservoirs of pathogens should become part of strategies to reduce future disease risks, especially under climate change,” Maestre says.

“Our maps can help countries identify where environmental monitoring should be prioritised, for example in humid, tropical and temperate regions, wetlands, farmlands, and areas expected to become warmer or wetter with climate change.”

The results provide global baseline data for developing effective surveillance and predictive tools to improve risk assessment and management strategies associated with human bacterial pathogens and to support the WHO One Health approach, where soils, water, crops, animals and humans need to be considered together.

Monitoring soils, especially in areas prone to flooding, heavy rainfall, intensive agriculture or biodiversity loss, could provide an early-warning system that complements clinical surveillance. This could help identify environmental hotspots where the risk of exposure to some pathogens may be higher.

However, Maestre cautions that the maps do not forecast future disease outbreaks directly.

“Whether environmental pathogens lead to infections depends on many other factors, including exposure routes, sanitation, land use, healthcare systems, socioeconomic conditions, host susceptibility and public health policies,” he notes.

He believes there is an urgent need to identify the major environmental drivers and global distribution of soil-inhabiting human pathogens to develop effective tracking, predict future distributions and improve risk management strategies linked to infectious diseases.

Monitoring and surveillance

While environmental monitoring is already being used in some forms, most notably wastewater surveillance, monitoring of soil-dwelling human pathogens is far less developed. “Technically, implementing this type of monitoring is becoming increasingly feasible because the sequencing and bioinformatic tools needed to detect pathogens from environmental samples are now available,” says Maestre.

In fact, the study team used these tools, including shotgun metagenomics, quantitative PCR, whole-genome-based analyses and machine learning, which he says can be adapted for monitoring programs, particularly for priority pathogens and high-risk locations.

Key challenges to implementing such systems are also organisational and financial. Countries would need to establish or access standardised sampling protocols, long-term monitoring sites, laboratory capacity, reference databases, and strong links between environmental agencies, agricultural authorities and public health systems.

Although this study focused specifically on bacterial pathogens, soils also harbour fungi, viruses, and other organisms that can affect human, animal and plant health. While they need to be studied separately, Maestre says the broad message is clear: Soil biodiversity is not just an environmental asset; it is public‑health infrastructure. Protecting and restoring it should be viewed as part of a One Health approach that recognises the interconnectedness of soils, water, crops, animals and people.

“We need to better understand the environmental reservoirs of pathogens, not only the clinical cases they cause. Future work should expand this approach to fungal and viral pathogens and, ideally, integrate them into a broader environmental surveillance framework.”

 

Microplastic, in the form of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), is a significant pollutant in marine environments. “Mangrove ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to the accumulation of fossil-derived plastics,” says KAUST researcher Diego Javier Jiménez Avella. “These ecosystems are natural sinks, but they are also potentially promising reservoirs of novel lignocellulose- and plastic-transforming enzymes.”

Jiménez, a research scientist in Alexandre Rosado’s team, led an international project that showed adding lignocellulose in the form of rice husks to mangrove soils increased the likelihood of recovering potential PET-degrading enzymes such as PETases^[1].

The project began in 2021, when Jiménez initiated a study of the microbial transformation of plastics with his former research group at Universidad de los Andes (UniAndes) in Bogotá, Colombia. The team sought to understand how microbial communities derived from mangrove soils respond to inputs of microplastics, plant biomass and seawater.

Initially, the researchers tried to identify plastic-degrading microorganisms by adding PET particles. Because of the difficulty in degrading PET, they tried an alternative treatment, adding plant biomass rich in lignocellulose, which contains polymers with ester linkages, similar to those found in PET molecules.

Seawater was included as a strategy to increase the chances of finding PET-degrading capabilities by mixing marine- and terrestrial-derived microbial communities. Unexpectedly, this addition proved vital for the desiccation patterns and salinity gradients within the microcosm experiments.

“Without planning it, the incubation conditions created a gradient of desiccation and salinity — an unforeseen factor that ultimately proved crucial to our findings,” says Jiménez.

The project continued when Jiménez moved to KAUST to join Rosado’s team in 2023. María Fernanda Peña-Valencia, his master’s student at UniAndes, worked on genome analyses, which provided key insights into the functional potential of salt-tolerant microorganisms enriched during the microcosm experiments.

“These results helped us better understand how specific microbial groups adapt and thrive under the experimental conditions,” says Jiménez. “A real turning point came when we expanded our analysis to gene catalogs derived from the full metagenomic dataset.”

Using high-throughput metagenomic sequencing to identify the different microbial species, the team found that conditions of desiccation and increasing salinity favor salt-tolerant PETases. The gradual evaporation of seawater and associated increase in salinity acted as strong selective pressures, particularly in the lignocellulose treatment.

Surprisingly, they discovered a higher number of potential PETases in the lignocellulose treatments compared to those amended with PET particles themselves. The researchers identified putative salt-tolerant PETases belonging to a new family of enzymes and characterized them using AI-based tools and 3D structure comparisons.

The study identified potential PETases found in soil bacteria. These enzymes can remain active under extreme conditions such as high temperatures and low pH, which makes them particularly interesting for industrial applications, explains Rosado.

PET is the only plastic that has been enzymatically recycled at an industrial scale. Over the past few decades, research efforts have focused on screening and engineering PETases, aiming to identify variants that can operate efficiently in both environmental and industrial settings.

“We still need to identify efficient thermophilic and salt-tolerant PETases for the industrial biocatalysis of PET,” Rosado says.

“Our work suggests that disrupting microbiomes with polyester-rich substrates can be an effective pathway for the discovery of PETases that can be used as scaffolds for protein engineering and biotechnological applications,” he concludes.

In future, the researchers plan to produce the enzymes and test them directly on PET under industrial conditions. They aim to develop a cocktail of enzymes able to degrade PET under harsh conditions of high temperature and salinity.

 

Plants cannot uproot and move to shelter as temperatures rise, meaning they must rely on internal mechanisms to survive heat stress. A specific chlorophyll-related enzyme has been shown to play a key role in increasing tolerance and protecting photosynthetic machinery in Arabidopsis thaliana plants exposed to high temperatures^[1].

“When cells encounter stress, tiny condensates composed of proteins, RNA and metabolites quickly form. These ‘stress granules’ help protect key cellular components and mechanisms until the danger from stress has passed,” says Fatema Alquraish, who worked on the project under the supervision of Monika Chodasiewicz. Around five years ago, Chodasiewicz and colleagues from an international research team were the first to identify stress granules in chloroplasts (cpSGs) in Arabidopsis plants^[2].

“It would take a huge amount of energy for a plant to protect all of its machinery and cellular components under heat stress,” continues Alquraish. “Forming stress granules rapidly in an emergency is a smart and selective way for the plant to shelter key components needed for the recovery phase after stress eases. The granules provide protection, and also allow the various components to ‘talk’ to one another and instigate repair and recovery processes.”

“This study was inspired by a simple question: do chloroplast stress granules merely appear during heat stress, or do they actively help plants tolerate heat? This led us to investigate specific proteins inside these granules and examine their roles,” says Chodasiewicz.

The team’s initial investigations into components of cpSGs led them to protochlorophyllide oxidoreductase C (PORC), a chlorophyll biosynthesis enzyme that is involved in chlorophyll production and photosynthesis, and is usually distributed evenly in the chloroplasts. The team noticed that, in response to elevated temperatures, PORC quickly localized into small, dot-like cpSGs as they formed.

In further experiments, the team showed that plants with higher PORC levels recovered photosynthesis faster and performed better under heat stress. Plants lacking PORC function were more sensitive to heat stress, suggesting that PORC helps preserve chloroplast function and protect the plant’s photosynthetic machinery during stressful conditions.

“We observed PORC granule formation under acute heat shock conditions as well as under milder, prolonged heat stress,” says Alquraish. “Under sudden extreme heat, cpSGs containing PORC formed within 30 minutes. Under sustained moderate heat, the granules developed more gradually. This suggests that the mechanism is flexible and can respond to the different types of thermal stress that plants may encounter in nature.”

The findings imply that cpSGs may represent an untapped strategy for improving plant resilience to heat stress, which is especially crucial for food security in arid countries such as Saudi Arabia.

“In future, it may be possible to tune cpSG formation, stability, or composition in crops, so they maintain photosynthesis more effectively during heat waves,” says Chodasiewicz. “We are interested in whether cpSG behavior can be genetically or chemically tuned to improve heat tolerance without compromising growth. We may also be able to enhance how plants reorganize chloroplast machinery in response to stress.”

Next steps for Chodasiewicz and her team include understanding the molecular rules that control cpSG assembly and disassembly, identifying additional protective components inside cpSGs, and testing whether similar mechanisms exist in different crop species.

International plans to increase marine protected areas (MPAs) to cover 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030 will not be sufficient to conserve many of the world’s largest marine creatures, according to new findings^[1] by hundreds of international scientists including KAUST researchers as part of the MegaMove^[2] project.

Habitats and ecosystems in the world’s oceans face growing threats, from anthropogenic activities, such as fishing and industry, to the deeper pressures posed by climate change. Tied to the fate of the oceans are the fates of marine life, from the smallest creatures to the largest – marine megafauna. Over a third of marine megafauna species, including the hawksbill turtle, the North Atlantic right whale, and the shortfin mako shark, are now threatened with extinction.

Recent global commitments via the United Nations High Seas Treaty and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) seek to protect, conserve and manage at least 30 percent of the world’s oceans. But this is unlikely to be enough.

“Protecting the ocean requires a clear understanding of how marine life actually uses ocean spaces,” says Carlos Duarte, marine scientist at KAUST. “Imagine if pedestrian crossings were just randomly deployed in cities, rather than being concentrated in the busiest areas where they’re needed most? Understanding how marine megafauna use the oceans for migration, residency, feeding and breeding is critical to developing effective protection and conservation strategies.”

Duarte and hundreds of scientists across the world collaborated to collate and analyze a vast marine megafauna tracking dataset: 11 million geographical positions gathered over three decades from 15,845 tracked individual animals across 121 species of marine megafauna. Their results show that both existing and proposed MPAs will need to be coupled with enforced mitigation strategies, including strict fishing regulations and separation of wildlife and boat traffic, if they are to achieve international goals for marine megafauna conservation.

A monumental moment in movement ecology

“Marine animals are highly mobile, often engaging in large, basin-wide migrations,” says Duarte. “From the largest creatures, such as whales and albatross, to smaller fish like the endangered European eel, they all make epic journeys to breed and feed. Accurately tracking these movements is no small feat.”

Advances in Big Data analytics, which combines data from multiple animal tagging and tracking programs, have made large-scale tracking of marine animals possible. The MegaMove project was founded in 2020 based on Duarte’s vision that collaborative science and Big Data could accelerate understanding of how large marine animals use the oceans. It combines expertise and vast datasets to provide robust evidence for international marine policies and treaties.

KAUST hosted one of the foundational workshops that helped launch MegaMove. But challenges remained, not least persuading scientists to share their hard-earned datasets.

“Animal tagging is very expensive: buying sensor packages, paying for vessels and staff to catch the target animal in the wild, and then paying for satellite data transmission,” says Duarte. “It is perhaps no wonder that researchers have been reluctant to share their data.”

Over the past six years, MegaMove has helped change attitudes toward data sharing in the biologging community, Duarte notes. After demonstrating how large-scale data analytics can reveal patterns in marine animal behavior, researchers are now voluntarily contributing telemetry datasets to the project.

Unlocking the power of telemetry data

For the current study, the team developed their own data analytics tools to unify all the data acquired across species and years into a single ‘biology year’ of movement in the ‘global ocean’. They then classified each individual geo-position based on the activity of each creature, labeling each position as ‘migrating’, ‘feeding’ or ‘reproducing’.

“By aggregating data from individuals and species, we created a synoptic map of the world’s ‘hot spots’ for feeding and reproduction, and highlighted the migration corridors of marine megafauna,” says Duarte. “This revealed previously unknown features of their use of ocean space.”

The team then aligned these data insights, including their synoptic map, with existing MPAs and exclusive economic zones (EEZs). Existing MPAs encompass only 7.5 percent of the total area used by creatures in the tracking dataset, and the animals spent over 85 percent of their time outside these protected areas. The locations of future MPAs therefore need careful consideration, and the team have estimated the best possible configuration of future protected areas to offer optimal protection to marine megafauna.

“Our results should help identify critical ocean areas for protection. Also, individual nations have strong enforcement capabilities within their own EEZ jurisdictions, so they can choose to actively regulate human activities that harm marine animals, and designate specific areas for conservation and protection,” says Duarte. “Considerable challenges remain in securing and enforcing marine protected zones for international waters.”

Coupling MPAs with stricter regulations

The researchers also examined global datasets regarding threats to marine wildlife, including fishing intensity, shipping intensity, plastic density, and water temperatures. Every year, an estimated 3,000 great whales are killed by ship strikes, and the MegaMove project has also identified ship strikes as the top source of mortality for whale sharks, the largest fish in the ocean. The team also found noise pollution from human activities to be ubiquitous across the oceans.

Their results suggest that additional forms of ocean management will be needed to curb existing threats and achieve the GBF’s goals. The team is calling for greater scrutiny of fishing and industry practices, increased enforcement, and improved direct management of marine ecosystems. Their findings should help redirect marine traffic to safer corridors and substantially reduce the risks of ship strikes on marine animals.

What’s next

The MegaMove project aims to strengthen the evidence base for marine megafauna conservation and expand participation from researchers around the world.

“Further insights are possible from long-term datasets describing movements of multiple individuals of the same species, but such datasets are not yet available. Long-term tracking data could reveal how animal movements change in response to pressures such as fishing and ocean warming, which we currently understand only anecdotally. Longitudinal studies will also allow us to verify and demonstrate the benefits of well-managed ocean protection zones,” concludes Duarte.

 

Ten contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) have been found in one of the Red Sea’s most abundant corals, Pocillopora favosa, in a survey of coral reefs along the central Red Sea coast^[1]. This highlights how the expansion of human activities and development along the world’s coastlines is having significant effects on coastal and marine environments, not least the increase in effluent discharge into coastal waters.

“CECs are chemicals that originate from human activities, such as pharmaceuticals, steroid hormones, cosmetics and pesticides. The release of most CECs into the environment is not regulated or continuously monitored,” says Mariana Rodrigues, a Ph.D. student who worked on the project under the supervision of Susana Carvalho. “Corals are critical to reef biodiversity, so it is vital to determine whether they are exposed to or affected by these pollutants.”

Saudi Arabia is undergoing rapid coastal development through tourism and urban expansion, which may increase the release of chemical compunds into regional marine systems. The research team sought to establish baseline levels of contamination on local coral reefs now, in order to track changes in the future.

The widespread distribution of the reef-building coral Pocillopora favosa allowed the team to study CEC accumulation in coral tissues across 15 onshore and offshore reefs. Each reef had different levels of exposure and proximity to human development. The team focused on 10 pollutants from different classes, including antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, bronchodilators used in asthma inhalers, and herbicides.

The researchers examined CEC concentrations in both seawater and coral tissue samples, and detected most of their targeted CECs at nearly every site. Notably, the asthma medication salbutamol was found to accumulate in coral tissues relative to surrounding seawater at 81 percent of sites, while the herbicide atrazine was detected at 72 percent of sites. These results highlight the widespread presence of such contaminants in the region.

“While previous studies have detected pharmaceuticals in coastal waters, this research shows that corals are absorbing and accumulating these pollutants,” says Rodrigues. “We also uncovered an unexpected pattern: some contaminants were found in higher concentrations offshore rather than near the coast, suggesting that ocean currents and biological processes can transport and concentrate pollutants far from their original sources.”

Corals can act as biological indicators of long-term chemical exposure, providing scientists with a way to monitor contamination over time rather than relying on snapshots of pollution levels in seawater. Managing pollution from CECs will be challenging, notes Rodrigues, but a combination of strategies can help reduce their impact.

“For example, overprescription and improper disposal of pharmaceuticals contribute significantly to contamination, so help could come through public awareness campaigns and proper medication take-back programs,” she explains.

Data collection and monitoring are critical to determine where and how these chemical residues enter marine environments, while advanced filtration and membrane technologies can remove many CECs before they reach the sea.

“We’d like to see concerted efforts to set limits on the amount of pollutants that can be discharged by industry and wastewater facilities, together with stricter surveillance,” says Rodrigues.

“Our monitoring efforts will continue, and additional results from the city of Al Lith will be published soon,” concludes Carvalho. “Future work will examine other reef organisms, including algae and fish, to better understand how these contaminants move through the marine ecosystem.”

 

The human brain has an estimated 86 billion neurons, and an even greater number of support cells, called glia, long thought to provide mainly structural support and nourishment while neurons do the real cognitive work.

A KAUST-led study now reveals that this division of labor is not so clean.

As Pierre Magistretti and his colleagues demonstrate, one type of glial support cells in particular — astrocytes, star-shaped glial cells — do more than keep neurons fed^[1]. They actively shuttle a molecule called lactate into neurons, where it triggers a chain of events that strengthens synaptic connections involved in core brain functions.

“This observation represents a paradigm shift,” says Magistretti, neuroscientist at KAUST. “It shows that glial metabolism is an integral part of information processing by neurons, with implications for learning and memory.”

At the heart of the finding is a set of proteins called NMDA receptors. These sit at synapses, the junctions where neurons communicate, and govern how strongly signals pass between cells. They are activated by neurotransmitters released by neurons.

But neurotransmitters are not the whole story. The KAUST study shows that astrocyte-derived lactate also acts on NMDA receptors, amplifying their activity and, with it, the strength of synaptic signals.

Lactate is best known for building up in fatigued muscles, but it has a second life in the brain. Astrocytes produce it continuously and ship it to neurons as fuel, a metabolic arrangement that Magistretti’s laboratory first described more than 30 years ago, naming it the ‘astrocyte-neuron lactate shuttle’.

However, lactate’s role does not end at the fuel pump. The new study shows that once inside a neuron, it also acts as a signal — one that alters the cell’s internal chemistry, amplifies NMDA receptor activity and locks in stronger synaptic connections.

This occurs through a finely tuned molecular cascade. Working with collaborators in Europe, the KAUST team found that neurons convert incoming lactate into pyruvate, a reaction that generates NADH and tips the cell’s chemical balance in a way that boosts calcium signaling. That shift tightens the grip of a key enzyme on NMDA receptors, driving a burst of synaptic activity that yields lasting changes in connection strength, cementing memories and deepening learning.

“Our study uncovers a previously unknown molecular mechanism by which lactate regulates brain function,” says Hubert Fiumelli, a research scientist in Magistretti’s lab and co-author of the study. “We show that lactate acts not only as a source of energy, but also as a signaling molecule that directly strengthens communication at synapses.”

The findings further disrupt a century of neuroscientific orthodoxy that cast glial cells as little more than “brain glue” filling gaps between neurons and lactate as a metabolic waste product. But they also point somewhere more practical.

Scientists have long suspected that NMDA receptors hold the key to treating Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and major depression — conditions in which there is a breakdown in the brain’s ability to form and maintain connections. What has been missing is a clear molecular picture of how those receptors are regulated. The lactate pathway now provides one.

“These findings open new avenues for therapeutic strategies targeting brain metabolism,” Fiumelli says.

A protein by-product from corn processing could help cut the energy cost of industrial chemical purification. Developed by KAUST researchers, the protein can be made into a biodegradable nanofiltration membrane that separates mixtures of industrial chemicals using a fraction of the energy of traditional purification methods^[1].

Chemical separations account for a large share of global industrial energy consumption, typically through large-scale heat-driven processes such as evaporation, drying, or distillation. Molecular sieve membranes are a promising, energy-efficient alternative for industrial chemical purification, using selective nanofiltration rather than heat-driven separation. Adopting membrane technology can cut the carbon emissions of a chemical purification step by up to 90 percent.

Yet despite this promise to decrease industrial energy consumption, nanofiltration membranes themselves are not very green, says Claudia Oviedo, a Ph.D. student in Gyorgy Szekely’s lab, who led the research.

“Most membranes are based on synthetic polymers derived from fossil resources, which raises concerns about their sustainability and long-term environmental persistence,” Oviedo explains. “The motivation of our research is to reduce the dependence on fossil-based membrane building blocks by exploring bio-based alternatives, preferably made from abundant agricultural waste.”

An ideal candidate could be a protein called zein, a widely available byproduct of the global corn processing industry, the team showed. “Zein is particularly promising for membrane materials due to its hydrophobicity,” Oviedo says. This low water solubility was the key to turning zein into a solvent-resistant nanofiltration membrane.

The researchers made their bio-based membranes by dissolving the zein in a green solvent, casting this solution into a thin film, then adding water as a nonsolvent. As water displaced the solvent and the hydrophobic protein chains were squeezed together, they experienced a phenomenon called macromolecular crowding.

“Macromolecular crowding occurs when large molecules are present in high concentrations,” Oviedo says. Repelled by the water, the zein protein chains are forced to interact and organize, packing closely together to form a well-defined structured membrane.

Collaborating with Satoshi Habuchi and his KAUST team, the researchers tracked the process in microscopic detail by adding nanoscale luminous tracers called quantum dots to the starting protein solution.

Once water was added, the quantum dots’ motion gradually separated into two bands, with fast-moving dots in the upper layer and slow-moving dots in the lower layer where the membrane was forming. “This motion indicated the formation of zein-rich and zein-poor domains as the membrane structure developed,” Oviedo says.

Computational molecular dynamics simulations showed that hydrophobic protein-protein interactions drove the zein chains to pack closely and entangle, creating a crowded network where nanoscale pores are surrounded by densely arranged protein chains.

The performance of the new zein membrane’s nanofiltration was competitive with commercial synthetic nanofiltration membranes, the team found, and they used their sustainable membrane material to separate a toxic impurity from a pharmaceutical product.

“Our trials also showed that zein membranes biodegraded rapidly, in contrast to conventional fossil-based membranes that persist in the environment post-disposal,” Szekely says.

The team’s next goal is to evaluate whether bio-based nanofiltration membranes provide lower environmental impacts from cradle to grave. “Our ongoing research focuses on life cycle assessment comparing zein extraction and membrane fabrication with fossil-based membranes,” Szekely says.

 

A thin-film, flexible optical device that mimics the way the human brain senses and interprets visual information has been developed by KAUST researchers^[1]. This “optical synapse” may help address the growing need for more efficient artificial vision systems.

“Today’s cameras and computers usually separate sensing, memory, and processing into different parts, which requires data to move back and forth constantly, wasting both time and energy,” explains Manoj Kumar Rajbhar, who worked on the project supervised by Nazek El-Atab. “Our goal was to move closer to the human visual system, where sensing and processing are tightly linked.”

Previous designs for light-sensitive synaptic devices required both electrical and optical signals to operate. They were composed of complex ‘stacks’ of materials, or utilized unstable compounds such as perovskites or black phosphorus. Rajbhar and colleagues designed a synaptic device controlled entirely by light, improving energy efficiency and eliminating the need for electrical signals. Exposure to different colors of light can strengthen or weaken their device’s response, similar to how synapses in the human brain behave during learning.

“In the brain, synapses don’t only become stronger, they can also become weaker,” says Rajbhar. “That balance is essential for learning new information, filtering noise, forgetting unimportant signals, and adapting to changing environments.”

For example, the researchers imitated the classic Pavlov’s dog experiment, in which a dog learns to associate the sound of a bell with food and begins salivating in response. By using one wavelength of light to represent a bell and another to represent food, they trained the device to associate the ‘bell’ signal with ‘food’ and initiate a ‘salivation’ response.

“This type of training is especially valuable for future machine vision and neuromorphic hardware, because it allows the device to process visual information in a more brain-like way,” says Rajbhar. “Practically, this helps systems become more adaptive and better at tasks such as recognition, memory formation, and decision-making without relying on separate sensing and processing units.”

The team also simplified their device’s structure by using an ultrathin layer of manganese oxide on a flexible silicon substrate. The device works even when the silicon substrate is bent. Manganese oxide is relatively abundant and affordable, supporting future scalability. It is also more environmentally friendly than some other potential materials and hosts multiple oxidation states.

“These mixed oxidation states help create controllable defect states and oxygen vacancies, which are important for tuning how the device stores and modulates information,” says Rajbhar. “We consider these features to play an important role in the light response and memory behavior of the device.”

Their device is capable of real-time image detection and processing, and preforms logical operations compatible with existing semiconductor computing.

“This device could be useful where there is a need for lightweight, low-power systems that can sense visual information and process it locally,” says El-Atab. “Our results support advances in AI hardware, robotics, wearable electronics, and artificial vision. The study also aligns with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 goals in advanced technology and semiconductor research.”

 

An intelligent optoelectronic transistor can not only sense light but also remember and learn from what it has seen. Developed by researchers at KAUST and Peking University, the “optoelectronic synapse” uses an organic material called gDPP-MeOT2 — a light-absorbing polymer that can also store and transport ions^[1].

“A conventional photodetector simply turns light into an electrical signal,” says Yazhou Wang, a postdoc in Sahika Inal’s lab who led the research. “Our device goes a step further – it can process and remember what it sees. Light triggers not only electronic signals but also ionic motion in the material, allowing the device to dynamically adjust its response over time, similar to how synapses in the brain strengthen or weaken with experience,” explains Wang.

By integrating the gDPP-MeOT2 material into an electrically controllable transistor architecture, Inal’s team, in collaboration with Nazek El-Atab’s group at KAUST, showed that the device can mimic key functions of a neural synapse in the human brain. The researchers demonstrated behaviors linked to learning and memory, including the ability to strengthen responses to repeated light signals and transition from short-term to long-term memory. These functions operate at an very low programming voltage of just 0.4 volts and on the timescale of seconds.

Using these capabilities, the team carried out optical logic operations, such as switching between binary states using light, as well as image processing tasks including image denoising through adaptive filtering.

“We were inspired by how the human retina seamlessly combines sensing, processing, and memory in a single energy-efficient system. In contrast, today’s electronics typically separate these functions, which increases complexity and power consumption,” explained Wang. “Our goal is to bring these capabilities within a single material platform, enabling devices that can not only detect light but also learn from it and adapt, much like biological vision systems.”

The device responds to both visible and near-infrared light, covering wavelengths from around 455 nm to 1100 nm. This makes it suitable for vision-related technologies that require fast, built-in image processing. Potential applications include artificial retinas, wearable sensors and autonomous systems that must interpret visual information in real time. The aim is to enable efficient, brainlike sensing and computing without relying on cloud-based processing.

According to Wang, the key challenges are to further speed up the technology and scale it into large, high-density arrays for practical implementation.

“Looking ahead, we aim to make these devices even more ‘brain-like’ by introducing functionalities such as selective responses to different chemical signals,” says Inal. “We are also working to integrate many of these synapses into large arrays, to enable real-time, on-chip visual processing. Ultimately, we hope to build systems that can sense, learn, and make decisions directly at the hardware level.”

 

A gas sensor that can provide an early warning of battery failure could improve the safety of lithium-ion batteries, used in everything from electric vehicles to grid-scale storage systems.

Lithium-ion batteries are transforming the global energy landscape, but they also come with risks. If a battery is damaged or overheated, it can trigger an unstoppable “thermal runaway” reaction that releases flammable and toxic gases and leads to catastrophic battery failure.

KAUST researchers have developed a sensor designed to detect those gases at a very early stage before conditions escalate^[1]. “Our ultimate goal is to demonstrate a closed-loop early warning and response system that could serve as the basis for a practical safety architecture in battery packs,” says Aamir Farooq, who led the team.

When a battery gets too hot, the chemicals inside start to break down and release gases. As pressure builds, a safety valve ruptures to vent them.

This breakdown also generates heat, potentially causing a chain reaction that accelerates gas formation and can ultimately cause the battery to catch fire or explode.

Among the most hazardous gases released during battery failure is hydrogen fluoride (HF), a highly toxic and corrosive compound. Previous studies have shown that HF can be detected during safety venting, before the thermal runaway process takes hold. However, conventional methods for measuring HF rely on bulky equipment and tend to underestimate emissions.

The KAUST team developed a more compact gas-sensing technique called tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS). Positioned directly above the safety vent, the system provides a much more accurate HF reading.

The researchers tested the TDLAS sensor on two types of lithium-ion batteries, commonly found in laptops and electric vehicles. One type uses a cathode containing nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC), while the other has a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode. These batteries, charged to either 50 percent or 100 percent of their capacity, were heated to trigger thermal runaway.

The NMC batteries reached thermal runaway at 174–215 °C, while LFP cells were more stable, doing so at 242–249 degrees Celsius. Both types released a small burst of HF during initial safety venting, followed by a much larger burst once thermal runaway had started. “These concentrations of HF are orders of magnitude above the level that is immediately dangerous to life and health,” says Ahmad Alsewailem, a Ph.D. student in the team who led the experimental work.

Crucially, the time between the early and later bursts was about one minute for NMC cells and five minutes for LFP cells. That would be long enough for a miniaturized TDLAS sensor to act as an early warning system in electric vehicle battery packs or grid-scale energy storage systems.

“A single sensor positioned within a battery pack enclosure could monitor the gas environment continuously and trigger an alarm or automatic shutdown the moment HF is detected above a threshold level,” says Janardhanraj Subburaj, a research scientist in the team. “This is faster than other thermal runaway sensors, giving a warning window before the more violent thermal runaway phase.”

The researchers now plan to study how overcharging and mechanical damage can cause similar gas releases, and hope to couple their HF sensor with an automated battery safety system.