King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) is committed to advancing its research activities and responding to the national and international research grand challenges in alignment with achieving the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 programs.  KFUPM’s research centers and academic departments are the cornerstones of our high-quality applied research activities and are recognized for solving critical scientific and technical problems inclusive of converting knowledge into practice.

With KFUPM's unique ingredient of research collaboration framework, KFUPM is annually producing hundreds of scientific reports, publications, and innovations for government, academia, and industry. Recently, KFUPM has revamped its research structure and programs completely with a strategic transformation. Our new research activities are designed to enhance society's well-being and solve grand challenges. Interdisciplinary research is our focus of the new research structure since critical and challenging research problems can be answered best at the edges of multi-disciplines. Hence, the combined knowledge of multiple disciplines can provide robust and more realistic solutions and impact. In response to our novel structure, research centers at KFUPM are composed of multiple disciplines and researchers from different departments. This strategic transformation of the research sector at KFUPM has resulted in the establishment of Applied Research Centers (ARCs), Interdisciplinary Research Centers (IRCs), and Joint Research Centers (JRCs) under the leadership of the Vice President of Research & Innovation (VPRI). Furthermore, the establishment of more IRCs is under study and evaluation, and several are expected to be launched soon.