David Keyes has joined the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia as division chair of mathematical and computer sciences and engineering. Keyes was formerly professor of applied physics and math at Columbia University.

The newly created King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST, is scheduled to open September 2009 with a donation of $10 billion endowment donated by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Keyes said the opportunity to work with KAUST’s super computer, Shaheen, is the primary reason for relocating.

Keyes, who received a B.S.E. in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard, is currently the Fu Foundation Professor of Applied Mathematics at Columbia’s engineering school.

He has been affiliated with the computer science divisions of Argonne, Brookhaven and Oak Ridge National Laboratories and is the acting director of the Institute for Scientific Computing Research (ISCR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His specific areas of interest include parallel numerical algorithms and large-scale simulations of transport phenomena, such as fluids, combustion and radiation.