Just returned from a fruitful trip to KAUST to visit dr Shuyu Sun and give a seminar at the department of Earth Science and Engineering. KAUST is a fascinating experiment, where an entire university with ambitious academic goals was created out of thin air in the desert on the shores of the Red Sea in just the past few years. Shuyu Sun is one of the founding faculty of the department, co-director of the Center for Subsurface Imaging and Fluid Modeling consortium (CSIM) and PI for the Computational Transport Phenomena Laboratory (CTPL). Shuyu and his group members are evaluating various interesting alternative numerical methods in subsurface flow modeling, and between excellent meals and bowling competitions we discussed exciting avenues for future collaborative research.