Saudi University's Tech Invention Got Awarded In The United States

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)’s team Bluefin started off the year with a big tech win at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Innovation Awards in Las Vegas.

This awards ceremony honors "outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products", and KAUST’s team won an award in the Tech for a Better World category for their marine data-gathering device.

What's Bluefin? It's an advanced technology for scuba divers, fisheries and naval forces to use marine life tagging for ecological data. The gadget, Bluefin, which took its first dip in the Red Sea, weighs just 2.4 grams, and can be attached to the skin or shells of underwater creatures in a friendly and “biocompatible” way, allowing for ecological data over 365 days from depths as far as 2km to be transmitted continuously.

The Saudi team’s electrical engineering professor, Muhammad Mustafa Hussain said that the fish tagging technology can measure water temperature, pressure, depth, and pH levels in parts of the ocean which are unreachable by humans.

"I realized we could help marine species by developing comfortable and convenient wearables for them. The sensors monitor the environment, save the data in an integrated memory, and when the tag is brought to the surface, it can wirelessly transmit the data to nearby smartphones, tablets, or computers," he told Arab News.