DHAHRAN: King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals on Friday launched its first global research consortium. Chaired by Prof. Omar Yaghi,  the Consortium for a Sustainable Future aims to bring together research and development collaboration bodies from industry, education, and government to overcome obstacles to sustainability. It has proposed several initial programs, including the air economy program, which is concerned with discovering a new material category under the name “digital materials.” Such materials will be synthesized using AI, big data, and robots to be later integrated into images of innovative machines. The latter is expected to use large volumes of air, which is considered the most widespread and easily accessible resource on earth. Other activities may include collecting water from the air, capturing CO2 and transforming it into other higher-value materials or fuels, and purifying the air. The consortium will adopt an approach under which material is to be converted to machine, where new material categories with premium properties are to be discovered, starting with basic chemistry and material science, to engineering design, and finally to transformation into advanced practical machines outperforming existing applications. KFUPM president Dr. Mohammed Al-Saqqaf expressed his hope that the CSF could be a game changer in how the full potential of cooperation in research and development should be launched. He also expressed his excitement about the pioneering procedures that would be adopted by the consortium. Using a multidisciplinary approach, consortium members will cover all expenses, starting with the expenses of the academic institutions where basic research is conducted and the expenses of the developers involved in rapid expansion and product design to reach the end user where technical solutions can eventually spread.