Some partnerships start with a cold email. This one started with a broadcast. In 2023, Al Jazeera's Nightly News featured ITKAN to a live audience across the Middle East — and AI researcher Dr. Mohammed ElHoseiny was watching. He reached out, visited the lab, and saw the model up close.
That visit became a partnership. Together, ITKAN and Dr. ElHoseiny launched an FTC team based at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) — only the third FTC team in all of Saudi Arabia, and one rooted at one of the world's leading research universities.
For ITKAN, KAUST is proof that the pipeline now reaches kids whose path into engineering runs through Riyadh and Thuwal, not just Texas — and that media reach, when it lands with the right person, can open an entire new front for the movement.