engineering

Nabilah al-Tunisi

Nabilah al-Tunisi is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Nabilah al-Tunisi rather than just read about it. In short: Nabilah al-Tunisi (born c. 1959) (Arabic:نبيلة التونسي), was the first woman to hold the title of chief engineer at Saudi Aramco. In 2017 Al-Tunisi became the first female chairman of the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul).

Key takeaways

Nabilah al-Tunisi belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Nabilah al-Tunisi to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Nabilah al-Tunisi from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Nabilah al-Tunisi (born c. 1959) (Arabic:نبيلة التونسي), was the first woman to hold the title of chief engineer at Saudi Aramco. In 2017 Al-Tunisi became the first female chairman of the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul).

Early life and education The daughter of a Saudi general, Al-Tunisi grew up in Riyadh. When she was 12, her family moved to Spain where her father became a military attaché at the Saudi Embassy in Madrid. While in Spain, she attended a Spanish-American school and took Arabic lessons at night. At the age of 15, she returned and completed high school in Riyadh. But at the age of 17, she moved to Portland, Oregon to study electrical engineering at Lewis & Clark College, with encouragement from her parents and where her brother was also studying. Al-Tunisi's fascination with computers came as she was preparing for the requisite English test. By 1980 she had gained a Bachelor in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Portland and a masters in computer engineering from Oregon State University. Al-Tunisi also completed the Stanford’s Executive Business Program in 2007, after being rejected two decades earlier for the Master's program there in Computer engineering.

Career Her uncle, a friend of the Saudi oil minister, encouraged her to apply to Saudi Aramco, in Houston. Al-Tunisi had first searched and applied for various positions in the tech industry, including Microsoft, and PG&E. She even turned down a job with Apple Inc. before she joined the company as a computer systems engineer in 1982. In 1984, she moved to the engineering and project management division. In 1996, she led the company´s planning department for IT facilities and electrical networks. She served as General Manager of Northern Area Project Management in Saudi Aramco. For Saudi Aramco, she also directed one of the largest hydrocarbon and petrochemical complex. Al-Tunisi developed software to monitor oil assets and implemented automation systems for the transport of oil and gas. She became the chief engineer of Aramco in 2015. In 2018, the Sadara Chemical Company opened for business. The joint project between Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical was led by Al-Tunisi and took nearly 10 years of planning. She is also preparing the plastic production crude oil-to-chemical plant together with Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation. Al-Tunisi is currently Managing Director of energy and water sector at Neom.

Distinctions In 2006, she was named on the 25 Most Influential Women in Project Management. In 2010 Oregon State University honored her with membership of their Academy of Distinguished Engineers. In 2014 Forbes Middle East listed her at # 4 in their list of the 200 Most Powerful Arab Women in Executive Management. In 2018, she ranked 17th on the Forbes List of most influential women in the Middle East.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nabilah al-Tunisi

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nabilah al-Tunisi claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Nabilah al-Tunisi before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Nabilah al-Tunisi ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Nabilah al-Tunisi

In research: Nabilah al-Tunisi appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Nabilah al-Tunisi in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Nabilah al-Tunisi is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1959 births, 20th-century Saudi Arabian engineers, 20th-century women engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nabilah al-Tunisi outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Nabilah al-Tunisi in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Nabilah al-Tunisi means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Nabilah al-Tunisi out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nabilah al-Tunisi in simple terms?

Why does Nabilah al-Tunisi matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Nabilah al-Tunisi?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Nabilah al-Tunisi.