Faculty Mentors, United States:
Dr. Bimal Nepal is a professor in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution (ETID) at Texas A&M University. His research interests include supply chain management, distribution and logistics, data analytics, applied operations research, and engineering education. He has a long track record for engaging UG students in research. Through an industry grant for talent incubator program at Thomas and Joan Read Center for Distribution Research and Education, he advised over 100 undergraduate students from his research-intensive classes in company projects including many women and underrepresented minority students. These research projects are highly valued by the corporate sponsors. Dr. Nepal currently leads an REU program in cybermanufacturing at Texas A&M University.
Dr. Eakalak Khan is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research interests include environmental risk modeling and analysis, biodegradation, wastewater treatment, impact of nanotechnology on microbes and bioprocesses, fate and transport of contaminants in the environment, and stormwater pollution control.Dr. Khan has active international research and/or education collaborations with universities in Chile, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, South Korea, and Thailand. He has taught short courses and co-advised undergraduate and graduate students in Chile, New Zealand, and Thailand. He served as a faculty adviser for Engineers Without Borders student chapter for 12 years when he was at NDSU. The chapter completed several projects in Guatemala under his guidance.
Dr. Om Prakash Yadav is a professor in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at North Dakota State University. His research areas include application of data science and machine learning in reliability modeling and analysis. has an active research collaboration with several universities in USA, Hong Kong, and India and is actively involved in conducting training and education programs for professional development in USA and India. Dr. Yadav is the Director of an industry funded NDSU Center for Quality, Reliability, and Maintainability Engineering (CQRME). The center has successfully led to funding 8 students (4 PhD, 4 MS, 2 UG, including two female students), starting an undergraduate minor in reliability engineering in the department of industrial and manufacturing engineering.
UTP Faculty Mentors, Malaysia (IRES Site Host)
Associate Professor Dr. Ku Zilati Ku Shaari
Dr. Ku Zilati holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from West Virginia University, WV, USA. She is currently the Dean of Faculty of Engineering at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), Malaysia. She started her management position at UTP as a Head of Center for Student Internship, Mobility and Adjunct Lectureship in 2015, and after that she was appointed as the Director of Registry Division in 2018. Before getting involved in academia, she worked as a Process and Facilities Engineer for 6 years. Being active in research at the university, she was one of the leaders of the LRGS grant amounting RM12 millions, that involves four higher institutions in Malaysia. As an Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering, she graduated several PhD and students, authored several books and book chapters, over 100 research papers in journals and conferences proceedings, filed several patents and won several awards from her work in Particle Technology and Computational Fluid Dynamic Modeling. She has been an organizer for a special CFD session in the European International Conference on Advanced Computational Engineering and Experimenting (ACEX) since 2012 until 2017. She is a member of American Institute of Chemical Engineers, The Institution of Engineers Malaysia, Board of Engineers Malaysia and American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists; as well as the Founder of AICHE Student Chapter in UTP. She is currently one of the Executive Board members of Asian Energy Engineering Alliance.
Associate Professor Dr Jafreezal Jaafar
Dr. Jafreezal Jaafar is an Associate Professor in Computer Science. His research area includes AI, Machine Learning and Data Analytics. He actively supervises Final Year Project for undergraduate, MSc and PhD research student. He is the Dean of Faculty of Science & Information Technology. He also a former Head of Centre for Research in Data Science. The centre focus on implementation of Machine Learning and predictive analytic in Oil and Gas (O&G) industry. Through the centre, he had managed to secure many research grants, consultation project and conducting professional training for the government and industry. The centre with his supervision had hosted student under Research Attachment Program from partner universities around the globe.
Dr. Ho Yeek-Chia (YC)
Dr. Ho is a Program Manager for MSc in Industrial Environmental Engineering. Also, currently, YC is a Senior Lecturer and previously Cluster Leader for Environmental Cluster (2018-2020) in Civil & Environmental Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP). Nonetheless, YC is currently a Secretary in International Water Association (IWA) for Design, Operation and Maintenance of Drinking Water Treatment Plants. YC involves in research projects on renewable energy, algae harvesting, water and wastewater treatments, and life cycle assessment. YC has published several works in invited review papers, invited book chapters, international conference papers and international indexed journal papers, including Bioresource Technology from Elsevier, Scientific Reports from Nature Research and a few to name. Also, YC has won a few national awards in publications and international awards for her research works, two patents and two trademarks were filed. Recently, she has been selected to be one of the invited leaders in an Innovation Fellowships program by Royal Academy of Engineering, UK.
Dr. Khairul Habib
Dr. Habib obtained his B.Sc. (Hons.) and M.Eng. degrees from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and National University of Singapore in 2002 and 2005, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in 2009 from the Kyushu University, Japan. He worked as a Research Scientist in Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore prior to joining the Mechanical Engineering Department of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS in 2011 as a Senior Lecturer. His main research interests are thermally powered sorption systems, nanofluid enhanced heat transfer, zero energy building, and energy efficiency assessment. He has published more than 70 articles in peer reviewed journals and international conference proceedings. He is a Chartered Engineer from IMechE, UK and a member of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Ir Dr. M Mubarak B A Wahab
Dr. Wahab is a Senior Lecturer and Program Leader in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Deputy Head of Offshore Engineering Center at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia. Multifaceted, self-driven and highly motivated engineer with 20 years of experience with a Masters degree in Structural Engineering from University of Melbourne and a PhD degree in Civil Engineering from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS. He has several research programs completed and on-going currently in the field of structures (onshore & offshore). In the 20 years of experience, 6 solid years of progressively responsible supervisory, managerial and business development on construction projects with sizeable design exposure, in civil and structural field. Academic since 2007, with research interest onto structures and materials, offshore structures Integrity and Reliability domain. Sufficient knowledge in design standards and codes. Key strengths include engineering design and construction management; academic teaching, supervision, research and publication; academic consultancy, engineering services and management; and computer aided analysis and design, numerical computing skills. He is a registered Professional Engineer with Practicing Certificate with Board of Engineers Malaysia.
Associate Professor Dr. Izzatdin Abdul Aziz
Dr. Abdul Aziz is a researcher at the Center for Research in Data Science (CeRDaS), where he focuses in solving complex upstream and downstream Oil and Gas (O&G) industry problems from the viewpoint of data sciences, machine learning and big data analytics. He obtained his Ph.D. in Information Technology from Deakin University, Australia working in the domain of hydrocarbon exploration and cloud computing. He is working closely with O&G companies in delivering solutions for complex problems such as Offshore O&G pipeline corrosion rate prediction, O&G pipeline corrosion detection, rotating machine, and process failure prediction, securing data on clouds and bridging upstream and downstream oil and gas businesses through data analytics. Additionally, he is also working on fundamental computer science problems such as on algorithms optimization. He has secured numerous consultancy grants worth of USD 4.2 mil, active in delivering short courses in Big Data Analytics and publishing research manuscripts in algorithms and optimization.
Associate Professor Dr. Suriati Sufian
Dr Suriati Sufian obtained her first degree in BEng (Hons.) in Chemical Process Engineering with Fuel Technology at University of Sheffield, UK in 1998. In the following year, she joined Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) as a trainee lecturer before she continued her study at University of Queensland, Australia and obtained MEng in Chemical Engineering in 2001 and later she began her career as a Chemical Engineering lecturer at UTP. She did staff attachment at PETONAS (Nov 2019 to May 2020), Tenaga Nasional Generation Berhad in 2003 and research attachment at University of Nottingham, UK in 2007. She had been selected to join in BASF summer course in Ludwigsafen, Germany and Asia Nanocamp in Singapore in 2008 and 2010, respectively. In January 2010, she completed her PhD entitled “Synthesis, Characterization and Testing of Graphitic Nanofiber for Hydrogen Adsorption Study” at UTP. She became Deputy Head (Academic) from 2011 to 2013 and later as the Head/Chair of Chemical Engineering Department in 2014 until 2018. She is now the Cluster Head of Process Fundamental (chemical Engineering). For publication, she has published more than 100 indexed journal papers with H-index of 22. Her research interest including advanced material (including carbon nanomaterials, photocatalyst, geopolymer), H2 production & storage, CO2 utilization and wastewater treatment. Currently, she is supervising 6 PhD students and 5 MSc students by research and she also had supervised international students (for student exchange and internship) from France, USA, Australia, and New Zealand. She also received various research grants from both national and international such as Fundamental Research Grant Scheme from Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia, Yayasan UTP, Murata Science Foundation, etc.
Ir Dr. Hazlina Husin
Dr. Husin is a Program Leader for Bachelor of Petroleum Engineering with Honors in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS. She has more than 13 years of teaching experience at higher learning institutions in Malaysia and Australia. Before joining as academia, she has more than 10 years of industrial experience where she led consultation projects for Malaysia, Vietnam, Germany, New Zealand and Australia companies. Currently, she is a Professional Engineer awarded by Malaysia regulatory body and Chartered Engineer United Kingdom, and she holds a position as Chartered Engineer Interviewer for Engineering Council United Kingdom. She has advised both graduate and undergraduate students on research. Her research interests are in LNG regasification, flow assurance (sand, scale, wax, asphaltene, emulsion, corrosion and hydrate), upstream and midstream oil and gas production operations and downstream processing including modeling and simulation.
Dr. Noorfidza Yub Harun
Dr. Harun is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Her research interests are in Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy and Application of Biomass Resources as Adsorbent. Noorfidza is ALUMNI of Universiti Kebangsaan MALAYSIA, University of Sheffield, UK and University of New Brunswick, Canada. She has advised both graduate and undergraduate students on the research area with most publications in year 2020 alone. Noorfidza is current Associate Member of IChemE and Registered Member of BEM Malaysia. She is presently active in both as academician as well as researcher in Chemical Engineering of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS.
Dr. Mohd Hilmi Hasan
Dr. Hasan is a senior lecturer at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), Malaysia and is an active researcher at the Centre for Research in Data Science at the university. He has been teaching and being an active researcher at UTP since 2004. His research interest covers areas of artificial intelligence, data analytics and system development. He has been awarded with research grants and consultancy projects from various sectors namely industry, ministry / government, as well as the university. The projects and grants are mainly related to enhancing machine learning / artificial intelligence algorithms and applying the algorithms to resolve industry problems. Through the grants and projects, Dr. Hilmi has published research articles in various journals and conferences and supervised a number of postgraduate and undergraduate students.