(334ae) Amping up the Organic Synthesis in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Explore the Potential of Structure-Property Relationship.

Through my academic career at various universities and institutes, I have acquired a unique perspective in understanding and developing cutting-edge materials and have been exposed to various research areas, including organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, polymer chemistry chemical engineering, materials engineering and separation science. My research is highly interdisciplinary but focuses primarily on the rational design, synthesis and characterization of novel materials. The success in developing new materials, small molecules or any chemical entity in general for a certain application is usually achieved by a keen understanding of the structure-property relationships. Over more than 10 years, I have demonstrated excellence in manipulating material structure and composition to suit the requirements of the desired properties. This extensive experience could seemingly be transferred to the small molecules and new drug development by building the chemical structure-property relationship understanding needed to identify optimal structures for achieving required biological attributes and physical, chemical and pharmaceutical properties relevant to the application.

My PhD. in materials chemistry and the seven years of professional experience in the U.S. Department of Energy National Labs, enable me to acquire a great breadth of scientific knowledge and experimental, communication, technical, and leadership skills, as summarized below.

I have demonstrated excellence and extensive experience in

• Design, synthesis, characterization and modification of small organic molecules
• Porous Materials, polymers and polymer composites
• Nanoparticles synthesis
• Deep knowledge in the structure-property relationships and tuning of material properties to meet performance and reliability requirements.
• Fabrication of membranes, thin films, monolith, pellets and tablets
• Materials manufacturing and characterization
• Development of new chemical entities
• Synthetic organic chemistry
• Multistep synthesis of complex organic molecules
• Development of new synthetic routes (Organic and Inorganic)
• Analytical development and characterization using several chromatographic and biophysical characterization methods
• Separation Science
• Electrochemical techniques
• Drug delivery
• Structural analysis
• Formulation chemistry
• Procedures relating to purification and separations
• Water treatment
• Heterogeneous catalysis
• Conducting work at scales spanning the range from laboratory scale to multi-kilogram scale
• Quality control and complying environmental health and safety requirements
• Delivering high-quality results
• Independent planning and execution of experiments, interpretation of data and drawing conclusions from resulting data
• Mentoring of young chemists, scientists and engineers to share best practice and knowledge toward efficiently achieved successful outcomes
• Meeting project timelines and objectives
• Leadership and Stewardship
• Working in several multi-disciplinary project teams
• Managing multiple projects and priorities
• High learning agility
• Creative problem solving
• Operating at pace and agile decision-making
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Remaining current with the latest technologies
• Writing proposals, scientific papers, patents and reports and giving presentations on technical and scientific findings.

Instrumentation skills:

Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC), Gas Chromatography (GC), Mass Spectrometer (MS), High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), Single-Crystal X-ray Diffraction (SCXRD), Powder X-ray Diffraction (PXRD), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Energy-dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Surface Area and Gas Analyzer, High-Pressure Gas Sorption Analyzer, Glove Box (Gas or Vacuum), Breakthrough Analyzer (Hiden), Inductively Coupled Plasma - Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES), Ultraviolet-Visible Spectroscopy (UV-Vis), Pycnometer, Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA), Schlenk Line, Gas Permeation Analyzers (Pure-Gas and Mixed-Gas), Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS)

Scholarly Achievements:

• Citations: 879, h-index: 17, i10-index: 21, total publications: 28
• Peer-Reviewed Research Articles: 25 published, and 4 in preparation (6 as a corresponding author, 19 as a first author)
• Peer-Reviewed Review Articles: 3 published and 1 in preparation (2 as a corresponding author and 2 as a first author)
• A cover image for Cell Reports Physical Science - May issue, 2020
• Patents: 1 published and 2 in preparation
• Research Grants: 2 PI (Granted; $322K in 2020 and $120K in 2015), 2 Co-PI (Granted; $400K in 2019 and $506K in 2018), 1 fellowship, 1 conference grant, 2 participation in proposal’s writing
• Invited Talks: 3 (MIT, UC-Berkeley Energy Frontier Research Center, Florida Institute of Technology)
• Conference Oral Presentations: 11
• Conference Poster Presentations: 6
• In the News: https://www.netl.doe.gov/node/9779; https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/fast-and-easy-two-step-creates-new-porous-materials; https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4490; https://www.pnnl.gov/science/highlights/highlight.asp?id=4883; https://phys.org/news/2018-04-decreasing-magnetism-metallic-core-particles.html; https://www.pnnl.gov/science/highlights/highlight.asp?id=4460

Leadership:

• Leading three projects in collaboration with NETL separation team members
• Leading several projects in collaboration with other national labs and universities

Professor Ju Li (MIT), Dr. Praveen Thallapally (PNNL), Professor Brian Space (University of South Florida), Professor Jeffrey McCutcheon (University of Connecticut), Professor Moises Carreon (Colorado School of Mines), Professor Omar Farha (Northwestern University), Dr. Yoosuf Picard (Carnegie Mellon University) and Professor Jeffery Long (University of California, Berkeley), Dr. Tony Pham (University of Tampa), Dr. Nathalie Rosi (University of Pittsburgh)

• Mentored ten students (nine undergraduate students at USF and one Ph.D. student at PNNL)
• Presentations at international/national conferences (11 talks, 3 invited talks and 6 posters)
• Leading large discussion sessions for groups of 500+ (lectures at Alexandria University) and 200+ (Inorganic Chemistry lectures at USF) students.
• Session chairing in conferences: ACS Meeting, Fall 2019
• Conference organization: Castle Conference (USF) and International Conference on Chemistry Progress (Alexandria University, Egypt)