Saka Abdulkareem

My university education career started at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria, where I obtained B.Eng. and M.Eng in Chemical Engineering in 1997 and 2000 respectively. I began lecturing in December, 1999 at the Federal uUniversity as an Assistant Lecturer. In May 2010, I proceed to the University of Witwatersrand where I obtained PhD in Chemical Engineering (Nanotechnology and Fuel cell) in 2010. While on the PhD programme, the University of the Witwatersrand offered me a permanent position as an Associate Lecturer at the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering. During my PhD programme I won the following awards: Second Best Prize Award for the Postgraduate Students Postal; Postgraduate Merit Award; Departmental Bursary Award; Staff Bursary for the PhD Programme (2007/2008 and 2008/2009 sessions). Currently, I am a Senior Lecturer at the University of South Africa (UNISA). My research interests are in the areas of Environmental Engineering and Science, Process modeling and simulation, Fuel Cell Technology and Nanotechnology. I have established myself as a prolific and productive researcher and this evident in consistent publication. I have published more than 10 articles in the area of Environmental Engineering and Sciences, with specific interest on the modeling and simulation of pollutant migrations from gas flaring with a case study Niger-Delta area of Nigeria.. My current research interests are Nanotechnology (Carbon Nanomaterials), Fuel Cell Technology and Membrane synthesis. I was able to develop an alternative polymer exchange membrane and composites membranes (developed from the synthesized membrane and carbon nanoballs) for fuel cell application using the locally available polymer as alternative to the commercially available membrane. Results of this work show that the performance of the developed membrane especially the composite membranes are better than that of the Nafion which is the commercially available membrane. In my ten years of experience in academic, I have published about 50 journal articles in peer reviewed journals with 12 as the major author, my contributions in others were not less than 30%. At least 4 articles have been accepted for publication with one patent provisional application in South Africa and Europe (2009/04368). Citation report from the web of science indicates that my published articles have been cited 22 times. In 2007 and 2008 I was a member of a panel of M.Sc (Engineering) NRF Scholarships. Iam Y2 rated scientist by the NRF South Africa. My experience as a University Lecturer in both Nigeria and South Africa coupled with series of training attended (e.g. Teaching Role, Time and Stress Management, Postgraduate Supervision, Research Writing, Transference in Supervision, Voice and Presentation Skills) has made me an enterprising academia. I have supervised and co-supervised more than 20 final year undergraduate students both in Nigeria and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and 3 postgraduate diploma student’s research work in Nigeria. At the moment, I teach 3 courses at UNISA, namely: Unit Operation, Chemical Process Design and Chemical Engineering Technology III (Module B, Theory) as well as assisting in coordinating the Project and Process Design. I am a member of the following professional bodies: the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers (MO 913), the Nigerian Society of Engineers (10980), Council of Registered Engineers of Nigeria (9593), Student member, South African Institute of Chemical Engineers (5324), while application for membership of South African Institute of Chemical Engineers is under review. I have also attended and presented papers at both local and international conferences, some of which were: South African Chemical Engineering Congress, Durban, South Africa. SACEC 2006; Chemical Reaction Engineering XI, Conference, Bilbao, Spain 2007; First International Conference on Multifunctional, Hybrid and Nanomaterials, Tours, France 2009; Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference Swaziland (SATNAC) 2009; Exhibition of Fuel Cell and Nanotechnology at the IEEE conference, Cape Town, South Africa, 2010. I have also attended a couple of short courses viz: Nanotechnology: Modeling and Simulation 2006; Storm River, Port Elizabeth; Carbon Engineering and Nanotechnology 2007 at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; and Assessment and Moderator Development 2008 at the Rhodes University, South Africa.