Elbashir elected to Sudanese National Academy of Sciences
Published Mar 23, 2022
Dr. Nimir Elbashir, a longtime faculty member at Qatar Foundation partner university Texas A&M University at Qatar, has been elected to the Membership of the Sudanese National Academy of Sciences (SNAS), announced the Academy’s president, Professor Mohamed Hag Hassan Ali.
Elbashir holds a joint appointment as a professor in the Chemical Engineering Program and the Petroleum Engineering Program at Texas A&M at Qatar. He is the director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Gas and Fuels Research Center, a major research center that involves 30 professors from both Texas A&M’s main campus in College Station, Texas (USA), and the Qatar campus. Elbashir is also chair of the ORYX GTL Gas-to-Liquid Technology Excellence Program.
SNAS is a non-governmental organization based in Khartoum, Sudan, that aims to grow the science and research sector in Sudan through collaborating in areas of education, science, technology and research. As a Member, Elbashir will help grow the organization’s international networking efforts and provide vital academic and research insight to the country.
Elbashir’s nomination came from SNAS members round the world, including faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and others. The highly competitive process took almost a couple of years and reflects the quality of his research and his contributions to industry and academia in Qatar, Sudan and worldwide.
“I have the utmost pleasure to be elected to such a prestigious organization for the academici and researcher elites of Sudan from all over the globe,” Elbashir said. “I am grateful for my colleagues who nominated and elected me for this honor. I will do my best to serve the nation and building the connection between Texas A&M University and Sudanese academic and research institutions.”
Elbashir’s research focuses on converting natural gas into valuable hydrocarbon products, including ultraclean fuels or useful chemicals, in a process called gas-to-liquid conversion, or GTL. His current research focus is to advance the decarbonization of natural gas processing via CO2 utilization for production of valuable products. His strategy is three-pronged: to develop highly skilled scientists and engineers in the field of GTL, to add value to Qatar’s current GTL infrastructure, and to find solutions to problems associated with current GTL technology so that Qatar can take a leading role in solving those problems for the whole world.
Elbashir’s contributions to the global research community include several international research collaboration models between academia and the industry in which he has worked with companies including TotalEnergies, Shell, GE (Oil & Gas), ORYX GTL, WOQOD, QatarEnergy and Qatar Airways. He holds several U.S. and European patents, and has published many scientific publications in the form of peer-reviewed journals, conference papers and technical industry reports. He has also trained a large number of postdoctoral researchers, along with Ph.D., master’s and undergraduate students, and has served as a visiting professor in multiple universities around the globe.
His research activities have been recognized by awards from Qatar Foundation, BASF Corp., the Gordon Research Conferences, Texas A&M, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Shell and ORYX GTL, among others. In 2020, the Industry Development and Knowledge Transfer division of QF Research, Development and Innovation named Elbashir Inventor of the year, which recognizes prolific inventors of patentable technologies.
Elbashir earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Khartoum, his master’s degree from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, and his Ph.D. from Auburn University (USA), all in chemical engineering.
Dr. César Octavio Malavé, dean of Texas A&M at Qatar, said Elbashir’s election to a prestigious National Academy is well deserved and just one example of the quality of faculty members who are educating students at the partner university.
“Dr. Nimir Elbashir has been a valuable and valued faculty member since joining our faculty in 2008,” Malavé said. “He has proven himself to be an outstanding educator, mentor and researcher, and a leader in the area of novel ultraclean fuels. We are proud to call him a colleague and of all he has accomplished.”