Meet Ahmad
- Department: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
- Year in Graduate School: Fourth year
- Expected Graduation Date and Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), expected December 2026
- Hometown: Cairo, Egypt
- Connect: Ahmad on LinkedIn
Research Focus
What is the overall problem your thesis will help to address?
Mitigating climate change through carbon capture and conversion to pure liquid fuels and chemicals.
Add scholarly depth for a specialist in your field.
Using electrochemical approaches, we aim to continuously and efficiently capture CO2 from point sources. Then, we perform a stable, scalable CO2 reduction to upgrade the captured CO2 to pure liquid fuels and chemicals such as ethanol, formic acid, or acetic acid.
Research Outputs and Impact
Describe any products from your work so far that you’d like to highlight:
I would like to highlight our carbon capture technology that was published in 2023 and a follow-up work that integrates with a carbon-efficient CO2 reduction system. Also, I am including a review article that I co-led, which addresses CO2 electroreduction to formic acid. For more research, please visit my Google Scholar profile.
- Zhu, P., Wu, ZY., Elgazzar, A., Wang, H. et al. Continuous carbon capture in an electrochemical solid-electrolyte reactor. Nature, 618, 959–966 (2023). DOI
- Elgazzar, A., Wang, H. et al. Electrochemical CO2 reduction to high-purity formic acid with high carbon efficiency. In review.
- Nankya, R.#, Elgazzar, A.#, Zhu, P., Chen, FY., Wang, H. Catalyst design and reactor engineering for electrochemical CO2 reduction to formate and formic acid. Materials Today, 76, 94-109 (2024). DOI
Are there any publications or creative scholarly items coming out soon that RSI can highlight?
We have a very exciting article showcasing stable CO2 reduction performance at a large scale, which will be available online soon! Keep an eye out for that one :)
Is there any funding your advisor or you would like to acknowledge?
- NSF EFRI Award Number: 2029442
- DOE Award Number: DE-EE0009287
Sustainability and Future Directions
What do you see as the most pressing sustainability challenge the world is facing?
One of the most pressing sustainability challenges the world faces today is the transition to a low-carbon economy to combat climate change. We try to do our part by establishing electrochemical systems that support the principles of a circular economy.
How do you envision your research contributing to solving sustainability challenges?
By developing efficient carbon capture solutions and coupling them with technologies that electrify chemical industries, my research allows for carbon capture and utilization, which can help establish a circular carbon economy and mitigate climate change.
What are your career aspirations post-graduation?
I aspire to take on a leadership role in proposing impactful solutions to sustainability challenges — whether through academia, entrepreneurship, or industrial R&D.