Dr. Nimir Elbashir, a Professor of Petroleum Engineering and Chemical Engineering, the Director of the TEES Gas & Fuels Research Center, and the Chair of ORYX GTL Gas-to-Liquid Excellence Program at Texas A&M University at Qatar, has been named a Distinguished Inventor of the Year by the Qatar Foundation.
The Distinguished Inventor of the Year Award goes to the most prolific inventor of patentable subject matter with the highest level of development, marketability, and licensability of all inventions reported to the Qatar Foundation’s Industry Development and Knowledge Transfer (IDKT) office between 1 January 2018 to 30 June 2020. It also takes into account any past activity of the creator over the time they have been with the Qatar Foundation. Inventive works may be in the form of a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof. A patent signifies that the invention is state-of-the-art.
This award was presented at the Qatar Foundation’s Virtual Awards Ceremony and Innovation Showcase, which can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5NjBAyhf1Q.
Dr. Elbashir holds a joint appointment as a Professor in the Chemical Engineering Program and the Petroleum Engineering Program at Texas A&M University at Qatar. He is the Director of Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Gas and Fuels Research Center; a major research center that involves 30 professors from both the Texas A&M University main campus in College Station and the Texas A&M University at Qatar campus (https://gfrc.tamu.edu/). Dr. Elbashir is also the Chair of the ORYX GTL Gas-to-Liquid Technology Excellence Program. He has extensive research and teaching experience from four different countries around the world, including his previous position as a researcher at BASF R&D Catalysts Center in Iselin, New Jersey. The focus of his research activities is the design of advanced midstream and downstream natural gas processing units including reactors, catalysts, and conversion processes to ultra-clean fuels and value-added chemicals. He has established several unique global research collaboration models between academia and industry with research funds of multiple million dollars. He holds several US and European patents and a large number of scientific publications in form of peer-reviewed journals, conference papers, technical industry reports as well as invited and conference presentations. The scholarship of his research activities has been recognized by awards from Qatar Foundation, BASF Corp., the Gordon Research Conferences, Texas A&M University, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Shell, ORYX GTL, and others.