Dr. Turki Baroud is the founding chairman of the Materials Science and Engineering department at KFUPM, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Dr. Baroud also is a champion for several companies at KFUPM, where he is responsible to unify engagement and forge a sustainable and more meaningful relationship between KFUPM and companies such as SABIC, DOW, BASF, and Sadara.

Dr. Baroud obtained his undergraduate degree (2010) and his M.Sc. (2012) in Mechanical engineering from KFUPM. Dr. Baroud received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University in 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Emmanuel Giannelis, vice president for research and Innovation at Cornell University. His research focus is on pushing the boundaries of science and technology with newly designed materials for clean water and sustainability. A special focus on developing porous functionalized membranes for desalination and water treatment (i.e. membrane distillation, capacitive deionization), and non-precious electrocatalysts for renewable energy and CO2 conversion. Dr. Baroud’s work has been published in top-tier journals such as the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), Desalination, Carbon, Journal of Power Sources, and ACS Sustainable Chemistry & engineering. In less than 3 years after finishing his Ph.D., Dr. Baroud served as PI/Co-PI on a number of industrial research grants with a total amount of around $1 million and his group shared around $600K.