Dr. Nayef Alsaifi is the acting chairman of the Materials Science and Engineering Department.  He received his PhD from the University of British Columbia in 2012. From 2017 to 2018, he was a visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests concern the development of statistical mechanical theories for simple and complex fluids including polar, associative, and polyelectrolyte solutions. His interest in understanding the nature of multi-body forces led him to develop a general theory for any kind of polarization arising from polar molecules and ions based on self-consistent mean field theory. His research is also concerned with the quantitative prediction of multiphase systems using statistical mechanical theories without input from experiments. For complex systems, he also contributed to developing qualitative theory for understanding the role of salt ions on phase separation of supernatant and coacervate phases in polyelectrolyte solutions. Recently, he developed an efficient method to pinpoint artifacts from any thermodynamic model using bifurcation analysis. 

Educational Qualification

• B.Sc., Chemical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, KSA, 1999.
• M.Sc., Chemical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, KSA, 2004
• Ph.D., Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of British Columbia, Canada, 2012.
• Visiting Scholar, California Institute of Technology, USA, 2017.

Research Interest

Statistical mechanics of structures, phase transitions in simple and complex fluids, thermodynamic modeling of associating and polarizable fluids for bulk and interfacial fluids, bifurcation analysis, modeling of gas hydrates, Optimization methods

Publications

• Fouad, Wael A., Nayef M. Alsaifi, Umer Zahid, and Hassan Baaqeel. "Predicting the phase equilibria of refrigerant gas hydrate systems in the presence of electrolytes using molecular theory." Journal of Molecular Liquids 391 (2023): 123211.
• Alsaifi, Nayef M., and J. Richard Elliott. "Avoiding artifacts in noncubic equations of state." Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 61, no. 42 (2022): 15661-15677.
• Alsaifi, Nayef M. "Simulation‐based equations of state for the Lennard‐Jones fluid: Apparent success and hidden failure." AIChE Journal 66, no. 7 (2020): e16244.
• Zhang, Pengfei, Nayef M. Alsaifi, and Zhen-Gang Wang. "Revisiting the Θ point." Macromolecules 53, no. 23 (2020): 10409-10420.
• Alsaifi, Nayef M., Mohammed Alkhater, Housam Binous, Isa Al Aslani, Yousef Alsunni, and Zhen-Gang Wang. "Nonphysical behavior in several statistical mechanically based equations of state." Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 58, no. 3 (2019): 1382-1395.
• Pengfei Zhang, Nayef M. Alsaifi, Jianzhong Wu, and Zhen-Gang Wang. "Polyelectrolyte complex coacervation: Effects of concentration asymmetry". The Journal of Chemical Physics. 149 (2018): 163303-163315.
• Pengfei Zhang, Kevin Shen, Nayef M. Alsaifi, and Zhen-Gang Wang. "Salt Partitioning in Complex Coacervation of Symmetric Polyelectrolytes". Macromolecules. 51 (2018): 5586-5593.
• Muhammad S. Waseem and Nayef M. Alsaifi. “Prediction of vapor-liquid-hydrate equilibrium conditions for single and mixed guest hydrates with the SAFT-VR Mie EOS”. The Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics. 117 (2018): 223-235.