Dr. Turki Baroud, the founding chairman of the Materials Science and Engineering department at KFUPM, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 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. 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, 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 $600 K.

Educational Qualification

• Ph.D., Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, USA, 2018
• M.Sc., Mechanical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, KSA, 2012
• B.Sc., Mechanical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, KSA, 2010

Courses Taught:

• ME   217: Materials Science and Engineering (Lab)
• ME   216: Materials Science and Engineering
• MSE 501: Materials Structure and Defects
• MSE 545: Membrane Based Desalination

Research Interest

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.

Research Highlights

Representative Publications

Porous functionalized membranes for desalination and water treatment. (Capacitive Deionization CDI, Membrane Distillation MD, Microfiltration)

• Azeem, M.A.; Lawal, D.U.; Al Abdulgader, H.; Baroud, T.N*. Enhanced Performance of Superhydrophobic Polyvinylidene Fluoride Membrane with Sandpaper Texture for Highly Saline Water Desalination in Air-Gap Membrane Distillation. Desalination 2022, 528, 115603.

• Baroud, T. N. & Giannelis, E. P. Role of Mesopore Structure of Hierarchical Porous Carbons on the Electrosorption Performance of Capacitive Deionization Electrodes. ACS Sustain. Chem. Eng. 7, 7580–7596 (2019).

• Baroud, T. N. & Giannelis, E. P. High Salt Capacity and High Removal Rate Capacitive Deionization Enabled by Hierarchical Porous Carbons. Carbon N. Y. 139, 614–625 (2018).

Highly active Electrocatalysts for renewable energy and CO2 conversion

• Wang, J.; Cheng, T.; Fenwick, A. Q.; Baroud, T. N.; Rosas-Hernández, A.; Ko, J. H.; Gan, Q.; Goddard, W. A., III; Grubbs, R. H. Selective CO2 Electrochemical Reduction Enabled by a Tricomponent Copolymer Modifier on a Copper Surface. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2021, 143, 2857,  DOI: 10.1021/jacs.0c12478
• Younas, M., Baroud, T. N.*, Gondal, M. A.*, Dastageer, M. A. & Giannelis, E. P. Highly Efficient, Cost-effective Counter Electrodes For Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs) Augmented By Highly Mesoporous Carbons. J. Power Sources 468, 228359 (2020).
• Suliman, Munzir H., Turki N. Baroud*, Mohammad N. Siddiqui, Mohammad Qamar, and Emmanuel P. Giannelis. "Confined growth and dispersion of FeP nanoparticles in highly mesoporous carbons as efficient electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction." International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 46, no. 12 (2021): 8507-8518.

Drug Delivery

• Nanaki, Stavroula G., Konstantinos Spyrou, Chryssa Bekiari, Pelagia Veneti, Turki N. Baroud, Niki Karouta, Ioannis Grivas, Georgios C. Papadopoulos, Dimitrios Gournis, and Dimitrios N. Bikiaris. Hierarchical Porous Carbon—PLLA and PLGA Hybrid Nanoparticles for Intranasal Delivery of Galantamine for Alzheimer's Disease therapy. Pharmaceutics 12, (2020).

Representative Ongoing Projects

• Development of Highly Efficient Membranes for Desalination of Produced Water.

• Synthesis of Functionalized Porous Materials for Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 to Useful Chemicals.