Awards

2009 winner Muhannad Al-Darbi

"In recognition of significant contributions to the advancement of corrosion science and engineering in Canada."

Dr. Muhannad Al-Darbi was born in Palestine and received several scholarships to pursue his BSc and MSc in Chemical Engineering at Jordan University of Science and Technology. His undergraduate honors thesis investigated the corrosion inhibition of iron in calcium chloride solutions. For his master's dissertation with Prof. Abdulghani Jaralla, Dr. Al-Darbi evaluated the inhibitive characteristics of sodium nitrite and other inhibitors under industrial operating conditions. Before coming to Canada, Dr. Al-Darbi worked as an instructor and as a Corrosion and Materials Laboratory Specialist at the Central Labs Unit in the United Arab Emirates University. Dr. Al-Darbi was awarded many scholarships during his PhD, most notably the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada scholarship (NSERC), the Bruce and Dorothy Rosetti Engineering Research Scholarship, Graduate Studies Scholarship, and the Faculty of Engineering Scholarship. He completed his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Rafiqul Islam at Dalhousie University and investigated the prevention of microbial corrosion using coatings and natural biocides, as well as the modeling and simulation of biofilms formation and the pitting microbial corrosion of steel in diverse industrial systems. During his PhD studies, Muhannad also received The President's Graduate Teaching Assistant Award and his passion for teaching and research led him to a research associate and a Part Time Assistant Professorship at Dalhousie University. In 2005 Dr. Al-Darbi started as a Killam and NSERC postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia where he taught several engineering courses and was involved in multiple projects such as researching the corrosion of several metal alloys at high pressure and high temperature and the corrosion protection of organic coatings on steel pipelines using the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy technique. Dr. Al-Darbi's research has been published, highly referenced, and presented at over 25 national and international conferences and has contributed significantly to the field of corrosion and electrochemical engineering. This is evident through his 20 refereed publications, many of which are in high impact journals. Dr. Al-Darbi is an editor and a reviewer in several prestigious scientific journals as well as he is an active member in many professional organizations like: CIM; ECS; CSChE; AIChE; SPE; and NACE.