SKUDAI: As part of the university’s mission to promote and disseminate the research and knowledge of its professorial staff, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) organised the inaugural Professorial Lecture Series.
The Professorial Lecture was held on 19th October 2011 at Lecture Theatre, Ibnu Sina Institute for Fundamental Science Studies, UTM and featured Prof. Dr. Hadi Nur, whose lecture was titled “Better (and happy) life through heterogeneous catalysis research”.
The lecture attracted around 100 students and academic staff. The Dean of the Nanotechnology Research Alliance, Prof. Dr. Mohd Marsin Sanagi delivered a speech to the audience introducing Prof. Dr. Hadi Nur.
In his lecture, Prof. Dr. Hadi Nur described his experiences in heterogeneous catalysis research. Professor Hadi Nur used examples from his work on the design of heterogeneous catalyst to give examples of how catalysis can be used to meet the challenges in chemical industries.
His lecture was compiled based on classification from the catalytic processes that comprised of examples from researches that were carried out by him together with his colleagues and students from 1996 to 2011 at UTM.
Prof. Hadi believes that excellence in research is one of the ultimate roots of all academic excellence, in both undergraduate and postgraduate education. This lecture traced Prof. Hadi’s personal journey in science detailing some of the highlights on the way. Another message was conveyed in his lecture is that
scientific research is enjoyable.
Prof. Dr. Hadi Nur was born on the 6th of May 1969. His main field in undergraduate and graduate studies was in chemistry and materials engineering at the Institut Teknologi Bandung.
He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Eng. (cum laude) degrees in 1992 and 1995, respectively. Shortly after that, he continued his postgraduate studies in zeolite chemistry at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) as he received his Ph.D. degree in 1998.
His postdoctoral studies started with a year as a UTM Postdoctoral Fellow and with two years as a Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral Fellow at Catalysis Research Center (CRC), Hokkaido University, Japan. He continued there as a Center of Excellence (COE) Visiting Researcher at CRC for half a year.
His academic career began with the appointment as a Lecturer in the Ibnu Sina Institute for Fundamental Science Studies, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 2003, after one year working as a Research Officer in this institute.
He was promoted to the rank of Senior Lecturer in 2007, to Associate Professor in 2008 and to Professor at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 2010.
He has authored and co-authored more than 150 publications on many topics, focusing on heterogeneous catalysis and advanced materialsincluding 60 publications in refereed journals with the Scopus h-index: 9 and the Google Scholar h-index: 12.
Currently, he is a Head of Catalytic Science and Technology (CST) research group and Manager of International Affairs for Indonesia at UTM.