On September 10, Ayalew H. Assen successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis entitled 'Polynuclear Rare-earth (RE) based Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs): From Topological Exploration to Preparation of Tailor-made MOFs' under the supervision of AMPM Center
Director Prof. Mohamed Eddaoudi and committee members Profs. Kazuhiro Takanabe (The University of Tokyo), Osman Bakr (KAUST) and Guillaume Maurin (The Institute Charles Gerhardt Montpellier).
Ayalew completed a Bachelor degree in Chemistry from Debub University in Dilla (Ethiopia) in 2006 and a Master's degree in Organic chemistry from Addis Ababa University in 2009. During his 2nd Master's studies in Advanced Spectroscopy in Chemistry at
the University of Lille (France) and University of Leipzig (Germany), he became interested in the study of Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and Prof. Eddaoudi's work, so he applied for a KAUST Ph.D. scholarship.
In 2013, he joined
AMPM Center in Functional Materials Design, Discovery & Development
(FMD3) researching design, synthesis and characterization of new Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) that offer great prospective in gas separation and sensing applications.
His Ph.D. research has resulted in
eight publications in high impact journals and many others pending
to be published – an outstanding result!
"You cannot miss joining Prof. Mohamed Eddaoudi's group if you have the opportunity. It has been a great honor to come here and learn from Prof. Mohamed Eddaoudi and his team members, especially Dr.
Youssef Belmabkhout and Dr.
Osama Shekhah. I also have learned by exploring KAUST's state-of-art infrastructure and research facilities that I've never seen before", Ayalew says.
"I want to express my thanks to AMPM Center and KAUST for creating this ideal research environment. It's been an amazing experience!", he adds.
Sharing Knowledge
Ayalew is originally from Dessie, Ethiopia and his ultimate goal is to continue his research career in his home country as well as develop research collaboration between both Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia.
"I would like to share everything I have learned here with Ethiopian students and researchers and work hard to build new research collaborations between our countries and develop joint projects", he concludes.
Congratulations Dr. Ayalew on your accomplishment!
We wish you a career full of success.
https://ampm.kaust.edu.sa/Pages/News-2018-AHS.aspx
