Rate My Professor Al Ghafri

Saif Al Ghafri is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering, Chemical Engineering at the University of Western Australia (UWA). He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London, awarded in 2014 for his thesis on the phase behaviour and physical properties of reservoir fluids under addition of carbon dioxide. He also earned an MSc in Advanced Chemical and Process Systems Engineering from Imperial College London in 2007 and a BEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nottingham in 2006. Prior to his academic career, he worked as a Process Engineer at Petroleum Development Oman from 2007 to 2009. Following his PhD, he served as a Research Associate at Imperial College London from 2013 to 2015. He joined UWA in December 2015 as a Research Fellow, was promoted to Senior Research Fellow in June 2021, and currently holds an adjunct position.

Dr Al Ghafri's research specializations include the hydrogen economy, liquid hydrogen, thermophysical properties, CCUS, clean energy, fluid science, cryogenics, and industrial refrigerants. He has led the Hydrogen Technology efforts in UWA's Fluids Science and Resources group and heads a research group on Propellant and Cryogenic Fluids in the UWA International Space Centre. His work involves collaborations with industry partners such as Shell, Chevron, Gas Processors Associations, Schlumberger, Qatar Petroleum, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Samsung Heavy Industries, as well as academic institutions including Imperial College London, NASA, Ruhr-University Bochum, and NIST. He is a Foundation Fellow of the Future Energy Exports CRC since 2021 and a member of the Australian Space Agency's Access to Space technical advisory group. Notable awards include the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference (ADIPEC) Award in 2015, Qatar Petroleum Medal for PhD Research Excellence in Clean Fossil Fuels in 2014, and Dudley Newitt Prize for Experimental Excellence in 2013. Key publications encompass "A Global Perspective on Decarbonising Economies Through Clean Hydrogen" (2026), "Dynamic simulation of a liquefied hydrogen export terminal" (2026), "Speeds of Sound and Derived Thermodynamic Properties of Liquid and Supercritical Difluoromethane (R32)" (2026), "Modelling hydrogen storage requirements to balance the future Western Australian grid" (2025), and numerous others on thermophysical properties and cryogenic fluids.