Irshad Kammakakam, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Office: 8.134
Email: irshad.kammakakam@nu.edu.kz
Phone: +7 (7172) 70 60 73
Specializations: Polymer Synthesis; Polymer Blends and Composites; Ionic Liquids; Membranes; Organic Porous Materials; CO₂ Capture and Sequestration; Gas Separation; Carbon Molecular Sieves; Wastewater Treatment; Ultra-Nano Filtration; Oil/Water Separation; Conductivity; Li-Batteries; Fuel Cells

Biography

Dr. Irshad Kammakakam received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Incheon National University, South Korea in 2015. Dr. Kammakakam joined Nazarbayev University in the fall of 2023 as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. His research focused on developing advanced organic porous materials and functional polymeric membranes for energy-saving separation technology and environmental green energy applications. Before joining Nazarbayev University, Dr. Kammakakam was a Research Scientist at the Advanced Materials Chemistry Center, Khalifa University, UAE. He also worked as a Visiting Scientist at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea (March 2015 to November 2016) and completed multiple Postdocs at the European Institute of Membranes, France (June 2017 to May 2018), the University of Alabama, USA (May 2018 to August 2021), and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia (August 2021 to November 2022). Dr. Kammakakam has bagged many awards and achievements including the recipient of the 2020 Future Faculty Mentoring Program sponsored by the EdDiv of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). He also serves as an academic editor as well as a reviewer in several high-impact factor Q1 journals, including Polymers, Membranes, and Frontiers in Environmental Chemistry.

Dr. Kammakakam’s group has mainly focused on the design, synthesis, and characterization of functional polymers and organic porous materials for applications in gas/liquid separation, CO₂ capture, oil/water separation, wastewater treatments, and energy conversion and storage. He has recently invented novel Ionene polymers as unprecedented CO₂ sequestration membranes with Prof. Jason E. Bara at the University of Alabama, USA. Dr. Kammakakam has developed the very first anionic Poly(IL) systems for gas separation technology and successively completed two main projects for the Department of Energy and NASA on “Design and Synthesis of Ionic-polymers for Gas separation Membranes as well as Shape-memory and Self-healing applications”. Dr. Kammakakam is highly skilled in designing of porous polymer materials to utilize as Ultrafiltration membranes for Oil/Water separation. In his recent studies, various advanced polymers and porous materials have been developed for wastewater treatment and ion separation technologies. Furthermore, novel pendant, as well as backbone tethered imidazolium functionalized mono/dual cationic groups having OH^– anions on Poly(ether ketone)s and Poly(ether sulfone)s, are focused as polymer electrolytes for alkaline exchange fuel cell (AEMFC) applications.