Research

My work sits at the intersection of condensed-matter theory and materials design. Using first-principles (density-functional theory) methods, my group predicts the electronic, magnetic, and adsorption properties of low-dimensional materials — and asks how they can be engineered into real devices.

Themes

• Graphene nanomeshes & porous 2D materials — turning graphene into a stable, dopable semiconductor by patterning nanoscale pores, and controlling the electronic and magnetic structure that results.
• Low-dimensional & 2D materials — carbon nanotubes, hexagonal boron nitride, transition-metal dichalcogenides (MoS₂), MXenes, and their hybrids.
• Energy materials — photocatalytic water splitting, transparent electrodes for solar cells, fuel-cell composites, and hydrogen storage.
• Materials for medicine — graphene quantum dots and nanocomposites as drug-delivery platforms, studied through DFT drug–material interactions.
• Electronic structure & transport — coherent transport in metallic carbon-nanotube junctions; doping of graphene from substrates and defects.

Methods

First-principles / density-functional theory, electronic-structure theory, and quantum transport modeling.

Computing

Much of this work runs on national supercomputers. Principal-investigator allocations have included KAUST Shaheen / Shaheen II (Saudi Arabia), IBM Blue Gene at T.J. Watson (USA), and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina cluster (Egypt) — tens of millions of core-hours of first-principles simulation on graphene, 2D heterostructures (h-BN, TMDs, MXenes), fuel-cell catalysts, and hydrogen-storage materials.

Collaborations

Lyman Laboratory of Physics, Harvard University · College of Engineering, North Carolina State University · Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University · British University in Egypt · Fayoum University.

Students

I’m always glad to hear from prospective students — see Contact.