Safiya Khalil Alhashmi
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: PhD Rice University
Research Websites: Khalil Lab
Research Areas: Materials and nanoscience; energy and sustainability; reticular chemistry; AI-guided materials discovery; self-driving labs; high-throughput synthesis
Safiya Khalil is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at NYU Abu Dhabi. She received her PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Rice University in 2023, where she advanced the synthesis, scalability, and processability of 2D Covalent Organic Frameworks (COF), following her BS in Chemical Engineering from Khalifa University in 2019.
Khalil contributed to research programs supported by major US funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, and the Welch Foundation. She is also the inventor of two patent-pending technologies that have been licensed to a US-based startup. Her work has been recognized through several prestigious honors, including being named to MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 Middle East (2024), Forbes 30 Under 30 Middle East (2025), and Fast Company Middle East's Most Creative People in Business (2026). In addition to her work on advanced materials, Dr. Khalil has developed electrochemical systems for converting carbon dioxide into value-added chemicals, including formic acid, contributing to emerging carbon utilization technologies.
She currently leads the Khalil research group, which leverages a cross-disciplinary approach that merges chemistry, reaction engineering, and advanced manufacturing principles to design and scale 2D COF materials for applications in water, energy, and quantum technologies.