Professor Dr. Md Lutfor Rahman

I received B. Sc (Hons.) and M. Sc in Chemistry from University of Rajshahi. Later I obtained a Ph. D. in Polymer Chemistry from Universiti Putra Malaysia in June 2000. Currently, I am holding a Professorship at Faculty of Science and Natural Resources, Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS). Besides teaching, I have more than 29 years of research experience in polymers and organic synthesis, development of metal catalysts, sustainable green chemistry, liquid crystals, nanomaterials and machine learning for prediction. My name is listed in the world’s top 2% of scientists. I am a member of the American Chemical Society and International Liquid Crystals Society. I published more than 170 high impact articles and 4 patents. My research articles received 4186 citations with H-index 37. I delivered talks at various international conferences worldwide. I am the recipient of a DAAD fellowship. I received several gold medals for my inventions.
My research field is chemistry materials for medical and industrial applications.
I developed a low-cost adsorbent for extracting heavy metals from wastewater using renewable resources such as sago starch, acacia wood, kenaf, jute, corn and palm fiber, khaya and pine wood as a starting material and demonstrated its capabilities of adsorbing heavy metals including rare earth metals. On the other hand, I developed copper and palladium catalysts derived from waste cellulose admitted as waste to wealth materials. These metal catalysts are serving with exceptional catalytic performance for the synthesis of many pharmaceuticals, drugs and biologically active molecules in green and cost-effective methods. My work has three aspects: i) reactions in water media considered a green process, ii) reactions performed at room temperature are cost effective and industry choice and iii) a very small quantity of catalysts as cost-effective. I have another field of research on liquid crystals which is interdisciplinary work outcomes on LCDs, sensors, portable organic solar cells. I have been engaged in novel molecular design and synthesis of photo-responsive polymer materials to fabrication of optical switch and optical storage devices. Recently, I have utilized machine learning methods to predict the optimum value of drug solubility for applications in drug delivery and identified a viable carrier for celecoxib molecule drug delivery. Our modeling capabilities for drug development are of major significance for optimizing the treatment with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) among other diseases that benefit from this type of drug delivery. Overall, my research benefits the economy, public welfare, healthcare, and sustainability efforts by providing novel materials and processes which serve to more efficiently treat wastewater, advance technologies, development of novel practical materials that have applications of major significance to various industries including chemical, healthcare, environmental remediation and pharmaceutical.