Sadia Ilyas

About me

Research

■ My research serves as a vital bridge between sustainability and materials science, leveraging advanced hydrometallurgical unit operations. These operations encompass a multifaceted approach, integrating chemical, microbial, electro-chemical, pressure metallurgy, and thermodynamic processes. The overarching goal is to significantly reduce carbon emissions, minimize energy consumption, and optimize reagent usage in the extraction of critical raw minerals, low-grade ores, and mine tailings from primary reserves, and additionally focuses on recycling strategic elements sourced from post-consumer electronic wastes, industrial residues and waste water, spent petro-refinery catalysts, autocatalytic converters, etc.

■ Following the circular economy pathways to unlock new economic opportunities while mitigating supply risks associated with critical metals via processing the waste generated from advanced electronics and clean energy deployments—such as permanent magnets, Li-ion and Ni-MH batteries, superalloys, PV panels, phosphor powder, and waste PCBs alongside industrial byproducts like molybdenite flue-dust, zinc plant residues, semiconductor sludge, and metallurgical slags, my research aims to achieve a sustainable solution.

■ The development and up-scaling of novel hydrometallurgical processes from laboratory to pilot scale, ensuring comprehensive mass & material balance of the system; understanding the mass transfer phenomenon within heterogenous reactions across solid-gas, solid-liquid, liquid-liquid, and liquid-solid interfaces; product developments that includes the precursor synthesis for electrode materials; life-cycle analysis to assess the environmental impact of the metallurgical processes; and the evaluation of sustainable process index values have remained the key strengths of my fundamental to industrial technologies.

Teaching

In +10 years of academic experience, I have taught Masters (M.Sc. & M.Phil.) and Ph.D. courses on the topics: - ■ Fundamentals related to extractive metallurgy involving the aqueous, chemical, and microbial extraction of base and transition metals, lanthanides and actinides, gold, etc. ■ Advanced courses on leaching, solvent extraction, ion exchange, cementation, precipitation, leading towards the hydrometallurgical flowsheet development. ■ Thermodynamics related to metal speciation, inorganic chemistry for coordination complexes, organometallic compounds, hybridization. ■ Chemical kinetics and mass transport phenomenon within heterogenous reactions across solid-gas, solid-liquid, liquid-liquid, and liquid-solid interfaces. ■ Supervision of students’ projects and their thesis works are also part of my teaching.

Background

■ M.Phil. (Research) in major—Inorganic Chemistry in 2005 and joined Lectureship in the Department of Chemistry, GC University Faisalabad, Pakistan (Oct 2005 to Apr 2007).

■ Ph.D. in major—Inorganic Chemistry at University of Agriculture Faisalabad (Pakistan).

■ Postdoc in Hydrometallurgy at Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (South Korea) using the microbial and chemical leaching of base and precious metals from primary and secondary resources (Feb 2012 to Feb 2014).

■ Assistant Professorship in the Department of Chemistry at GC University Faisalabad (Mar 2014 to Jan 2015), and then, at University of Agriculture Faisalabad (Jan 2015 to Feb 2021) in Pakistan. In between, awarded and invited as a Brain Pool Scientist by the National Research Foundation of Korea (Nov 2019 to Dec 2022), while served as an Associate Professor (Research) at Jeonbuk National University (Feb 2021 to Feb 2022) and at Hanyang University (Mar 2022 to Mar 2024) in South Korea.

Editorial Responsibilities

■ Section Lead Editor—Energy & resources in Communications Earth & Environment, a Nature portfolio journal.

■ Editor-in-Chief- Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry.

■ Associate Editor—Industrial Biotechnology section in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.

■ Academic Editor—Sections: Chemistry-Multidisciplinary, Biotechnology-General in PLOS ONE.

■ Editorial Board Member—Geosystem Engineering (Taylor & Francis), and Journal of Microbiology-MIKROBIOLOGIJA (The Serbian Society for Microbiology).

External links

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9247-7540 External link.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=sUISawQAAAAJ External link.