PZETS-2025 Oral Presentation：Sustainable Valorization of Biomass into Functional Biochars for Wastewater Treatment and Soil Amendment for Land Reclamation

Mohamed Gamal El-Din

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1H9, Canada

(e-mail: mgamalel-din@ualberta.ca)

Dr. Mohamed Gamal El-Din is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on innovative treatment approaches for municipal and industrial wastewater, including oil and gas. Since 2011, he has held an NSERC Senior Industrial Research Chair in Oil Sands Tailings Water Treatment and is also a Theme Lead for the Future Energy Systems (FES) theme on Resilient Reclaimed Land and Water Systems. In 2017, Dr. Gamal El-Din was awarded the Alberta Science and Technology Leadership (ASTech) Foundation Award for Innovation in Oil Sands Research. He is a Jinshan Distinguished Professor at Jiangsu University and was awarded the Research Chair in Environmental Engineering at Tongji University in China in 2020. In 2023, he was appointed the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Sustainable and Resilient Wastewater Treatment for Reuse. Additionally, he was named the UofA Engineering Research Chair in Community-Based Wastewater Management with a focus on advancing a circular economy. In 2024, he was the recipient of the Albert E. Berry Award by the Board of Directors of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering for his career-long outstanding contributions to the field of environmental engineering in Canada. Dr. Gamal El-Din also serves as the Director of the Water Research Centre (WRC). Dr. Gamal El-Din's commitment to education and research is unparalleled. Over the course of two decades, he has supervised a diverse group of 207 students and staff members. Under his mentorship, these individuals have grown into accomplished professionals who are making significant contributions to their respective fields. Dr. Gamal El-Din is also a prolific researcher, with an extensive body of work that includes 332 peer-reviewed journal papers and 414 conference and workshop presentations, among other publications. His contributions to the field have been widely recognized, as evidenced by his impressive h-index of 70, and 16,529 citations as per Google Scholar.