Prof. ABDI Fatwa Firdaus

Prof. Fatwa F. Abdi is an Associate Professor in the School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering (1^st class honours) from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He then completed his Master of Engineering degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, and Master of Science degree from the National University of Singapore, Singapore, within the framework of the Singapore-MIT Alliance program. After a brief stint in the semiconductor industry, he pursued a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Netherlands, and graduated cum laude in 2013. His PhD thesis on the development of highly efficient bias-free solar water splitting received the Martinus van Marum prize from the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) for the best thesis in chemistry and chemical technology for the past five years. He then joined the Institute for Solar Fuels, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Germany, as a postdoctoral researcher. He was then promoted to be a group leader / staff scientist (2015 – 2023) and the deputy head of the institute (2019 – 2023).

Prof. Abdi’s research group is interested in the development of materials and engineering of devices for solar-to-chemical conversion applications. His group focuses on complex metal oxides with activities spanning from investigating their fundamental material properties using e.g., spectroscopy techniques to implementing bulk and surface modification strategies to overcome their limitations. At the same time, his group utilizes the combination of multiphysics modeling and validation experiments to identify challenges associated with device scale-up and demonstrate highly efficient solar-to-chemical conversion devices. With these research topics, Prof. Abdi has participated as a principal investigator in various national and international projects funded by the European Commission (Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe), German’s Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF), German Research Foundation (DFG), and Helmholtz Association.

• Photoelectrochemical water splitting
• Solar-driven waste valorization and generation of valuable chemicals
• Oxide semiconductors for energy conversion applications
• Transport phenomena in solar-driven chemical conversion devices