Mojtaba Ghadiri

Biography

Dr Mojtaba Ghadiri is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Leeds. He graduated in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tehran (Iran) and has an MSc from Imperial College (with Distinction) and PhD from Cambridge (awarded PV Danckwerts Prize).  He had a one year postdoctoral position at Cambridge and then moved to Unilever Research as a scientist for two years before joining the University of Surrey in 1983. At Surrey, he held the Chair of Particle Technology. In 2001, he moved to the University of Leeds and was appointed Director of the Institute of Particle Science and Engineering. Professor Ghadiri has been a Senior Visiting Scientist at Shell Research B.V., Amsterdam, and a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Salerno, Calabria and Florida.  Until recently he was a consultant of the International Fine Particle Research Institute (IFPRI).

Professor Ghadiri has served on the editorial boards of five learned journals, and was also the Chairman of the Europe & Africa Board of KONA Powder and Particle Journal, and the Subject Editor of ChERD.  He has acted as an expert assessor as well as the College Member of the EPSRC.  He has also acted as an expert witness for a number of legal cases and has contributed to the organisation of a large number of national and international conferences. In April 2010, he was awarded the prestigious Iinoya Award of the Society of Powder Technology, Japan, for his contributions to the promotion of international cooperation in powder technology.  In September 2016 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In October 2019 he was awarded the prestigious Kona Award from Hosokawa Micron Foundation, Japan, for his contributions to Particle Technology. Professor Ghadiri has extensive collaborations with a number of internationally-leading R&D organisations supporting on-going projects at postdoctoral, PhD and MSc research levels as well as short term consultancies.

Research Interests

Professor Ghadiri’s research is focussed on the development of relationships between microscopic and macroscopic properties and phenomena; i.e. the way in which the microstructure of particulate solids and the micromechanics of their interactions in process equipment influence the performance of the process and product characteristics. It covers a number of fundamentally related areas in Particle Technology:

• Mechanical breakdown of particulate solids, encompassing attrition and comminution
• Electrical effects in bulk particulate systems, such as tribo-electric charging, electro-spraying and electro-coalescence
• Mechanics of particle-fluid systems in the aerodynamic dispersion and fluidisation of cohesive powders
• Granulation
• Environmental effects causing powder caking
• Segregation of formulated powders
• Assessment of flowability of cohesive/sticky powders at low stresses and high strain rates
• Modelling of spray drying
• Numerical simulation using Discrete Element Method and Computational Fluid Dynamics