Dr Ahmed Taha is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Khalifa University. He earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, where his doctoral research focused on developing advanced biokinetic and bioenergetic models for biotechnology applications, including anaerobic digestion and microbial fermentations. His innovative modeling approaches incorporate spatial discretization into the widely used Activated Sludge Models (ASM) and Anaerobic Digestion Models (ADM), making them particularly suitable for simulating biotrickling filters in wastewater and sewer foul air treatment.
Dr Ahmed's expertise includes detailed bioenergetic modeling, specifically examining how microorganisms optimize their limited energy resources under conditions of minimal Gibbs free energy. This has enabled the assessment of the thermodynamic feasibility and energy efficiency of diverse metabolic pathways for applications such as biofuel production and bioreactor optimization.
During his MSc studies, Dr Ahmed developed models for bioelectrochemical denitrification systems, addressing significant environmental concerns in both the UAE and the European Union related to nitrate contamination.
Dr Ahmed further expanded his modeling skillset during a research semester at the Computational Biology Lab of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Galicia, Spain where he specialized in formulating and solving optimization problems within biological systems.
Currently, as a postdoctoral researcher, Dr Ahmed is involved in various modeling projects, refining bioenergetic frameworks by incorporating resource allocation dynamics, and developing comprehensive biokinetic models for biomethanation and other reactors. Additionally, he has applied his modeling expertise to public health, creating mechanistic epidemiological models (SIR-type) to study and predict the dynamics of emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19, dengue fever, and tuberculosis in the UAE context.
