AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Maksim Islam, 3rd Year PhD student at NC State University, Research & Development (R & D)
MOHAMMAD MAKSIMUL ISLAM, North Carolina State University
Abstract Number: 567 Working Group: Meet the Job Seekers
Abstract My name is Maksim Islam, a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU).
What drives me to work in the field of environmental engineering, and air quality, in particular, is largely my experience at home in Bangladesh. There, the black smoke curls up from brick kilns and the smog shrouds the sky of Dhaka (the capital city), with its ant-like army of vehicles clogging up the streets. My undergraduate research (conducted in Bangladesh) allowed me to elucidate dynamic interactions between meteorology, pollution sources, and the fates of atmospheric aerosols, with the ultimate goal of improving air quality and reducing human exposures to air pollutants. Later, after witnessing the unbearable sufferings of the people living in coastal Bangladesh- due to a scarcity of potable water- I was drawn to rainwater harvesting research, the focus of my M.Sc. During this time, I applied my programming and modeling skills to develop design curves for storage tank sizing based on reliability concepts. My strong mathematical background always encourages me to blend mathematical concepts and programming skills in my field of interest.
I began my Ph.D. research work at NCSU on air pollutant emissions and indoor air quality impacts of cookstoves. Globally over 3 billion people use biomass stove, and the emissions from it are associated with 4 million premature death each year. With a dream to change this scenario, I work as a part of a large interdisciplinary team to analyze data from a multi-year cookstove intervention project in rural India. My prime foci are emissions from cookstoves and their subsequent influence on indoor air quality, which interact with stove choice, stove adoption and diffusion, and fuel use.
I am planning to defend my Ph.D. dissertation in summer of 2020. I am interested in both academia and industry, and dream of attaining a postdoctoral research position that focuses on the energy-emission-indoor air-policy nexus.