Dr. Syed Ahmed Ali is a Research Engineer II at the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Refining and Advanced Chemicals, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM). He has over forty (40) years of R&D experience in petroleum refining, petrochemicals, catalyst development, performance evaluation of catalysts, process optimization, and project management. He has successfully managed over 25 applied research projects funded by Saudi Arabian petroleum refining and petrochemical industry. Specifically, his research experience is in the areas of hydrotreating, hydrocracking, catalytic reforming, transalkylation processes. For these processes, Dr. Ali has worked on the catalyst and/or process development, kinetic modeling and process optimization. His expertise also lies in the design and operation of laboratory-scale and pilot-scale reactor systems aimed at performance evaluation of catalysts for petroleum refining and petrochemical processes. He is a co-inventor in twenty (20) patents on the novel catalysts for hydroprocesses and transalkylation.  He has authored or co-authored over 80 research papers and/or book chapters in the area of petroleum refining and petrochemicals.