Saeed Al-Zahrani is a professor of chemical engineering and executive director of SABIC Polymer Research Center at King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh.
In 1988, Al-Zahrani obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from KSU. Two years later, he received a master’s degree from the same university.
He then traveled to the US to complete his doctorate at the University of Oklahoma, where he gained a degree in chemical engineering in 1994.
He owns about 20 patents from the US, Europe and Japan, and has also filed three more patent requests with the National Industrialization Company (Tasnee). Three other requests have been submitted to the patent offices at KSU and Saudi Mining Co. (Maaden).
In 2005, he received the King Abdul Aziz Medal of the First Order for owning three patents. He also received the King Abdul Aziz Medal of the Excellent Order two years later for owning three more patents. In 2010, he received the first prize at the Abdul Hameed Shoman Arab Researchers Award.
In 2013, Al-Zahrani was ranked first in the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques’ Prize for Inventors, an achievement he repeated in 2017. A year earlier, he received KSU’s medal for life-long excellence in research. He has also received prizes from Saudi Arabia and abroad.
Al-Zahrani is a consultant for SABIC and an adviser to the president and vice president of KSU. He has also worked as an academic adviser to KAUST and a part-time consultant at the Petrochemical and Petroleum Refinery Institute of KACST.
