Dr. Mirella earned her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland in 1993. She joined the Petroleum Institute (PI), now Khalifa University, in 2005 as an Assistant Professor in Chemistry. In 2010, she won the ‘Faculty Service Award’ at the PI and three years later, was awarded the ‘Excellence in Academic Advising Award’. In 2013 she launched the Academic Intervention and Mentorship Program (AIM) and served as the AIM coordinator on the PI Women’s Campus, advising, guiding and mentoring female students who were facing academic difficulties. In 2016, she was appointed as Acting Director of the Women’s Campus, and in the same year was promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry. From 2017 until the end of 2018, she served as Interim Chair of the Chemistry Department at Khalifa University.
Dr. Mirella's area of expertise is applied organic chemistry, with an emphasis on the applications of NMR, GC, IR, and MS techniques. Her earlier research focused on biofuels, including reaction mechanisms, improving conversion yields, trace-metal content and toxicity, and the effects of fuel additives on soot and particulate emissions. Over the past five years, her research has focused on converting waste crude glycerol into value-added products for sustainable energy applications. Her work includes the electrochemical conversion of glycerol, the development of glycerol-derived carbon materials for CO鈧� capture, and bioglycerol fuel cells. She is the principal investigator of a project on electrochemical hydrogen production from waste crude glycerol and has also served as a co-investigator on a project focused on the green recovery of precious metals from electronic waste.
