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To make a long story short, I graduated with a B.Sc. degree in Geology from the University of Baghdad in June 1974. After few weeks I was sent to the army and started training in the Military Engineering School. Luckily the newly nationalized Iraqi Company for Oil Operations (the new name of the IPC) was in need of geologists so they sent me after 45 days to Kirkuk. After few tours and some encouraging rhetoric about the critical moments in the history of our country and that we need to take over the nationalized company, they assigned to me drilling the well Bai Hassan 42. Embattled by a very complicated geology, cold weather and the Kurdish warriors, I started my career in geology.

After exactly one year, I got a scholarship from the Ministry of Oil, got married to a geologist and traveled to Bristol University to do my Ph.D. on the Cretaceous reservoirs of Northern Iraq. I was lucky to go to Bristol because it is the number one research university in the UK and I had a great supervisor Douglas Hamilton and the legendary H.V. Dunnington, Head of Geology at the IPC as my co-supervisor. My time in Bristol moulded me into a new person. I got my degree in April 1978 just after two years and six months.

Returning back to Iraq I was sent again to the army. I spent there around six months and in February 1979 I started working with the Iraqi Oil Exploration Company, a subsidiary of Iraq National Oil Company. Between 1979-1991 I was called to the army 11 times: even Montgomery did not have to serve that long!

In June 1991, I left Iraq and settled in Irbid, a wonderful city in northern Jordan and started teaching at Yarmouk University. in 1996 I moved permanently to New Zealand ad worked with the New Ventures Group of Fletcher Challenge Energy (which was bought and closed by Shell). In September 1998 I joined the Department of Geology, Qatar University and after three years I moved to become the Head of the Geology Department in the United Arab Emirates University till 2007. Since then I moved back to Qatar as a research professor, adviser in the Office of the Vice President of Research and associate director of the Environmental Studies Center. On April 10th, 2014 I have been appointed as adviser to the Vice President for Research.

I am a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and served between 1983-1988 as a council member of the International Association for Mathematical Geology.

My research interests are changing with time and at the moments I do research in carbonate reservoirs, evaporites and microbial sediments.

I love books, watching movies, cooking and vegetable gardening.