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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 a 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) needed geologists, so they sent me after 45 days to Kirkuk. After a few tours and some encouraging rhetoric about the critical moments in our country's history, and the need to take over the nationalized company, they assigned me to drill the well, Bai Hassan 42. Embattled by a highly complex 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 fortunate to attend Bristol, as it was the number one research university in the UK at the time. 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 received my degree in April 1978, just two years and six months after I started.

Returning to Iraq, I was sent again to the army. I spent around six months there, and in February 1979, I started working with the Iraqi Oil Exploration Company, a subsidiary of the Iraqi National Oil Company. Between 1979 and 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, where I began teaching at Yarmouk University. In 1996, I moved permanently to New Zealand and 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 at Qatar University, and after three years, I moved to become the Head of the Geology Department at the United Arab Emirates University until 2007. I returned to Qatar as a research professor, adviser in the Office of the Vice President for Research, and associate director of the Environmental Studies Center. On April 10th, 2014, I was appointed as adviser to the Vice President for Research.

In June 2025, I retired from Qatar University and started working as a part-time consultant. 

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