Professor Hilal's research interests lie broadly in the identification of innovative and cost-effective solutions to real world process engineering problems within the fields of water treatment, membrane technology and the engineering applications of atomic force microscopy. He has developed a highly successful research portfolio pursuing high quality curiosity-driven and strategically significant research. He has established a very wide range of international research collaborations.

Professor Hilal has published around 300 articles in the refereed scientific literature. His work has also been published widely in highly reputable journals, refereed international conference proceedings and invited book chapters. He has also published a pioneering new book on Atomic Force Microscopy in Process Engineering. The co-authors on many of his publications reflect the strong international links which he has established.

Professor Hilal has been the co-chairman of a pioneering international research event at the University of Oxford on Water and Membranes. He has also been invited to act as a member of the scientific committees in international conferences and delivered a numerous number of invited lectures around the world. He has made major contributions to discussion panels on global water issues and Desalination for a number of science programmes including "Home Planet" and "The Material World" for BBC radio 4. He is also an Editor-in-Chief for the Desalination journal, on the advisory board of Lifeboat Foundation, a member of the project advisory board of the Middle East Desalination Centre, on the panel of referees for the Research Councils in the UK, Canada, Finland and Norway and for more than 40 international journals.

Professor Hilal is the Director of the Centre for Water Advanced Technologies and Environmental Research (CWATER) at Swansea University. This centre is internationally recognised for research into potable and waste-water treatment technologies, including desalination, advanced oxidation, membranes, and colloid and interface-based technologies.  He has been the Director of the Centre for Clean Water Technologies at the University of Nottingham from 2003 until July 2010.

He has been awarded the Doctor of Science Degree (DSc) from the University of Wales in 2005, in recognition of an outstanding research contribution in the field of Scanning Probe Microscopy and Membrane Science and Technology.
The world-leading reputation for research that Professor Hilal has earned in the fields of membrane technology and water treatment have now been formally recognized by the award of the prestigious Kuwait Prize of Applied Science for Water Resources Development for the year 2005. This has been awarded by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS). This prize is one of the highest scientific honours which are awarded in the Middle East for intellectual achievement. This is the first time that the award has been made to an academic in a UK university.

Professor Hilal is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, a member of the European Desalination Society and a member of the European Membrane Society.

Current Research

Professor Hilal's current research activity focuses on water treatment, novel membrane separation processes, membrane nanotechnology, and the application of atomic force microscopy (AFM) to chemical and process engineering. He is now internationally recognised as a world-leader in developing and applying the force measurement capability of AFM to the study of membrane surfaces.

His research has produced several breakthrough innovations, including the development of novel membranes; the smallest AFM colloid probe reported in the literature; the first AFM coated colloid probe technique; the first AFM cell probe technique; the first direct measurements of the interaction of single live cells with surfaces; the first use of the atomic force microscope in meso-scale cavitation studies. His most recent scientific breakthrough has been the development of a ground-breaking AFM-HSMP technique that combines AFM force-distance measurements with ultra-high speed micrography to study rheology and extensional fluid properties (Proc. Royal Society, 459, 2003). All these techniques/technologies have widespread applications in process optimisation and the development of novel processes.

He has also been highly active in finding multidisciplinary, collaborative applications of atomic force microscopy and process engineering. For example, current projects range from rheology of colloidal suspensions and superspreading with nano-scale interactions to fabrication of re-usable materials based on mineral particulates. This approach has been highly successful in attracting both significant funding from EPSRC and industrial interest.