Personality of The Week: Dr. Mensah-Darkwa

Our Personality for this Week is none other than Dr. Kwadwo Mensah-Darkwa. Below is a profile of the senior lecturer popularly known as Dr. Darkwa. 

PROFILE SUMMARY

Dr. Kwadwo Mensah-Darkwa (KMD), is a senior lecturer at the Department of Materials Engineering, KNUST. He is also the College Examinations Officer. His offices are located at PB 319 and the College Examinations Office. Some of the courses he teaches include Introduction to IT, Strength of Materials, MATLAB, Numerical Methods. He is quite known among his students to be IT-oriented due to the neoteric gadgets he employs in his lectures.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

He studied General Science at Ghana National College, Cape Coast, where he obtained his SSCE. He then gained admission to KNUST to read B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering where he completed in June 2004 with First Class Honours degree.

At the North Carolina A&T State University (NCAT), Greensboro, USA, where he did his PhD, his research focused on ‘’Pulsed Laser Deposited Magnesium - Hydroxyapatite Composite Thin Film for Resorbable Magnesium Bone Implants’’, a study into biomaterials. It is interesting to know Dr. KMD did a straight PhD, that is no Masters degree after his B.Sc. His PhD study lasted four (4) years.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Though his background is in Mechanical Engineering, he has been with Materials Engineering Department as a lecturer since March 2014. He has also been Review Editor for the Editorial Board of Frontiers in Thin Solid Films; Reviewer for Journal of Materials and American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). 

He was a researcher at the Mechanical Engineering Department of NSF Engineering Research Center for Revolutionizing Metallic Biomaterials, NCAT. He was also Assistant Professor at NCAT before to returning to Ghana to lecture.

He worked as MRP / PPDS Team Leader and Production Planner for Nestlė Ghana Ltd. from 2007 to 2008. He also served as Production Planning and Logistics Executive for British American Tobacco, Takoradi from 2005 to 2006. He was Teaching Assistant for his department after his undergraduate program.

Dr. Mensah-Darkwa has expertise in the  Pulsed Laser Deposition System (PLD), Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), XRD, SEM, Atomic force microscopy (AFM), techniques, Nanoindentation, Electrochemical testing, Physical Properties Measurement System (PPMS), Cell Culture Techniques among others.

Dr. KMD has  made a myriad of  technical presentations and research publications in the areas of ceramic biomaterials, nanotechnology, corrosion resistance, etc. One of the thematic areas which he worked on with his team is ‘’Facile synthesis and morphogenesis of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles for high-performance supercapacitor applications.’’ This shows that research is no easy work as one has to know a lot before undertaking the task. It can be time-consuming and cost-intensive but worth the try, since new knowledge brings advancement.

SOCIAL LIFE

Dr. KMD is happily married with three children (two girls and one boy). For his hobbies, he loves to tinker with things, more often than not, anything that is available to open he spends time on. He is a proud fellow, that is, an alumnus of the University Hall, Katanga! He is also a member of the Ghana Institute of Engineers (GhIE). He admits his greatest motivation is his students. Proud to be his student?

Dr. KMD is our last lecturer personality of The Week. We hope you have learnt a lot reading from his profile, and how as a Mechanical Engineer he ended up in the field of Materials. Follow Dr KMD on Google Scholar.

Thank you for being part of our audience all this time. We are grateful! In the meantime, anticipate #ShareYourExperience on MATESA Fanpage.