Mahdi Al-Zerkani brings to Uberbinder the perspective of an engineer who has spent his career actually building roads. A civil engineer with more than 12 years supervising major road and bridge projects — and now Uberbinder's fractional Asphalt Technician and a PhD researcher at the University of Nottingham — he sits at the meeting point of field and science, exactly where Uberbinder's bio-binder must prove itself on its way from lab to road.

His grounding is in the realities of construction. Over more than a decade with the Directorate of Roads and Bridges in Wasit Governorate, Iraq, he supervised road networks, multi-lane highways, grade-separated interchanges, and bridges over the Tigris, rising to Head of the Planning and Follow-up Division and, later, Deputy Director of Roads and Bridges.

That practical command is matched by research depth. Mahdi earned bachelor's and master's degrees in highway and transportation engineering from the University of Technology, Baghdad — graduating second in his class as an undergraduate and first as a postgraduate — and has published peer-reviewed studies on modifying and rejuvenating asphalt binders using waste vegetable oils and recycled plastics.

At Nottingham, his Uberbinder-sponsored doctorate, supervised by Dr Nick Thom, tests the company's sulfur-based bio-binder as binder, mix, and pavement — building the evidence and the 'playbook' the industry needs to trust an innovative material, and helping accelerate Uberbinder's path to field trials.