Engr. Dr. N.R. Nwakuba is a senior lecturer and academic researcher in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, School of Engineering and Engineering Technology of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), Nigeria where he earned his B.Eng (Hons), M.Eng, Ph.D degrees in 2005, 2011, and 2018, respectively. His career objective is to contribute substantially to teaching and research for development, particularly in the agri-food sector and be part of the dynamic team that works towards applying the basic sciences and natural laws to develop technologies and innovations to improve agricultural/food production.

Engr. Dr. Nwakuba specializes in Power and Machinery Engineering as well as Crop Processing and Storage Engineering options of Agricultural Engineering. His research spans the technological process and system variables for the development of efficient and tecno-economic food and bio-processing equipment and technologies for value addition in the agri-food sector.

His research so far has focused amongst other areas on the drying behaviour and thin-layer simulation of heat and mass diffusion in food materials; design and development of low-cost hybrid crop dryers for highly humid regions; energy-exergy and economic sustainability analyses of hybrid solar dryers; optimization of drying and process conditions of plant-based materials in convective dryers; engineering properties of food materials; proximate and sensory evaluation of packaged food products, etc.

He has published over sixty-three (63) peer-reviewed scholarly research articles in reputable national and international journal outfits (indexed in Scimago, Thompson Reuters, Web of Science, and Google Scholar) as well as fourteen (14) papers in national and international conference proceedings. These articles are accessible on Research gate, Google scholar, Web of Science, and Publons platforms.

Dr. Nwakuba is a member of the Departmental Research Trust Committee, FUTO as well as a Journal manuscript reviewer to many journals and publishing houses such as Elsevier, Willey & sons, Taylor & Francis, etc. He lectures and supervises research works at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as a course facilitator in the FUTO ACE-Fuels program and is currently the departmental PG Coordinator.