Professor M.R. Islam is a worldwide consultant on environment and energy-related issues. He is currently director of Oil and Gas at Trans Canada Training. Dr Islam is known as one of the most published engineers in the world. He is credited to have coined terms, such as “green petroleum” and “sustainable petroleum development” at a time when “sustainable petroleum” was considered to be an oxymoron. His work has created a paradigm shift in a wide range of applications, spanning through various disciplines.

Dr Islam's most notable contribution is in the areas of sustainability, environmental integrity, and knowledge modeling, on which topic he has written dozens of books and over 700 research papers. His latest work is captured in his book: Unconventional Gas Reservoirs published by Elsevier, 2014. Dr Islam's current projects include: “greening of chemical industries,” a “virtual research university,” and “knowledge-based modeling.” Spanning a professional career for more than 30 years, Professor Islam has held faculty positions with seven different universities and supervised over 150 research students and postdoctoral fellows. He received 30 million US dollars in research funding from various government and industrial entities. His research spun off a number of technology transfer projects that led to the development of three companies. One of them now has become one of the most innovative oil spill remediation technology development companies.

During 2000–2005, Dr Islam held the Killam Research Chair Professor in Oil and Gas, which was the only Petroleum Engineering Research Chair in Canada. Prior to this, Dr Islam was the first NRCan (Natural Resources Canada) Professor of Engineering at the University of Regina, where he was the Program Leader of Petroleum Engineering. He was instrumental in establishing the Petroleum Technology Research Center (PTRC) and the Greenhouse Gas Technology Center (GTC) in Regina. Dr Islam has written over 700 research articles on various modeling-, management-, energy-, environmental-, and communication-related topics. During the same period, he received more than 20 million US dollars in institutional and over 10 million US dollars in individual research grants, and employed over 150 postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate research students. In recognition of his research and teaching excellence, he has received a number of international awards, including the Einstein Gold Medal of Honor and the Crown and Eagle Gold Medal for both of which Dr Islam is the first recipient in Canada. He taught 30 different academic courses and several industry professional development workshops around the world. He gives numerous invited and guest speeches in multiple countries.