Fahed Albreiki
Ph.D. Student, UCLA Chemical Engineering | Srivastava Lab
“What made me happiest was never the glamorous stadiums, theaters, and stages; instead, it was the late nights in the lab, where I made very exciting observations.”
Fahed Albreiki’s graduate life at UCLA has moved between two worlds that rarely meet: the quiet intensity of a research lab and the public energy of international freestyle football. As a Ph.D. student in UCLA Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Fahed works in Professor Samanvaya Srivastava’s lab, where he develops ultra-strong water-based adhesives inspired by the natural glue chemistry of marine organisms. Outside the lab, he is an elite freestyle footballer who has competed and performed around the world, collaborated with global brands, and helped shape the sport as both an athlete and artist.
For Fahed, these two parts of his life are connected by creativity, discipline, repetition, and the search for originality. His research focuses on a problem that is easy to understand but difficult to solve: how to make strong adhesives that start in water. Wet materials are usually weak and difficult to make sticky. Fahed’s work addresses this challenge by designing block polymers, molecular structures made from different polymer segments linked together in a controlled way. In his system, some segments help the material dissolve in water, while others help it form strong adhesive bonds. The result is an injectable, water-based material that can cure into a strong adhesive. Fahed’s goal is to develop materials that could eventually be useful across many areas, including biomedicine, energy, transportation, and construction.
One of the most surprising results from his research was that the materials exceeded the performance of some of the strongest commercial glues, including Superglue, Gorilla Glue, and epoxy. For a broad audience, the importance is clear: strong adhesives are everywhere, from medical devices and wearable technologies to construction materials and energy systems. Developing adhesives that are powerful, water-based, and inspired by natural chemistry could open new pathways for safer and more adaptable bonding materials.
Fahed’s path to chemical engineering began with an early interest in chemistry. As an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he became drawn to transport phenomena and thermodynamics, especially when he began using these ideas to understand how everyday materials flow, stick, and stretch. That experience led him toward graduate research in soft matter and polymer science.
Long before graduate school, however, Fahed had already built another identity. He began freestyle football at age 15 after training in Taekwondo and spending time in a professional soccer academy in the United Arab Emirates. He discovered freestyle football on YouTube while the sport was still developing and became deeply invested in learning it. Since then, he has traveled to more than 40 countries, competed in international tournaments, and performed on world-class stages. He has been a multiple-time UAE national champion, a two-time runner-up at the North American Championships, and a five-time World Finalist at the World Freestyle Football Championship, representing both the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
He has also collaborated with companies including Samsung, Nike, Visa, and Red Bull; worked with contemporary artists, dance studios, and museums; established a yearly freestyle football event across several cities; and created a judging system for evaluating competitors.
Freestyle football is a sport and street art form built around juggling, stalling, and performing tricks with a ball. Although it grew out of soccer, it has become its own global performance culture, appearing in stadiums, theaters, music videos, advertisements, fashion shows, and video games. For Fahed, freestyle football has shaped the way he approaches science. Performing at a high level taught him attention to detail and a commitment to quality. Years of repetition taught him patience. Failure became part of the process, both in sport and research. Working alongside performers, artists, and creative professionals raised his standards and pushed him toward bolder ideas.
Freestyle also taught him the importance of originality. “In an era increasingly shaped by AI and social media, I believe that a distinct voice and a genuine idea matter more than ever,” he said. “This was key to my success in graduate school.” His experience across multiple fields has also helped him see connections between chemical engineering and industries such as fashion, sports, and the arts. It has made him think more deeply about how scientific research connects to public life, culture, and the economy.
At UCLA, one of Fahed’s greatest research highlights came when he realized that the biomimetic block polymer toolkit he was developing had worked. He remembers collecting some of the first results late at night near the Molecular Instrumentation Center and feeling that something significant had just happened. What followed was even more rewarding: the platform became a rich research direction and opened the door to a new class of adhesive systems. “The platform proved to be incredibly fruitful,” he said. “Watching it evolve into a rich research direction has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my Ph.D.”
Another highlight has been the breadth of collaborations he built along the way, from UCLA and Southern California to partnerships spanning continents. Those collaborations enriched his research and made him proud to be a graduate student at UCLA. As he wraps up his graduate research, Fahed continues to perform. He is currently part of a live artwork at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, collaborating with performers from music, acting, dance, and artistic cycling as part of the opening of a new gallery. Thousands of visitors have come to see the work each day.
He was also recently selected as an official FIFA World Cup freestyler and is expected to perform in stadiums during games in Los Angeles, Dallas, and potentially other cities. For Fahed, UCLA and Los Angeles made this combination of science, art, sport, and performance possible. “From working on cutting-edge research to performing on world stages, my graduate life at UCLA was like a science fiction story,” he said. “It was the city, LA, and the people within it, that made this bold lifestyle possible. I could not have become this person anywhere else.”
Still, for all the public performances, his deepest excitement often came from research itself. “What made me happiest was never the glamorous stadiums, theaters, and stages,” Fahed said. “Instead, it was the late nights in the lab, where I made very exciting observations. Those quiet moments of discovery were far more thrilling to me than anything the spotlight ever offered.” Fahed’s story reflects the many dimensions of UCLA CBE: rigorous science, creative thinking, global perspective, and the freedom to bring one’s full identity into research.
Congratulations to Fahed Albreiki on his remarkable work in the lab, on the field, and on the world stage.
A featured article link from Redbull
https://www.redbull.com/mea-en/the-emirati-freestyle-footballer-you-need-to-know-about