Rate My Professor Komal Habib

Komal Habib is an Associate Professor and MEB Academic Director in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development at the University of Waterloo. She holds a PhD in Energy and Environmentally Efficient Technologies from the University of Southern Denmark and an MSc in Engineering in Urban, Energy and Environmental Planning from Aalborg University in Denmark. Her research focuses on resource and waste management, material and energy flow analysis from micro- to macro-scale, and the resource dependency of clean energy systems, including critical materials such as rare earth elements in technologies like wind turbines and electric vehicles. She has examined resource criticality, mapped flows and stocks of critical resources, and evaluated processing efficiencies of waste electrical and electronic equipment treatment facilities. Habib teaches courses including Principles of Industrial Ecology, Circular Economy, Business Operations and Sustainability, and Business and Climate Change.

Her selected publications include works on the lifespan of consumer electronics in Canada (2026), critical raw materials (2026), grand challenges in critical materials supply risks (2024), planned obsolescence (2023), and a comprehensive estimate of electronic waste in Canada (2023). Additional papers address COVID-19 impacts on metal supply (2021), household food waste quantification (2021), and circular economy potential related to e-waste (2021). Habib serves as MEB Academic Director and contributes to the field through research on industrial ecology and sustainability topics.