Samir El Hankari was born in Morocco. After receiving his PhD degree in the synthesis of nanostructured hybrid silica by 'Liquid Crystal Templating' of ionic precursors in 2012 from the University of Montpellier 2 in France and the University of Mohammed V-Agdal, Morocco under the supervision of Dr. Peter Hesemann and Prof. Ahmed Bouhaouss, he joined four different teams as a post-doc researcher in different countries: United Kingdom, Morocco, China and Austria. After his first post-doc fellow of three years under the supervision of Dr. Darren Bradshaw at the University of Southampton, he joined the group of Prof. Abdelkrim El Kadib at Euro-Mediterranean University of Fes for a duration of 18 months. His passion for research and travelling moved him to pursue his career at Hunan University together with Dr. Jia Huo for a period of 10 months. He worked as a post-doctoral research associate within the group of Prof. Paolo Falcaro at the Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, Graz University of Technology.

Samir El Hankari has experience in organic synthesis and materials science, particularly: i) Sol-gel ii) nanostructured porous silica bearing organo-ionic species, iii) templating and processing of mesoporous Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), MOF capsules and MOF-oxide composites and evaluating their practical application in catalysis, sensing and separation. He worked also on MOF@biopolymer and shaping of MOFs into films and monoliths. Currently, his research interests involve the development and exploration of new methods for the transformation of ceramics and other solid matters to MOFs as well the growth of oriented MOFs.