Dr. Ali is an associate professor in the Department of . The primary focus of his Chemical Reaction and Separation Laboratory is on creating, understanding, and rationally engineering advanced nanoporous materials and processes for energy and environmental applications through innovative and scalable processing strategies. He received his Ph.D. in Catalysis from the University of Putra Malaysia (UPM). He worked as a postdoctoral fellow associate with Bill Koros at Georgia Tech, where he investigated composite hollow fiber membranes for energy-intensive gas separations before he joined Missouri S&T in 2014.

He is currently leading an NSF funded grant titled "" that is focused on developing a controlled fabrication process for gas separation membranes that overcomes the primary limitations facing industrial use of membranes in energy-intensive gas separation, including the ability to control the internal network of pores and how the material ages. Conventional gas separation technologies such as cryogenic distillation and absorption are energy-intensive and, thus, add to operational cost and further burden the environment.

During his academic career, Dr. Rownaghi has co-authored over 130 peer-reviewed publications, two book chapters, and was listed as a co-inventor on 10 issued patents. According to the Stanford study, he was among the top 2% researchers in his field for career and single-year impact in 2021 and 2022. He is an editorial board member of Modern Research in Catalysis, and review editor of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage journals.