Dr. McKay has almost 40 years' experience in academia and industry. He is presently a professor of sustainable development at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Prior to this he was head of department and professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). During his time in Hong Kong he was Chairman of the Chemical Discipline of HKIE.

Prior to joining HKUST in 1995 he spent 10 years in industry. He established his own company, Consultancy Process Engineering and Management Systems, and this company was subcontracted to Project Management (PM) Ltd (Foster Wheeler Ireland) who employ over 600 staff and is Ireland's largest process engineering design company. From 1971 to 1987, Dr. McKay was in the Chemical Engineering Department at Queen’s University, Belfast and he was a training consultant to the BP Oil Refinery in Northern Ireland. He has over 400 publications in international refereed journals and authored eight books about energy, environment and process design. He co-authored the third most cited paper (6,000 cites to date) ever in the SCI Chemical Engineering sector and has an h-index of 85.