Saiful is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) since 2008 and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM), as well as Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association.
Saiful has received several RSC research awards including 2008 Francis Bacon Medal for Fuel Cell Science, 2011 Materials Chemistry Division Lecturer Award, 2013 Sustainable Energy Award, 2013 Wolfson Research Merit Award from the Royal Society, 2017 Peter Day Award for Materials Chemistry, 2020 Storch Award in Energy Chemistry from the American Chemical Society, 2022 Hughes Medal from the Royal society, and the Robert Perrin Award from Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.
In 2019, he declined a New Year Honours Award of an Order of the British Empire, because he is "never been comfortable with the words ‘British Empire’ in this award and the links to empire, colonialism, and slavery".