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Dr Lisa Bai is a Research Fellow in the School of Chemical Engineering and the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology (ACWEB) at the University of Queensland. She is chief investigator for multiple projects advancing sustainable waste and wastewater management, with a focus on resource recovery to produce bioenergy and value-added bioproducts such as biodegradable plastics (PHA).

Dr Bai holds a background in bioengineering and environmental engineering. Prior to joining UQ, she worked for four years in environmental consultancy in North Queensland, developing macroalgae-based bioremediation systems and valorising waste streams into biomass for aquaculture feed, fertilisers, and bioactive products.

Jessica Eisma is an expert in community-engaged research in the context of sustainable urban water management. Her vision is to spark a shift toward hydrology-informed urban design spanning the lot to city scale through grounded, yet innovative research on nature-based solutions for managing urban flooding and on urban modification of rainfall. She seeks to uncover how urban development policy and practice contribute to the occurrence of flooding and to stimulate international dialogue on effective urban water management with nature-based solutions. She is committed to developing the information and resources necessary for urban planners and engineers to pursue practice and policy changes that will address significant infrastructural planning and design gaps related to infrastructure for urban water management. Her work will advance scientific evidence for the feedback between urban areas, the hydrosphere, and society and transform the way we approach urban development. In the face of climate change and burgeoning urban populations, such understanding is increasingly critical for managing the human and property costs associated with urban flooding.

Dr Anthony Halog: Expert in Circular Economy, Life Cycle Thinking, and Sustainable Systems

Dr. Anthony B. Halog is a professor at the University of Queensland specialising in circular economy, sustainability engineering, industrial ecology, and life cycle assessment (LCA/LCSA). His current work focuses on designing low-carbon, net-zero, and resource-efficient systems to address climate change, waste reduction, and sustainable development.

Dr. Halog works across energy, materials, food, waste, and policy systems, applying systems thinking, life cycle sustainability assessment, digital twins, and artificial intelligence for sustainability. His research helps governments, industries, and communities make evidence-based decisions that reduce emissions, improve resource efficiency, and avoid unintended environmental impacts.

A core focus of his work is transforming linear value chains into circular value chains, supporting green hydrogen, bioenergy, circular bioeconomy, agricultural waste valorisation, waste-to-energy, and sustainable materials. These solutions contribute to decarbonisation, climate resilience, sustainable supply chains, and the green economy.

Key areas of expertise

• Circular economy and industrial ecology

• Life cycle assessment and sustainability metrics

• Green hydrogen, bioenergy, and clean energy transitions

• Sustainable waste management and circular bioeconomy

• Systems modelling, AI-enabled tools, and sustainability policy

Dr. Halog collaborates with policymakers, industry partners, SMEs, and Indigenous communities in Australia and internationally to deliver practical climate solutions and support the transition to decarbonised circular economies.

Dr Evgenii Nekhoroshev is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Chemical Engineering and a member of the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Centre led by Prof. Evgueni Jak.

He graduated with a Master in Chemistry (chemical thermodynamics) from Lomonosov's Moscow State University, Deparment of Chemistry in 2012. His Master's Thesis was "Thermodynamic optimization of the NaOH-Al(OH)3-Na2SiO3-H2O system for applications in Bayer's process of bauxite treatment" as part of a bigger project initiated in collaboration with Rusal company aimed at utilisation/valorisation of red mud residues accumulated during the production of aluminium oxide from bauxite ores.

In 2019, he completed a PhD in Metallurgical Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal, Canada within The Centre For Research in Computational Thermodynamics (CRCT), where he acquired expertise in FactSage software, multicomponent database development, and was included in the list of official collaborators of FactSage. His PhD thesis was "Thermodynamic optimization of the Na2O-K2O-Al2O3-CaO-MgO-B2O3-SiO2 system" sponsored by Glass Consortium including Corning and SCHOTT glass producers. The purpose of the database he developed was to assist the industry in designing new glasses with special properties: chemically hardened glasses (smartphones), technical glasses with high thermal and chemical resilience (boron-containing glasses), chemically inert glasses, etc.

Short after receiving his PhD, Dr Evgenii Nekhoroshev accepted a position at The University of Queensland as part of the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Centre's team where he has an official title of Theme Leader in Thermodynamic Computations, combining his broad expertise in metallurgy, chemical engineering, applied mathematics, and programming.

Dr Evgenii Nekhoroshev has always been passionate about formalisation and automation of big research tasks. He started working on developing an automated solver for thermodynamic optimisation during his PhD thesis which was improved and finalised using the ideas of Prof. Evgueni Jak about real-time derivative matrix optimization and sensitivity analysis applicable to large multicomponent systems. His contribution to the Centre allowed to make transition to a continuous optimization approach when experimental and modelling streams of work in the Centre are efficiently combined together. It allows to include the most recent experimental datasets into a self-consistent database update with minimal time delays.

Dr Tebyetekerwa is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Sub-Group Leader at UQ Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation and ARC Centre of Excellence for Green Electrochemical Transformation of Carbon Dioxide(GETCO2), working with Professor Xiwang Zhang. His current main research interests at UQ School of Chemical Engineering rotate around water and electrochemical systems such as electrochemical CO2 capture and conversion to valuable chemicals and electrochemical production of hydrogen peroxide and/or hydrogen. He is deeply interested in designing scalable and industry-relevant chemical cells and generators. He completed his PhD from The Australian National University (ANU), where his research focused on optical spectroscopy and advanced characterization of semiconducting materials and their devices (Supervised by Prof Dan Macdonald, A/Prof. Dr. Hieu T. Nguyen and Prof. Yuerui (Larry) Lu). Dr Tebyetekerwa also holds a Master's in Materials Processing Engineering from Donghua University, Shanghai, where his research focused on fibrous materials for flexible energy storage (Supervised by Academician Meifang Zhu and A/Prof Shengyuan Yang). Mike supervises projects for undergraduate, master's, and PhD students on topics related to the following research interests;

1. Scalable electrochemical production of hydrogen peroxide and/or hydrogen from water*
2. Scalable electrochemical CO2 capture and reduction to valuable chemicals*
3. Reconstructed graphite for sodium-ion batteries
4. High surface area electrospun fibre materials for various applications
5. Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) molecules and their engineered applications
6. Light-matter understanding of 2D materials and other semiconductor materials for optoelectronics*

*Currently funded and active ongoing projects

Featured works

• 2022: His work on 2D materials (https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/S2666-3864(21)00213-7) was selected in the Cell Reports Physical Science “Influential papers-2021” and "Editor's Choice-2021" collection.
• 2021: His works (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2017/sc/c8ee02607f) and other co-authored works (https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abb8687), ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2017.11.012 ) are listed as "Highly Cited Papers" and "Hot Papers" in Web of Science.
• 2020:His work on nanofibers has continuously been listed as one of the highly cited articles for Advanced Fiber Materials (https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-020-00049-5), since it was published to date.
• 2019:His work on nanofibers ( https://doi.org/10.1021/acsaem.7b00057 ) was listed as the most-read article for ACS Applied Energy Materials in 2018.

In addition to his research, Mike lectures Sustainable Energy Technologies and Supply Systems (ENGY7000) course as part of the Master of Sustainable Energy (MSE) program.

Dr. Zhe Yang currently is an ARC DECRA fellow (Mentor: Prof. Xiwang Zhang) in the School of Chemical Engineering/Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation at the University of Queensland since Dec 2023. He obtained his PhD degree in Environmental Engineering in 2018 at the University of Hong Kong (PhD supervisor: Prof. Chuyang Tang). He was appointed as Research Assistant/Post-doc Fellow/Research Assistant Professor at HKU from Nov 2018 to Dec 2023. Dr. Yang has more than 10 years of R&D experience in membrane technology in the context of resource recovery, desalination, water reuse, and water/wastewater treatment. To date, he has published over 80 refereed publications, with total citations of over 7,700 and an h-index of 46 based on Web of Science. Most of these papers (90%) are published in Nature indexed/top-tier journals in the field of environmental engineering and membrane technology, including Nature Sustainability, Nature Water, Nature Communications, Nano-Micro Letters, Nano Letters, Chemical Society Reviews, Environmental Science & Technology, Water Research, Journal of Membrane Science, Desalination, etc. He currently serves as the Early Career Editorial Board member of the leading journals in his field (Environmental Science & Technology - IF 11.3, Link & Desalination - IF 9.8, Link).

Featured Honors and Awards:

• 2024 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (1/1000, Link)
• 2025 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Awards (Link)
• 2024 Rising Star in Environmental Research (Link)

Featured Grants (Sole or lead investigator):

• Lead Entrepreneur, Innovative, ultra-efficient device for sustainable electricity harvesting from CO2, (IG240100353), Department of Education, Australia's Economic Accelerator (AEA) – Ignite, AUD454,240). (Link)
• Sole Investigator, Novel interlayered membrane for highly efficient separation processes, Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), (DE230100114), Australian Research Council (ARC), AUD429,554 (11/12/2023-10/12/2026). (Link)