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Professor Chen graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. She has over twenty five years research experience in the areas of membrane separation, gas separation, biocatalytic systems, nanomaterials, and water treatment. She was professor of chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales from 2008 - 2018, the Director of the UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology from 2006 - 2014 and head of school of chemical engineering fron 2014 - 2018. She is currently on the editorial board for the Journal of Membrane Science and was formerly on the editorial board for Desalination Journal.

She currently holds ARC Discovery grants ("Putting MOFs to Work on Interfaces") and has recently held funding from diverse sources such as CO2CRC, Coal Innovation NSW, ARC Linkage program, and CRC-P (Printed Energy).

Dr Jingwei Hou received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of New South Wales in 2015. He then joined the UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology (2015-2017) and University of Cambridge (2017-2019, affiliate of the Trinity College) for this post-doctoral research. In 2019, he returned Australia as an ARC DECRA Fellow at the School of Chemical Engineering, University of Queensland. In 2021, he was named the ARC Future Fellow. He is currently an Associate Professor and group leader of the Functional Materials Engineering (fme) Lab.

Dr Jingwei Hou has attracted over $3.5m AUD external research funds as the lead CI or sole CI, and contributed over 40 plenary, keynote and invited talks. So far, he has 1 book chapter and 130+ publications in highly-ranked international peer-reviewed journals (including lead author publications in Science, Nature Communications, CHEM, Cell Report Physical Science, JACS, Angew Chem, Advanced Materials, Journal of Membrane Science, ChemComm etc), which attracted over 10k+ citations and an H index of 58. He is the Membrane Separation Theme Leader of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Green Electrochemical Transformation for Carbon Dioxide (2023-2029). His main research focuses on understanding the physical properties of the microporous materials and translating them into useful devices for membrane separation, optics, energy storage and catalysis.

Richard Lee is a research officer in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia.

He obtained his PhD from the UQ School of Chemical Engineering. His PhD study focussed on grinding and flotation chemistry of copper flotation. Richard’s PhD thesis:

• Identified the fundamental chemistry issue of copper flotation containing high-concentration pyrite, which is a big problem faced by global flotation concentrators
• Proposed a pyrite-selective oxidation method using inorganic radicals to improve the depression of high-concentration pyrite in copper flotation

Currently, Richard is working as a research associate in two Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Projects:

• The first project, sponsored by ARC, Newmont and BHP, is focussing on understanding and mitigating the negative effect of process water to improve gold processing during flotation and leaching
• The second project, sponsored by ARC and Vega Industries, is focussing on improving the processing of low-grade copper ores via grinding and flotation chemistry

Richard’s research specialises in base metal grinding and flotation chemistry, surface chemistry, electrochemistry, radical chemistry (Advanced oxidation processes, AOPs) and leaching. He is currently working to apply inorganic radicals in metallurgical processes to improve the extraction and separation of several base and precious metals.

Overview:

Simon Smart is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at The University of Queensland. He is the UQ Director of the Net Zero Australia study and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Green Electrochemical Transformation of CO2 (GETCO2). Simon completed his BE/BSc and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering at The University of Queensland in 2003 and 2008 respectively. From 2008 until 2012, Simon was a research fellow in the Films and Inorganic Membrane Laboratory Group of Em.Prof. Joe Diniz da Costa in Chemical Engineering at UQ, where he led inorganic membrane research into hydrogen production, carbon dioxide capture, oxygen production, desalination and membrane reactor technologies. He pioneered metal, metal oxide silica and organosilica membranes, and was amongst the first researchers globally to apply Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) to inorganic membranes.

Simon has been working with the UQ Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation since it’s inception in 2014, where he has focussed on the use of molten metals and molten salts as liquid catalysts for the production of turquoise hydrogen from methane using pyrolysis and CO2 utilisation to produce syngas using dry reforming. He also specialises in broader energy system modelling and decarbonisation pathways, exemplified in projects with the Future Fuels CRC, Net Zero Australia study and GETCO2.

Simon has 147 publications including 9 book chapters and 120 international journal articles at an h-index of 44, with two Highly Cited papers in chemistry and geoscience. He was selected as one of the 2018 Class of Influential Researchers by Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. Simon was awarded a Queensland Government Early Career Researcher Fellowship in 2012, and a prestigious UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award for work on 'Low CO2 Iron and Petrochemicals Production' in 2016. Simon was the Secretary for the Membrane Society of Australasia from 2011 - 2013, where he served on the board of directors from 2010 - 2014.

Research Interests:

Simon's research is centred around the sustainable production and use of energy and chemicals - including the development of enabling technologies and processes for the production of clean energy, materials and water. This involves: the design and development of inorganic membranes and hybrid nanocomposite materials for gas and water separation (particularly for carbon capture); the use of molten metals and molten salts as liquid catalysts for low CO2 hydrogen production through methane pyrolysis, CO2 utilisation to produce syngas through dry reforming, and low CO2 iron production via molten iron salts. Simon also specialises in broader energy system modelling and decarbonisation pathways.

Teaching and Learning:

Simon is currently the course coordinator for: Energy Systems, and Sustainable Energy Technologies and Supply Systems. He teaches into Process Systems Analysis.

Denys Villa Gomez holds a joint appointment at the University of Queensland as Senior Lecturer at the School of Civil Engineering and as a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. She obtained her PhD at the world-leading institute’s IHE-Delft/Wageningen University, The Netherlands in 2013. She applies advanced methodologies such as omics approaches and micro spectral tools to develop biotechnology processes that reduce carbon emissions and recover resources from mine waste and wastewater. She is the leader of the key area “Synbio Mining” within the recently created UQ Biosustainability Hub and chief investigator at the ARC Training Centre in Critical Resources for the Future. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers cited more than 500 times, and has served as editor and reviewer for leading journals and advisory roles in industry and scientific committees (e.g. International Mine Water Association).

Teaching and Learning:

• Course coordinator and lecturer for Introduction to Environmental Engineering (CIVL2135)
• Course coordinator and lecturer for Environmental Phenomena (ENVE3160)
• Lecturer in Integrated Design for Environmental Management (CIVL4516)
• Lecturer in Sustainable Built Environment (CIVL4180)

Dr. Zhe Yang currently is an ARC DECRA fellow in the School of Chemical Engineering/Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation at the University of Queensland. 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 in HKU from Nov 2018 to July 2021 and was further promoted to Research Assistant Professor from July 2021 to Dec 2023. He was recognized as a Top 1% Scholar worldwide ranked by Clarivate Analytics by citations in 2023. Dr. Yang has more than 10 years of R&D experience in membrane technology in the context of desalination, water reuse, and water/wastewater treatment. To date, he has published over 70 papers and two book chapters, with total citations of over 6,000 and an h-index of 42 based on Google Scholar. Most of these papers (90%) are published in Nature indexed/top tier journals in the field of environmental engineering and membrane technology, including Nature Communications, Nano Letters, Chemical Society Reviews, Environmental Science & Technology, Environmental Science & Technology Letters, Water Research, and Journal of Membrane Science. He has been awarded numerous prestigious awards, including The First Prize of the Water 2023 Young Investigator Award, Early Career Stars of Separation & Purification Technology, The 2022 ACS ES&T Engineering Best Paper Award, the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions Gold Metal in 2019, etc. He currently serves as the Early Career Editorial Board member of the leading journal in his field (Desalination, IF 8.3).

Feature works:

1. Meta-analysis and establishing upper bound of reverse osmosis and nanofiltration membranes:

2023: His work on establishing the nanofiltration upper bound framework and investigating its impact on system performance (ACS ES&T Eng., 2, 3, (2021) 377-390) was awarded the 2022 ACS ES&T Engineering Best Paper Award.

2022: Based on the upper bound framework, Dr. Yang collaborated with several international researchers/teams from KU Leuven, Yale University, and Technion to develop an open-access database of TFC desalination membranes - Open Membrane Database (OMD) (J. Membr. Sci., 641 (2021) 119927).

2019: His work on establishing the upper bound correlation between permeance and selectivity for desalination membrane (J. Membr. Sci., 590 (2019) 117297) is the first top-cited papers published in the Journal of Membrane Science in the year 2019 and among the top 1% cited according to Essential Science Indicators (ESI Highly Cited Paper).

2. High-performance gutter layer-based reverse osmosis and nanofiltration membrane:

2017-now: His works on designing high-performance novel gutter layer-based reverse osmosis and nanofiltration membranes significantly advance the water permeance of conventional membranes by an order of magnitude with simultaneously improved selectivity, which successfully surpasses the permeance-selectivity upper bound. The significance of these studies is highlighted by several ESI Highly Cited Papers (Environ. Sci. Technol., 52 (2018) 9341-9349; Environ. Sci. Technol., 53 (2019) 5301-5308; Environ. Sci. Technol., 54 (2020) 11611-11621).

3. Mechanistic investigation of nanofiller-enhanced reverse osmosis membranes:

2019-now: In the membrane community, the concept of thin-film nanocomposite (TFN) has successfully led to several commercialized products including Aquaporin-containing TFN membranes by Aquaporin A/S1 and zeolite-based TFN seawater and brackish RO membranes by LG-Chem NanoH2O®. Nevertheless, the mechanisms for membrane performance enhancement remained unclear. Dr. Yang's works on TFN membranes (Environ. Sci. Technol., 53 (2019) 5301-5308; Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett., 7 (2020) 766-772) unveiled the underlying transport mechanisms of TFN membranes based on a systematic framework of the interior and exterior channels of the embedded nanofillers.

Professional memberships

1. A member of Membrane Society of Australasia (MSA), since May 2024

2. A member of Australia Water Association (AWA), since April 2024