Veena Sahajwalla
Veena Sahajwalla
UNSW Smartlab Founder
Scientia Professor Veena Sahajwalla is the Director of SMaRT Centre (Sustainable Materials Research & Technology) and Associate Dean (Strategic Industry Relations) faculty of Science, UNSW. Her research interests include sustainability of materials and processes with emphasis on environmental benefits. She invented an environmentally friendly process for recycling plastics and rubber tyres in electric arc furnace steelmaking. She is an international award winning engineer. In 2012 she was named Overall Winner of the Australian Innovation Challenge Award. She was awarded the 2012 Banksia Award, the GE Eco Innovation Award and the 2005 Eureka Prize for Scientific Research. She has established excellent working relationships with national and international organisations. She was an ARC- Future Fellow and a long-serving judge on ABC television’s The New inventors. In 2022 Veena was awarded NSW Australian of the Year.
Related Sessions
Featured Session: Addressing The Global E-Waste Crisis.
TUE, OCT 17, 12:30 PM
Conference
Australia’s waste and resource recovery industry is being increasingly challenged by complex e-waste. Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest waste estimate figures show the Australian economy domestically generated 539,000 tonnes of e-waste in 2019, with more than 50% going to landfill and only 17.4% being claimed as recycled but much of this goes offshore where outcomes are unknown. UNSW SMaRT Centre Director, Professor Veena Sahajwalla has pioneered the science of microrecycling and developed a range of MICROfactorieTM technologies, including modules to harness from complex e-waste the valuable materials within. She has teamed up with Renew IT CEO James Lancaster to pilot and commercialise this e-waste MICROfactorieTM technology to increase waste resource recovery and sustainably produce some of the essential materials needed for future manufacturing of electrification components.
