Prachi Shevgaonkar
Eastern Session
Founder, Cool The Globe
Talk: The Face of Climate Change
Professor Veena Sahajwalla is an internationally recognized materials scientist, engineer, and inventor revolutionizing recycling science. She is renowned for pioneering the high temperature transformation of waste in the production of a new generation of ‘green materials’ at the UNSW Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) Centre, where she is Founding Director. Professor Veena is the inventor of polymer injection technology, known as green steel, an eco-friendly process for using recycled tyres in steel production.
In 2018, Veena launched the world's first e-waste MICROfactorieTM and in 2019 she launched her plastics and Green Ceramics MICROfactoriesTM, a recycling technology breakthrough. Professor Veena is the director of the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for ‘microrecycling’, a leading national research centre that works in collaboration with industry to ensure new recycling science is translated into real world environmental and economic benefits. Professor Veena has also been appointed hub leader of the national NESP Sustainable Communities and Waste Hub.
In 2021, Professor Veena featured in the ABC’s Australian Story and she was named the 2022 NSW Australian of the Year in recognition of her work. Professor Veena was named the 2022 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes winner for the Celestino Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science and was also awarded the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) Clunies Ross Innovation Award.
Fav Climate quote - “Climate change and clean energy narratives often overlook the need for more sustainable manufacturing and waste management practices, where we start to use waste resources for future electrification manufacturing needs. Natural resources alone will not deliver the feedstock supply, so we need a far more sustainable approach, like some of the innovative recycling technologies we’ve developed at the UNSW SMaRT Centre.”
