Veena Sahajwalla awarded India's Jubilee Chair

Waste innovator Veena Sahajwalla has become the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Jubilee Professorship by the Indian Academy of Sciences. The professorship is open to any scientist from any discipline worldwide and has most recently been held by leading academics from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.

Professor Sahajwalla and her team at the UNSW Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) are revolutionising recycling science, enabling green materials and products to be manufactured from the rubbish the world throws away. These include building products made from waste and a whole range of innovative resources for the production of advanced materials, like carbon nanoparticles and metallic alloy and nonmetallic particles.

“Green materials are cheaper, they reduce energy usage and emissions, they are non-toxic and they can be recycled at the end of their lives — and they look just as good and perform just as well as materials made of virgin raw materials,” said Professor Sahajwalla.

Professor Sahajwalla is best known as the inventor of ‘green steel’, a patented, commercialised steelmaking process that is transforming waste tyres in the production of steel in Australia and internationally. Having recently been named one of Australia’s most innovative engineers by Engineers Australia, the Jubilee Chair is just the latest in a long line of Australian and international honours.

“India urgently needs a safe, low-cost recycling solution for e-waste,” said Professor Sahajwalla, who was born in Mumbai and studied in India before embarking on her international research career. “Our approach is to enable every local community to transform their waste into valuable metal alloys, instead of sending their old devices to landfill.

“These kinds of waste solutions are critical for building new, clean industries of the future.”

UNSW Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research Nicholas Fisk congratulated Professor Sahajwalla on the professorship, calling it “a well-deserved recognition of Veena’s many achievements”.

Image caption: Professor Sahajwalla was a guest speaker at the forum ‘Recycling in a Global Economy’, hosted by the Global Product Stewardship Council (GlobalPSC) in October 2014.