The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay is organising an Institute Lecture on Thursday, October 25, 2018. The details of the lecture are given below:
Title: From Challenges to Leadership: Water and Environmental Technologies in Singapore
Speaker : Dr. Adil Minoo Dhalla, Managing Director, Separation Technologies Applied Research and Translation (START) Centre, Singapore
Abstract: Singapore has successfully taken the challenge of being a water scarce country with limited land area, and developed itself into one of the world’s leaders in water and environmental innovation and management.
This has been achieved through significant proactive investment in Research and Development targeted to not just solving these challenges, but developing world class institutions with the ability to collaborate with and learn from peer groups globally.
Ranked among the world's top water and environment research organisations, Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute (NEWRI) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, operates across the domains of Water, Waste, Wastewater, and the Energy-Water nexus. One of the key areas of focus at NEWRI is Advanced Membrane Technologies.
One of the biggest challenges for commercialization of novel ideas, even if the Intellectual Property is duly protected, is the gap between laboratory processes, results and testing, and the full scale final product. Key risks include scale-up of component materials and equipment, systems level thinking, and testing at pilot scale in an actual application setting. Organizations in Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise Eco-system work in cohesion with industrial partners, to take promising ideas all the way to commercially viable Water and Environmental technologies.
The Separation Technologies Applied Research and Translation (START) Centre is Singapore’s national facility for bridging the gap between promising innovations at the laboratory scale, and industrial scale products and processes. The START Centre, with several industry experts on its leadership and staff, also leads SG-MEM, Singapore National Membrane Consortium, with close co-operation with Institutions of Higher Learning, relevant Government Agencies, and Industrial Partners.
About the speaker: Dr Adil Dhalla is Managing Director, Separation Technologies Applied Research and Translation (START) Centre, Singapore’s national facility for bridging the gap between research innovations and commercial outcomes. The START Centre’s mandate involves scaling up industrially relevant advanced separation technologies and processes from the various Institutions of Higher Learning and Research Institutes in Singapore, evaluating their efficacy at pilot scale, and commercializing them with industrial partners.
Dr Dhalla is also concurrently Chief Operating Officer, Nanyang Environmental and Water Research Institute (NEWRI) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Ranked among the world's top water research organisations, NEWRI operates across the spectrum of Research, Innovation and Enterprise, providing a multi- and trans-disciplinary
platform for some 400 researchers in the domains of Water, Waste, Wastewater, and the Energy-Water nexus.
Dr. Dhalla chairs the Steering Committee of Singapore’s National Membrane Consortium. Since 2015, he has served as the Vice Chair of the Singapore Chapter of American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).
Prior to this, he was the Director of the GE Singapore Water Technology Center at NUS, from April 2010 to July 2015, where his role included leading GE’s technology efforts in Singapore, and liaising with regional government agencies and universities on collaborative efforts relating to technology development. He was also an Ombudsperson for GE Power and Water, ASEAN, and Chair of Singapore’s pro-tem committee on Standards for Industrial Water Reuse.
Before coming to Singapore, he was the Technical Director of the Polymer Science and Technology team, and earlier the Chemistry and Characterization team, at GE’s John F. Welch Technology Center in Bangalore, India. Since joining GE in 2000, he established and led technical centers of excellence in chemistry, materials and process technologies.
After completing his five-year integrated master’s degree in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, he earned a doctorate in Chemistry from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Following a post-doctoral stint at Penn State University, he was a research fellow at the Bristol-Myers Squibb PRI in Princeton, N.J., and a senior manager in the research and technology division of Ciba Specialty Chemicals in Mumbai, India.
With industrial experience spanning 24 years, including 21 years in management roles, his key areas of professional expertise include the leadership and operational management of large, multifunctional teams, strategic planning, R&D in product/process development and commercialization. He has co-authored more than 20 issued patents (US and EP), more than 30 GE internal reports and several publications in peer-reviewed international journals.