Congratulations to the University of Melbourne on winning the KBR Student Design Prize

In 2015, my first engagement after forming Sustainable Services was to coordinate and lecture the University of Melbourne Design Project in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. The project task was to develop a process design for the production of biodiesel fuel from microalgae — including algae cultivation, water removal, oil extraction and transesterification (conversion of algae oil to biodiesel).

Earlier this year one of my student groups (Suya He, Robert Murray, Yonathan Christianto, Huixuan Yu, Chen-Yu (Champ) Tsai and Lachlan Henderson) was awarded the 2015 Pratt Prize for the top Chemical Engineering design project in Victoria. This was a credit to the hard work of the team and was personally satisfying.

Then last week we were informed that this same group have won the KBR Student Design Prize — the equivalent of the Pratt prize for all Australian universities that teach chemical engineering. This prize will be awarded at the Chemeca chemical engineering conference in Adelaide next month.

I am so pleased for the success of these students and proud to have had a part in their success. Congratulations to you all.

Originally published at Sustainable Services.