'Indian-origin researcher gets $3.3mn grant for upcycling battery waste'

An Indian-origin researcher in Australia has received a grant of 3.3 million dollars for developing advanced manufacturing capabilities that focus on small-scale processing of materials produced from battery and consumer wastes.

Professor Veena Sahajwalla, founding Director of University of New South Wales (UNSW)'s Centre for Sustainable Materials Research & Technology (SMaRT), will lead a hub that aims to transform Australia's waste and resource recovery industry.

The project will deliver new information about high-temperature reactions of waste and selective synthesis techniques to transform waste into valuable materials and products, including metallic alloys, oxides and carbon, UNSW said in a statement.

The aim is for industry to adopt commercially viable technology and processes where low value or complex waste is reformed into high-value materials, creating jobs and environmental and social benefits, it said.

The hub is supported by a further 2.6 million dollars of industry contributions, according to the university.

Sahajwalla said it was vitally important for researchers to collaborate with industry and jointly tackle some of the society's big challenges, including solutions to waste and recycling issues.

"It is time to rethink attitudes towards all of the materials we design, produce, use and discard, to see them as renewable resources if we want to reduce our reliance on finite resources," Sahajwalla said in a statement.

"With this new work on battery waste, we can help create circular economies where waste materials can be reformed into new high-value materials to boost our manufacturing industry and supply chains," she said.

UNSW said it has has secured 8.3 million dollars in Australian Research Council (ARC) Industrial Transformation Research Program (ITRP) Hub grants for 2019.

Professor Rebecca Guy, an epidemiologist from the Kirby Institute and UNSW Medicine, will lead a hub awarded almost five million dollars to develop an integrated diagnostic and pharmaceutical approach to antibiotic resistance.

The hub will develop a world-first partnership between industry, researchers and stakeholders to tackle antimicrobial resistance.

The collaborative hub will focus on sexually transmitted microorganisms as a model of the wider problem of antimicrobial resistance.

"We plan to develop new molecular diagnostic technology and improve the processes for identifying potential new antibiotics," Guy said.

"The hub aims to connect the many complex facets of antimicrobial resistance, to provide a highly integrated diagnostic and pharmaceutical solution to the problem of antimicrobial resistance," she said.