Sydney: Internationally recognized materials scientist, engineer, inventor, and IIT-Kanpur alumni Dr. Veena Sahajwalla, has been named the 2022 New South Wales (NSW) Australian of the Year. Premier of NSW Dominic Perrottet presented the award to her on November 21 at a ceremony which was attended by Governor of NSW Margaret Beazley.
Sahajwalla, who has revolutionized recycling science, is a professor in the materials science faculty at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and also a laureate of the Australian Research Council (ARC).
She is the founding Director of the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research & Technology at UNSW where she helms the production of a new generation of green materials, products, and resources made entirely, or primarily, from waste.
Sahajwalla has been extensively recognized for the innovation and significance of her work, including via election to be a Fellow of the esteemed Australian Academy of Science.
The university under her leadership had launched the world’s first e-waste microfactory to reduce the vast amounts of electronic waste heading into landfills in 2018.
In 2019, she launched a plastics microfactory, a recycling technology breakthrough.
