Chemical Engineers awarded IChemE Fellowships
Dr Mike Bird and
Dr Semali Perera, both Senior
Lecturers in the
Department of Chemical Engineering, have been elected to
Fellowship of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). Fellow is the highest grade of IChemE
membership and is awarded to engineering professionals of distinction, who are making significant
contributions to the chemical engineering profession.
Mike has been a Chartered Chemical Engineer since 2000 and the recent award of Fellow was in
recognition of his international research in the area of food process engineering. His work
concerns the improvement of product quality and the reduction of water and chemical consumption,
particularly in membrane separation processes. All Mike's research is carried out in conjunction
with UK or overseas industrial partners and he has just returned to Bath from a 6 month sabbatical
at the
University of Canterbury in New
Zealand.
Semali Perera has been awarded both FIChemE and Chartered Engineer status. This is
recognition of Semali's contribution to the fields of membrane technology and pollution control
using adsorption and nanomaterials. The potential of Dr Perera's research has already earned
recognition with a Royal Society
Brian Mercer Award for Innovation in
2007. This is for the development of systems to trap carbon dioxide, and early trials of the
technology have shown that it uses less than five per cent of the energy used by state of the art
cleaning processes. This work has been commercialised with the formation of
Nano-porous Solutions Ltd, a University of Bath
spin off company.
