29 April 2021
Drs. Gaurav Bhattacharjee and Lu Kangjia from the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) at National University of Singapore (NUS) are among the 2021 Class of Forbes 30 under 30 Asia. Forbes gives the honor this year to 300 top entrepreneurs under 30 years old in Asia. The hororees have been identified from a pool of 2500 nominations. Both Drs. Bhattacharjee and Lu and are in the sector of Healthcare & Science (30 honorees per sector every year).
Dr. Bhattacharjee is a Research Fellow working with Associate Professor Praveen Linga on natural gas storage. Natural gas is the cleanest form of fossil resources. It can be used to generate power with lower carbon emission than coal and liquid fuels. Wider utilization of this resource will partly depend on development of new technologies that can store natural gas at a lower cost. Dr. Bhattacharjee and their team focus on transforming natural gas in a safer and cheaper way into solid hydrates that are suitable for long-term storage.
Dr. Lu is a Research Fellow working with Professor Neal Chung on membrane distillation, a technology that can potentially be used to recycle wastewater at lower cost than existing methods. With climate change, water scarcity is becoming a global challenge and is especially a concern to Singapore, a city-state nation heavily relying on water import. The new distillation technology developed by Dr. Lu and her colleagues is already being used commercially in Singapore.
The official announcements from Forbes are
(Dr. Bhattacharjee) https://www.forbes.com/profile/gaurav-bhattacharjee/?list=30under30-asia-healthcare-science&sh=6d5a845c6048
(Dr. Lu) https://www.forbes.com/profile/lu-kangjia/?list=30under30-asia-healthcare-science&sh=194a35113c7d
More information on their research can be found through the following links:
(Dr. Bhattacharjee & Prof. Linga) https://blog.nus.edu.sg/lingalab/
(Dr. Lu & Prof. Chung) https://blog.nus.edu.sg/membrane/