NRI Professor Veena Sahajwalla , an Award-winning scientist is known internationally as the Inventor of 'Green Steel'

Always looking the ways to transform waste into something useful.

Educating from Universities from Mumbai, Canada and Michigan, NRI Veena Sahajwalla became top award-winning scientist and engineer in Australia, invented the “green steel” a process of recycling plastics and rubber tyres.

Her greatest achievements is the invention of so-called “green steel”, the environmentally friendly technology for recycling end-of-life rubber tyres to replace coal and coke in steelmaking. It has meant that more than 2m tyres have been diverted from landfill and greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced.

With electronic devices, the recycling process is complicated “because there are lots of different types of materials locked into a phone or computer. So you have to think about reforming. It’s the transformation of waste to higher value products.”

Veena Sahajwalla is Founding Director of the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research & Technology (SMaRT), Associate Dean (Strategic Industry Relations) in the Faculty of Science at the University of New South Wales, and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, has provided leadership for research programs on sustainable materials.
“It was a job offer from the CSIRO in Melbourne, as well as the “quest” for being able to live in a society where the environment is valued, that finally enticed her to the land down under in the 1990s.” Veena Sahajwalla said, “Another part of it for me, was the Australian desire to go out there and do whatever you want to do and not hold yourself back.”

Veena said, “I was looking for a place where I could exercise my academic freedom, explore and do the new things that I wanted to do. Being able to work in environment  that allows that freedom is quite rare.”

Her research focuses on the sustainability of materials and processes with an emphasis on environmental and community benefits  and recognized for changing the way the properties of carbon-bearing materials are understood, including coals, cokes, graphite, plastics and rubber.

She has published in excess of 250 papers in leading scientific journals. She collaborated with several companies and institutions in Australia and overseas.

• In 1986, Veena Sahajwalla obtained B.Tech. degree in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Kanpur
• In 1988, she earned her M.A.Sc. in Metals and Materials Engineering from the University of British Columbia, Canada
• In 1992, she got Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, USA.

Veena Sahajwalla has received several awards  and Honors include Jubilee Professorship by the Indian Academy of Sciences, 2017, Sydney Engineers Excellence award (2014),  Howe memorial award by AIST (2013), CRC Australian collaborative innovation award (2012), Overall winner of the Australian innovation challenge (2012), Pravasi Bhartiya Samman for outstanding achievement in science (2011), Telstra National award for business innovation (2011) and Eureka Prize (2005).

Waste – and how to make the best of it – has been on Sahajwalla’s mind from a young age. “I was born in Mumbai. It’s a crazy city with a big population – 18 million people – with a big amount of waste produced and factories. I grew up in a place where there was a lot of industry and buzz around waste, and I’d walk past these factories and see all this waste, and I thought: this is what I want to do.”

“It’s an exciting domain for young people, bringing together sustainability and technology. You can be an engineer and scientist and you can work across the fields.”

Veena Sahajwalla is an inventor “green steel” and Professor of Materials Science in the Faculty of Science at UNSW Australia