﻿Peter, you are the Director of C3 and you have very significant knowledge
in microalgae and we have been able to borrow a lot of that expertise to further our research. So thank
you very much Peter. I think the opportunities are for us to work with your centre – the Centre for
Techology in Water and Wastewater – that allows us to approach bigger problems. That’s where the
opportunities that have arisen between us is allowing us to address big industry problems
that in the past I haven’t been able to address and I don’t think you’ve been able to address.
But together we can work on bigger challenges and I think that’s exciting. I agree Peter.
The name of the challenge is actually embedded in the name of your centre C3 – Climate Change Cluster.
It is, and I think the opportunities that are happening with climate solutions are dramatic.
Every day there’s new industries and government saying what are we going to do and how are we
going to solve this. And I think this has been the exciting thing for us. We’ve been chipping away
at problems but now society wants big problems solved. And unless we come together as groups.
So a scientist and an engineer coming together can address a big problem. But then a scientist and an
engineer with a designer get even larger. And when a scientist, an engineer, a designer and a policy
person this is where UTS can have impact. This is the vision that I think the university wants us to
grow into - where we work as teams that are across different disciplines. This is the big problems,
the big impact that we are the two of our teams achieving. I'm very motivated by our
first prototype. We showed that the technology worked. We've been able to bring together certain
knowledge and technical know-how, so that we can turn waste water and CO2 into valuable product.
I think we started from our individual interests. For you is microalgae and how to
produce microalgae. For us it’s how to deal with wastewater and nutrient recovery. And we end up
solving a much bigger problem which is how to then capture the CO2. We don't store the CO2,
we utilise a CO2 in the form of microalgae biomass that, in my view, we can then use to
convert into bioplastics, into construction materials. And even that field that one day,
we can fly the aircraft around the world in a sustainable way. Exactly. I think as you said
it was bringing us together allowed us to solve circular bio-economies. I think groups around
the world are struggling trying to understand what is a bio-economy, how do you make it circular and
how do you bring together waste streams and make a product. Wastewater technology and algae together,
CO2 carbon capture and then making, as you say, plastics and industry products. This is
the demonstration of what a circular economy is. I think governments and industry are going to be
looking at what we're doing and going “Ah now we get it now”. This is the kind of models that we
need to work on so we're providing the technology and the solutions so that then society can
actually have sustainable bioeconomies. It's very exciting. I believe our solution is comprehensive.
Because when the two centres work together, we have the benefit of getting some exposure to the
problems. Then we can actually use our engineering knowledge to then have to solve the problems.
Likewise we have problems that we need to understand and the more we understand
through the science that you can provide, then the more optimised our solutions could be.
I think this is a real evolution in what an academic will be at a university.
And I think UTS is a fantastic place to be breaking those old moulds and creating a new
style of industry facing academics. I also think that UTS has the right balance in exchanging the
knowledge within the university but at the same time protecting the IP for our industry partners
as well as for ourselves. Absolutely. And I think that's why the industry partners keep
coming back to us because they understand that we work well with a range of different IP issues
and we actually can maintain clarity so that we don't have cross-contamination between projects.