New staff in Chemical Engineering
Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:06:00 BST
As well as welcoming new students, the School of Applied Sciences is also welcoming several new members of academic staff across our full range of subjects. In the Department of Chemical Science this includes two new chemical engineers, Prof Grant Campbell and Dr Marta Granollers. Grant and Marta join our existing chemical engineers Dr Daniel Belton and Dr Lande Liu (who joined the Department in the last academic year) as the BEng Chemical Engineering degree takes in its first cohort of undergraduate students. Later in the year the team will be joined by Dr Chenyu Du.
Prof Campbell joins Huddersfield to head up Chemical Engineering, after 19 years at the University of Manchester. Grant, who is married to wife Rachel with three children, was born in Auckland, New Zealand, and did his first degree at Massey University in Palmerston North, NZ. He first moved to the UK in 1987 to carry out studies for his PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Cambridge.
Grant’s research is in process engineering of cereals such as wheat, the UK’s major agricultural crop and the world’s most important cereal. This focuses on both food and non-food uses, in particular integrated cereal biorefineries. In the 21st century as we face shortages of fossil fuels such as oil, chemical engineers will increasingly be dealing with renewable raw materials where cereals will have a strategic role to play. Given the issues of “food versus fuel”, his research tackles the problem of how process engineering of cereals and other biological raw materials can be achieved, sustainably supplying both the food and non-food needs of society.
Dr Marta Granollers was born in Barcelona, Spain, and studied chemical engineering at the University of Barcelona. After graduating in 2006 she carried out her Master’s degree in Experimental Chemical Engineering and subsequently obtained her PhD. Her work has largely focused on heterogeneous porous materials to catalyse reactions producing gasoline and diesel fuels, and to incorporate bioethanol in the refinery streams.
After obtaining her PhD she took on undergraduate teaching as an Assistant Professor being a member of the teaching improvement and innovation group of Chemical reaction engineering at the University of Barcelona. Marta first joined the Department in 2013 as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Dr Gareth Parkes and started her academic post as lecturer in September 2014.
With new arrivals, and one more to come to complement existing staff, the Department has a strong team in place to deliver first rate teaching in chemical engineering with research programs that will tackle the major topical problems facing mankind.
