IChemE Global Award 2021

The IChemE Young Researcher Award recognises the chemical engineer who best demonstrates the impact of their chemical engineering research to address important technical, economic, environmental or social issues. This year, Dr How Bing Shen, a lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak, won the Global Young Researcher Award.

Winner: Dr How Bing Shen

Achievements

Dr How is a chartered engineer (Engineering Council UK). He has over 60 publications with an H-index of 16 in Scopus. He is the author of two books and has been promoted as the associate editor of Frontiers in Sustainability in early 2021.

He was named the Top Peer Reviewer for Global Peer Review Award presented by Publons. In research, he has secured research grants that account for MYR374,400, or equivalent to GBP65,000.

Research focus

In the first four years of his research journey, Dr How had been heavily focused on biomass supply chain, in which it includes transportation design, SVS diagram analysis, circular economy and stochastic modelling.

After he completed his Ph.D. study, he has applied his skills into a wide variety of areas, such as green hydrogen economy, lean and green management and resource conservation network using P-graph.

Research contributions

Dr How is dedicated to bridge research with real world. In one of his projects, he had optimised the performance of a real waste oil re-refinery through the use of principle component analysis, DOE optimisation, and lean and green management. In result, the product yield improved by 55.2% and the carbon emissions reduced by 3.4%. His work was documented in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

While Dr How was attached to HuaChang Growmax (H&G), he determined the optimum oil plant fertiliser formulation using P-graph, and the result was later documented in Resources, Conservation & Recycling journal.

Funded work

On grant application, he secured fundings from national grant, state fund and through industrial collaboration. He led a team for discovering the economic feasibility of building a green hydrogen plant in Kuching, Malaysia. The research acts as an important guide for SEDC Energy in identifying the potential gap prior to the actual deployment of the plant.

In 2020, Dr How and his team secured a state fund that aimed to foster the research that support green economy and sustainable development in Sarawak. The project aimed to convert the carbon dioxide, cement waste and unwanted fly ash into useful green building materials through adsorption and AWL technology. On national grant, one of his projects aimed to explore the feasibility on the transition of oil and gas industry into circular business model.

Knowledge transfer

Dr How has organised P-graph workshop to researchers in numerous institutions and coordinated a SPC workshop at Institute of Health Systems Research. He also gave a keynote presentation in IAGPS and shared his knowledge through the POPSIG-hosted webinar on 20 September 2021. He is also keen on providing mentorship for the younger generation to become a talented researcher. 

Concluding remark

Dr How believed that young is never a constraint, but it is a fuel to explore further without fear. After the announcement for the winner, Dr How expressed his gratefulness for the decision made by IChemE. He also expressed sincere congratulations to Dr Zhihao Chen (National University of Singapore) and Dr Neil Robinson (The University of Western Australia) for their achievements, and warmest wishes to Dr Kenny Koh Kok Yuen (National University of Singapore), Dr Amani Othman Alghamdi (Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia) and Dr Thomas David Machin (Stream Sensing, UK).