A pathway to a new sustainable source of lithium

Sir Rodney Walker

Sir Rodney Walker is a respected and distinguished advocate for many organisations, where he lends his considerable expertise to promote sport, business and charitable enterprises, for which he has raised £40 million.

He holds many honorary titles including: the Chairman of the London Marathon Trust, The Chair of the British Basketball League, Vice Chair of Wembley Stadium and the Life Vice President of the Rugby Football League.

He has chaired four companies listed on the London Stock Exchange and a number of public bodies including the N.H.S. Trust Federation, Sport England and U.K. Sport. He is the past Chairman of Leicester City Football Club.

A chartered engineer, Sir Rodney is a fellow of the Institute of Directors and member of the Imperial Society of Knights Batchelor. He’s also found time to support the NSPCC, being Vice Chairman of the Full Stop Appeal as well as being the Chair of the Sports Steering Group, raising £25 million and elected honorary member in 2008.

Recognised by the education sector, he’s received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Bradford and Huddersfield and has recently accepted the position of Chair of the Yorkshire Society.

David Oddie

David is the CEO of Oddie Holdings, a group of companies forming a diverse portfolio. Whilst his career has been spent predominantly in engineering related enterprises, David has worked in the music business, the magazine printing industry and in publishing.

As an investor he is a shareholder in Aromaworks, the award winning natural lifestyle brand. David’s rich and varied experience will enable him to help galvanise the efforts of the Aqualithium team and extend its opportunity network.

Tom Black

Having won the prestigious Doosan Babcock sponsored award for excellence in design and technology, Tom elected to make an early entrance into the commercial world of filtration where he has built up a broad knowledge of systems and media. Most recently Tom has completed The MBA Essentials Qualification at the London School of Economics.

Tom has been instrumental in both conceiving and developing this project and his passionate enthusiasm has been a major driver behind the speed and efficacy that has helped it progress from its embryonic stage to its launch as a venture with huge potential.

John Jeffrey

John brings both engineering and research skills. CEO and founder of Critical Activities, a research consultancy that uses customer insights to steer effective boardroom strategy, John’s services are employed by leadership teams and private equity houses.

As a Non-Executive Director and shareholder at Pyeroy, John worked with the group board to deliver year on year profit growth.  Profits quadrupled over this period and as the company readied for flotation it was acquired pre-float by WOOD PLC.

John is the former Managing Director of the CAN Group, a pioneer in the market for industrial roped access with an innovative cost-effective approach for civil and petrochemical industries.His early career included working as a project engineer and subsequently as an offshore construction Chartered Engineer with a specialism in high-speed rotating equipment and gas compression.

Mike Astell

Former Director at Centrica Energy responsible for the utility’s biggest gas production business. Mike brings a strong background in offshore and onshore oil & gas from both Shell and Centrica, and a track record in delivery and innovation in complex, highly-regulated, technology-led environments.

He has an international MBA and a B.Eng in Engineering from Imperial College.

Geoff Turral

Formerly CEO and Marketing Director at Porsche Cars Great Britain, Geoff brings extensive experience in leading companies to reshape their product offer and marketing strategy to address new and fast-changing markets.

In recent years he has focused in taking tech businesses from start-up through to revenue and market maturity.

In addition to his current primary focus in taking a transport app through to revenue, he is a Non-Executive Director on the Board of a NHS Mental Health & Care Trust.

Geoff has a Manufacturing Engineering Degree from Loughborough University.

Professor Semali Perera BSc (Eng) , PhD, CEng, FIChemE

Professor Semali Perera has a BSc (Eng) in Chemical Engineering and a PhD from Brunel University, Uxbridge. She is a Charted Engineer and a Fellow of the IChemE. In 2007 she won the prestigious Royal Society Brian Mercer Award for Innovation in pollution control technology.

In June 2007-2010, she was Research Director for the University spinout company Nanoporous Solutions Ltd. In 2017, she was the winner of the Academic Award in the UK’s biggest programme championing women in technology, FDM everywoman in Technology Awards. She specialises in adsorption, membranes and low-pressure drop adsorbent structures for advanced separations, micro-pollutant removal, nanomaterials and microencapsulation of drug molecules. She is currently the Director of the Centre for Advanced Separations Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath. Her research is funded by a range of industrial organisations and government bodies.

Professor Perera leads a team of scientists at the University of Bath whose diverse areas of speciality are invaluable to the research of Aqualithium.

Dr. Salman Shahid – Lecturer

Dr Salman Shahid, has over ten years experience working in three main areas, all aiming to characterise and produce process intensification for more sustainable technologies: Membrane Science and Engineering, Catalytic Reaction and Reactor Engineering and Water Treatment Technologies.

Salman studied Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Louvain, Belgium. He conducted his PhD studies at University of Twente (The Netherlands), University of Leuven (Belgium) and University of Montpelier (France) with PhD in Chemical Engineering and PhD in Bioscience and Surface Engineering.

He has long-term international experience of working in leading academic and industrial research centres. Before his appointment as Assistant Professor (in August 2018) at the University of Bath, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Technical University of Delft (NL), University of Bath (UK) and Imperial College London (UK). Salman is associated with the Centre for Advanced Separations Engineering (CASE) and Water Innovation and Research Centre (WIRC) two of Europe’s leading centres for the development of advanced materials and processes for separations and water research.

His research activities are mainly aimed at developing new strategies for the design and synthesis of functional materials from molecular building blocks and advancing the understanding of the structure-property relationship of materials. His research focuses on the rational design, characterisation, and testing of multifunctional nanomaterials as a platform for addressing environmental, water and energy sustainability challenges (via, for instance, new approaches to CO2 capture/separation and conversion as well as waste-water treatment and liquid (solvent) separations).

Dr. Jannis Wenk – Lecturer

Dr Jannis Wenk studied Environmental Engineering at the Technical University
Berlin. He conducted his PhD-studies at Eawag and ETH Zurich from where he graduated in 2012. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley in California.

In 2015 Jannis joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of
Bath as a Lecturer in Water Science and Engineering.  His research incorporates both water engineering and water science and includes for example developing more efficient technologies for gas transfer and investigating novel types of process combinations for water treatment.

Dr. Ming Xie- Lecturer

Ming’s specialisation is in the field of membranes. His work has been widely disseminated and he has authored, co-authored and edited a number of scientific publications.

His PhD (with distinction) came from the School of Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. Since then he has been a visiting graduate at Yale University in America and a research fellow at Victoria University in Australia and Kobe University in Japan. Ming has lectured at Bath since 2018, supervising graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

Abbas Daruwala B.Sc. Imperial College London

Abbas is not only a Marine Engineer (B.Sc. First Class in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering) but he has had valuable hands on experience at sea with the Maersk Line specialising in pumping systems. He is currently at Imperial completing his studies for anMSc in Sustainable Energy. Abbas will oversee the development of the Aqualithium Harvester.