Biographical note

Professor Ahmad Fauzi Ismail holds a chair at the Petroleum and Renewable Energy Engineering and Advanced Membrane Technology Research Center (AMTEC) at the Universiti Teknologi, Malaysia. He received the Malaysian Young Scientist Award in 2000 and was the first Malaysian recipient for the ASEAN Young Scientist and Technologist Award in 2001. He has been the recipient of several other prestigious awards and most recently received the Merdeka Award for Outstanding Scholastic Achievement and the IChemE (Malaysia) Innovator of The Year Award (both 2014). His areas of expertise included the development of membrane technology for reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, ultrafiltration, membrane contactors, gas separation and development of nanofibers and carbon nanostructured materials for energy related applications. He has been highly successful in attracting major funding in these areas and has several patents, more than 400 technical or scientific papers in well-established and high impact factor international refereed journals. Dr. Kailash Chandra Khulbe graduated with a Ph. D. degree in 1963 from Agra University, Agra, India, with a thesis on ‘Kinetic Study of the Oxidation of Aldehydes, Ketones, and the other related Compounds, by Persulphate ion. He joined the Chemical Engineering Department the University Ottawa. His work was focused on hydrogenation using Nobel metals and Ni-Cu alloys as a catalyst. He Joined Dr. Matsuura group in 1995 and stated work on membrane technology. He has published more than 400 research articles including 16 reviews including many book chapters. He has extensive work experience on ESR, AFM, IR, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray, Gas chromatography, Analytical Chemistry, Desalination, Synthetic membranes etc. He wrote two books on ‘Synthetic Polymeric Membranes: Characterization by Atomic Force Microscopy (other authors: Dr. T. Matsuura and Dr. C.Y. Feng) and ‘Gas Separation Membranes; Polymeric and Inorganic (other authors (Dr. Ismail, And Dr. T. Matsuura) Professor Takeshi Matsuura is a senior academic with a career spanning more than 50 years and has held several distinguished posts in many countries including the USA, Canada, Japan, Germany and Singapore. Most recently he joined the University of Ottawa (1992) as the British Gas/NSERC Industrial Research Chair. He served as professor of the Department of Chemical Engineering and the director of the Industrial Membrane Research Institute (IMRI) until he retired in 2002 and was appointed as professor emeritus in 2003. He received the Research Award of International Desalination and Environmental Association in 1983. He is a fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada and a member of the North American Membrane Society. He has delivered plethora of invited lectures and presentations to many of the world’s foremost scientific events and conferences. He has published over 400 papers in refereed journals, authored and co-authored 6 books and edited 8 books. A special symposium was held at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the North American Membrane Society to honour Prof. Matsuura (together with Dr. S. Sourirajan) for life-long contributions to membrane research and a similarly the International Conference on Membrane Science and Technology 2013 was held in his honour. In addition, he has received the George S. Glinski Award for Excellence in Research and the occasion of his 75th birthday was marked with a special edition of the journal Desalination.