Professor Muhammad Akbar Rhamdhani is currently the Director of Fluid and Process Dynamics (FPD) Group; and Program Leader of Net Zero Carbon Materials and Processes (Manufacturing Future Research Platform) at Swinburne. He is also leading research at the university on Energy Transition Metals. He is currently the Co Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy, TMS Springer Nature, USA.

A Professor in Extractive Metallurgy and Metals Recycling, Akbar obtained his PhD from McMaster University, Canada, in Materials Science and Engineering. Before joining Swinburne, he was a teaching-research academic at Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB) and the University of Queensland. Akbar was also a Visiting Professor at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium and Visiting Scientist at CSIRO.

Akbar’s research focuses on advanced metal/material refining and impurities removal; development of new processes for metal production; thermodynamics and kinetics of high-temperature metal and chemical processes; and low-carbon metal processes. His current interests include:

• recycling and recovery of metals from urban resources (e-waste, end-of-life alkaline and lithium ion batteries, solar panel, permanent magnet)
• decarbonisation and hydrogenation of metallurgical processes
• pyrometallurgical processes of rare earth element minerals
• solar metallurgy (the use of concentrated solar thermal energy for minerals and metals processing)
• astro-metallurgy (extraterrestrial minerals and metals processing, such as metals extraction on Mars and the moon).

Dr Reiza Z Mukhlis joined Swinburne as a teaching-research academic after obtaining his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University. He previously completed his Masters studies (M.Sc. and M.Eng) at Technische Universitaet Hamburg Harburg-Germany and Aalborg Universiteit-Denmark in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering Department, respectively. He obtained his Bachelors of Engineering (Hons.) in Materials Engineering from Institute of Technology Bandung in his homecountry, Indonesia.

Before joining Swinburne, Reiza conducted research in several research institutions including CSIRO Australia and Helmholtz-Zentrum Research Centre in Germany. At Swinburne, Reiza is one of the core researchers within Fluid Process and Dynamics Research (FPD) Group, Net Zero Carbon Materials and Processes Program, and Energy Transition Metal Flagship.

Reiza has worked collaboratively with CSIRO for more than a decade on various projects, including critical and strategic materials recovery and rare-earth metals extraction. He has also worked on industrial projects with local industries, e.g. Envirostreams Pty Ltd, Lithium Australia, and Upala Pty Ltd on materials recycling. He collaborates with the steel industry through HILT CRC, working to decarbonise technologies that can be commercialised and lead to net-zero production.

Reiza’s research focuses on thermodynamics and kinetics of high-temperature metal and chemical processes, critical minerals extraction, metals/materials recovery from alternatives and urban ores, and decarbonisation of metals/materials processes. His current research projects include ‘Recycling and recovery of valuable materials from alkaline and lithium batteries’; Recycling and oxidation behaviour of rare-earth elements in end-of-life magnet’; ‘Application of solar thermal energy for materials recycling’; ‘Extraction of silicon from rice hulls’; and ‘Decarbonisation and hydrogenation of steel, silicon, and lithium productions’.