Sustainable Cities

Research under this theme focuses on how to improve life for those living in cities today and how to reduce the impact they have on the areas around them. Major issues such as pollution, traffic congestion, crime, public health will be under the spotlight.The first major project is on plastics pollution. South East Asia is both a major plastics polluter and has been a dumping ground for waste plastics from the West. Bringing together academics with expertise on cleaning up waste, to the economics of plastics use and from social media analysts to politicians and public policy researchers, we aim to find credible solutions to both cleaning up the problems and finding viable alternatives.

Lancaster University Theme Members

Professor Kirk Semple

Interim Director, FCRI

Professor & Associate Dean international for Faculty of Science and Technology

I am a Professor of Environmental Microbiology with over 30 years of research experience.My main fields of research interest include understanding fundamental processes affecting organic contaminant-biota interactions in soils; availability of organic contaminant residues in soils, and risk assessment and bioremediation of contaminated land and, most recently, bioenergy and the use of microorganisms for energy generation and the application of resulting by-products as soil amendments or alternatives to conventional fertiliser.

A particular area of expertise lies in organic contaminant bioavailability in soil, and it is in this area where my reputation is best known internationally.

Funding has come from NERC, BBSRC, EPSRC and GCRF (ESRC); Government agencies, Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (CRC CARE), equating to over £15 M and I have successfully supervised 40 PhD students, with 20 from overseas. Output from my research has led to the publication of over 200 peer-reviewed journal, book chapters and international conference papers and I have a H-index of 46 (WoS), 47 (Scopus) and 57 (Google Scholar).

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Sunway University Theme Members

Professor Mohamed Kheireddine Aroua

Professor/Associate Dean (Research)/ Head Centre for Carbon Dioxide Capture and Utilisation (CCDCU)

Research Interests: CO2 capture and utilisation | Water and wastewater treatment | Separation processes: Membrane technology, adsorption, absorption| Electrochemical conversions.

Professor Mohamed Kheireddine Aroua completed his PhD in 1992 at the University of Nancy 1, France. Before joining Sunway University, he served for more than 23 years at University of Malaya where he held many administration positions such as Deputy Dean at the Institute of Graduate Studies, Head of Chemical Engineering Department and Head of the Center for Separation Science and Technology.

His research addresses the fundamental and technical issues related to water, energy and environment. He is interested in developing green solvents, sorbents and processes for CO2 capture and utilisation; treatment of water and wastewater using novel adsorbents and advanced electrochemical processes; production of biodiesel and transformation of its by-products to value-added chemicals; and providing safe water to communities in remote areas through the application of membrane technology. He has supervised the completion of 22 PhD and 20 Master’s students. His research has generated more than 150 articles in ISI-ranked journals and over 5,000 citations, and his h-index is 38.

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Professor Agamuthu Pariatamby

Professor at Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development

Research Interests: Marine debris and microplastic | Sustainable consumption and green city | Sustainable development goals in waste management | Sustainable use of Biomass and Resources | Treatment of wastewater using novel substances

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Professor Yuka Fujimoto

Professor/ Associate Dean - Postgraduate and Research Department of Management

Research Interests: Inclusive business and society to reduce inequality | Integrated community to address Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations | Work enrichment processes and outcomes

Her research areas include community-business interface for creating inclusive business; inclusive human resource management policies and practices; and work-life enrichment for different social groups. She holds a Bachelor of Business Management First Class Honours from the University of Queensland Business School (Brisbane, Australia) and her PhD in Business Administration from Monash University (Melbourne, Australia).

Her research has been published in leading journals such as British Journal of Management, Business and Society, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Review. She is a recipient of best paper proceedings at Academy of Management and Asia Academy of Management conferences. She is also an author of a textbook entitled Human Resource Management (Pearson) which approaches the topic from a wellbeing perspective. She is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Management & Organization and also has served as an executive member of Academy of Management (AOM), U.S. Diversity Inclusion Theme Committee, focusing on Member Inclusion at AOM.

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Associate Professor Teh Phoey Lee Heard

Associate Professor, Department of Computing and Information Systems

Research Interests: Sentiment analytics | Social media analytics | Textual analysis | Information Acquisition

Dr Teh Phoey Lee is Associate Professor at the School of Science and Technology, Sunway University. She is a reviewer for journals and conferences and is a senior member of the IEEE Association. She has published more than four-fifths of peer-reviewed papers in international journals and has secured nearly a total of RM500,000 in both internal and external research funding in the past. She is able to converse multilingually including English, Mandarin, Malay, Hokkien and Cantonese. Her research collaborators span across Malaysia, Taiwan, China, the United Kingdom and the United States.

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Associate Professor Mayco A Santaella

Associate Professor / Head Film and Performing Arts

Research Interests: UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage policies | Cultural Sustainability | Cultural Heritage within Urban Contexts

Mayco A Santaella is currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Music programme at Sunway University. He completed his BA and MA at the University of Hawai’I at Manoa where he was also Teaching Assistant, East-West Centre Fellow, and FLAS recipient. Dr Santaella’s focus of study is the gong-row tradition of Central and North Sulawesi as part of the gong culture of the extended Nusantara region. He conducted research for his doctoral studies in the region of Central Sulawesi as a Fulbright research grant recipient. He was formerly the Managing Editor of MMJ Journal and Lecturer at Sultan Idris Education University.

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