Lecture to focus on solving industry challenges

Technology with wide-ranging benefits for medical diagnostics and addressing challenges faced by industries in the Northern Territory, including oil and gas, will be the subject of the third Charles Darwin University Professorial Lecture for 2015.

North Australian Centre for Oil and Gas (NACOG) Director Professor Suresh Thennadil will speak on his research, which has applications in chemical process monitoring and medical diagnostics on Tuesday, November 10.

Originally from Chennai, India, Professor Thennadil has more than 20 years of experience in chemical engineering, working in the United Kingdom and United States of America.

The process monitoring expert has a special interest in process control and instrumentation, is co-inventor of 10 patents and has published about 30 refereed articles.

“Over the past three decades, there has been an increasing interest in developing near infrared technology for process monitoring and in point-of-care and non-invasive medical diagnostics,” Professor Thennadil said.

“In addition to applications in the chemical industries, this technology has a wide range of applications crucial to our health such as characterisation of tissue for medical diagnostics, fruit and vegetable grading, characterising pharmaceutical suspensions for monitoring quality, and potentially counterfeit drug detection.”

Professor Thennadil said the technology offered great promise for a wide range of applications.

During the lecture he will focus on his research that draws on developments from fields such as atmospheric sciences and medical diagnostics and how the technology can be applied to challenges faced by a number of industry sectors.

“The development of these techniques is important for many industries such as oil and gas, mining or even the agricultural industry,” he said. “Process monitoring techniques are not only important for process control and optimisation, but also for condition monitoring, which can be vital to give adequate warnings in cases of malfunction due to deterioration of equipment.”

Professor Thennadil has developed highly inter-disciplinary, industry-focused research programs with a range of global companies in the chemical sector such as BP, Shell, Pfizer, National Nuclear Laboratories BASF and Fuji Film as well as leading academic and research institutions across Europe.

The Professorial Lecture entitled “Polymers, Tablets and Tissue – The Third Way in Spectroscopy for Process Monitoring” will be held on Tuesday, November 10 from 5:30pm to 7pm in the Nitmiluk Lounge, Level 4, Parliament House. All welcome, but bookings are essential: RSVP to E: cduevents@cdu.edu.au or T: 08 8946 6554.