Professor Alison Emslie Lewis
Professor Alison Lewis is dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of Cape Town, the first woman to hold this position. She was previously the head of the Chemical Engineering Department and a full professor in that department.
Her love for mathematics and interest in water treatment led her to focus on “Modelling techniques for biological systems” for her MSc and on “Mathematical simulation of dynamic behaviour of secondary settling tanks” for her PhD, both obtained at UCT. As a young academic, Lewis started a crystallisation and precipitation research group under the guidance of Professor Gerda van Rosmalen of the Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands. The group has flourished nationally and internationally, especially in respect of hydrometallurgical applications. Water and brine treatment have become an increasingly important focus of the unit’s activities.
One of the most exciting research activities in which Lewis has been involved is a multicomponent research programme, which has developed a novel technology for mine water and brine treatment called eutectic freeze crystallisation (EFC). The research group started EFC research in 2006 with a very basic crystalliser and a rudimentary understanding of eutectic phase diagrams. Since then, the EFC project has successfully attracted funding to the order of R21-million. Eskom is currently commissioning a pilot-scale EFC plant, and a full-scale design for brine treatment is being implemented at Optimum Colliery.
Lewis’s academic achievements include the supervision to graduation of 109 BSc honours, 35 MSc and six PhD students, as well as the mentoring of eight postdoctoral fellows. Her commitment to transformation and empowerment is demonstrated by the fact that, of the students that she has supervised, 67% have been black and 37% women (in a field that is extremely male dominated).
She has a B2 NRF rating, has published more than 121 internationally peer-reviewed journal articles and conference presentations, and has attracted more than R54-million in funding for her unit since 2001. In 2010, she was awarded the NRF president’s “Champion of Research Capacity Development at South African Higher Education Institutions” award. Other achievements include receiving the 2015 Water Research Commission Knowledge Tree Award for Research Excellence in the category of New Products and Services for Economic Development; authoring the second most cited article in the international journal Hydrometallurgy; and being appointed as a Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, the South African Academy of Engineering, the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and the South African Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Lewis is a Fellow of the UCT College of Fellows. In 2012, she was awarded the Department of Science and Technology’s Distinguished Woman Scientist in Physical and Engineering Science Award for her outstanding contribution to building South Africa’s scientific and research knowledge base. She is also a professional engineer, registered with the Engineering Council of South Africa.