Surrey professor named as winner in first pan-European awards for academic enterprise
Thursday 8 January 2009
Professor Adel Sharif, founder of Surrey Aquatechnology Ltd, a spin-out from the University of Surrey, was recently named as a winner of the inaugural ACES, the Academic Enterprise Awards 2008, at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. The award is in recognition of his achievements in developing water purification and desalination technologies.
At Surrey Professor Sharif and his team at the Centre of Osmosis Research and Applications (CORA) have conducted research into desalination and water treatment for the provision of clean drinking water in regions of the world with low natural water resources.
Surrey Aquatechnology, which is now owned by Modern Water Plc, was spun-out to commercialise a range of water purification, desalination and renewable energy technologies developed in CORA at the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences.
Professor Sharif comments: “I am delighted and honoured to receive this award. It is very encouraging and extremely exciting to be selected in this category by the Science Business Innovation Panel. The selection reflects the timely importance of our desalination and water purification technologies for addressing, in a sustainable way, the issues of fresh water availability and the environmental responsibility.”
The prizes awarded by the Science|Business Innovation Board, a blue-ribbon panel of leaders in industry, academia and policy at a ceremony at Sweden’s Royal Academy of Engineering, go to companies tackling major issues of health, the environment and security and leaders of technology transfer.
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