Chemical engineering students heard from Imperial alumna and celebrated contributions to student life at annual Newitt Lecture.

This year represented the 46th Annual Newitt Lecture, organised by student representatives in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. The lecture was established in 1977 in commemoration of Professor Dudley Newitt, a former lecturer and Head of Department who had an influential role in the early development of the department. The lecture was held virtually on 9 Mar 2022.

This year’s guest lecture was delivered by Benjamina Bollag, an alumna from the Department and founder and CEO of Cambridge-based food tech start-up Higher Steaks. Higher Steaks is a cultivated meat company that have developed proprietary technologies that allow them to scale any type of cultivated meat in up to twenty-five times less time with five times the efficiency using mRNA technology. Previously Benjamina co-founded a London based B2B electronics company selling to FTSE500 companies.

Benjamina graduated from Imperial College London with a master’s in chemical engineering, where she completed a project focusing on the design of a peptide plant, conducting a lab based research on synthesis and liquid exfoliation of graphitic carbon nitride.

The Student Contribution & Citizenship Awards (SCACAs) were presented at the lecture. Introduced in 2019, they celebrate undergraduates active in student life and improving the Department for everyone. All students were nominated by undergraduates in their year, showing the level of appreciation for what their colleagues do. 

Awards 

IChemE Macnab Lacey Award (for the winning final year design group of 2020) presented by Malcolm Wilkinson.

Student Contribution & Citizenship Awards (SCACAs)

Winners

Year 1: Mateus Porfirio 

Year 3: Kelvin Choo Jun Yu & Emma Pajak

Year 4: Nathan Forshaw

Masters: Emmy Kritsanaviparkporn

Highly Commended:

Year 3: Bastiaan Geurtz

The Department also gave a new impromptu award, the Dep Rep’s Choice Award which was given to Colin Hale and Faith Ross for all their work for the department.