Nature Poddar

Nature Poddar is a Research Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), affiliated with the Climate Change Cluster (C3) within the Faculty of Science. She holds a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Melbourne, specializing in algae-bacteria metabolic processes for glycerol waste recycling. Her research focuses on sustainable biorefinery solutions, microbial process optimization, and Industry 4.0 applications like AI-driven digital twin systems for algae cultivation and carbon capture.

Dr. Poddar leads projects addressing environmental challenges, including algae-based rumen nutrition feed development (100-day cattle trials) and wastewater remediation via microbial consortia. She has secured over $2.7 million in research funding across agriculture, livestock, and food sectors. Her work integrates techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) for scalable bioeconomic solutions.

In academia, she serves as Subject Coordinator for the Environmental Biotechnology course at UTS and teaches Bioprocess Engineering and Process Design at the University of Melbourne. She mentors startups like Phycologic (Australia) and PHYX44 Labs (India) under the Deep Green Biotech Hub, fostering innovation in algal biotechnology. Her research spans interdisciplinary areas including carbonic anhydrase catalysis, algal rheology modeling, and cyanobacteria-based carbon capture systems.