Dr. Suresh Kumar Bhatia is a professor at the School of Chemical Engineering, University of Queensland. His research areas are in the fields of porous media and catalytic and non-catalytic solid fluid reactions. He was awarded an ARC Australian Professorial Fellowship (2010-15) and is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1993, and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2010. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 1993 for Science and Technology for his contributions to the engineering sciences.
Prof. Bhatia did his B.Tech from IIT Kanpur and earned his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He started his career in the chemical industry in the US, but later shifted to academia by joining the University of Florida, and after two years, he moved to IIT Bombay in 1984. He served IIT Mumbai for 12 years, winning the Herdillia Award for Excellence in Basic Research in Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers in 1992. He joined the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland in 1996, where he serves as a professor.
Focusing his work on transport and reaction in nanostructured porous media, Prof. Bhatia has contributed to the field of catalysis, specifically in vapour-liquid and reaction equilibria in small pores. He elucidated multiphase reactions in catalyst particles by demonstrating the existence and consequence of partial internal wetting states.
