Professor Stephen Gray
BE Chem Eng (UniMelb), PhD Chem Eng (UniMelb)
Director, Institute for Sustainability and Innovation (ISI)
Professor Gray has been the Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Innovation (ISI) since 2006. He previously worked at CSIRO for 16 years in the areas of water treatment, integrated water management and sustainable water technologies. He was the Urban Water team leader prior to joining Victoria University, where he led a multi-disciplinary team of engineers, scientists, and economists, and was part of the CSIRO team that developed MIEX™ resin for organics removal from water.
He has established ISI as a national, multi-disciplinary leader in water research, with expertise in water treatment, water resource management, social aspects of water, ecology and economics. Prof Gray and ISI have been key participants in the National Centre of Excellence for Desalination Australia and the Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence, receiving project funding of over $2 million. He led the CSIRO Cluster on Advanced Membrane Technologies for Water Treatment from 2007-2011, a program that involved 9 Australian universities and CSIRO.
Industry collaboration is central to Prof Gray’s and ISI’s research program, with collaborators that include water authorities and government agencies such as City West Water, GWMWater, Melbourne Water, Department of Health (Victoria) and private suppliers such as Memcor (Avoqua), Orica Pty Ltd, Dow Filmtec, Veolia Water, Hatch and Origin Energy.
He regularly collaborates internationally, and has published with researchers from UCLA, UTEP (USA), the Technion (Israel), KAUST (Saudi Arabia), Sunchon National University, Chosun Refractory Company (Korea) and Wageningen University (The Netherlands). He was an invited speaker at IWA's Leading Edge Technology conference (2014), IWA's Natural Organic Matter 5 conference (2013), Kobe University’s (Japan) Global Water School in 2013 and was recognised by Lux Research (2013) as an international “thought leader” in water research.
He is a board member of Water Research Australia, an editor of the Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination (IWA), an associate editor of Water Research and a member of the editorial board of Desalination.
Recent publications
Refereed journal articles
Chi Yan Lai, Andrew Groth, Stephen Gray, Mikel Duke, (2014) “Preparation and characterization of poly(vinylidene fluoride)/nanoclay nanocomposite flat sheet membranes for abrasion resistance”, Water Research, 57, 56-66
Zongli Xie, Manh Hoang, Derrick Ng, Cara Doherty, Anita Hill, Stephen Gray (2014) “Effect of heat treatment on pervaporation separation of aqueous salt solution using hybrid PVA/MA/TEOS/ membrane”, Separation and Purification Technology, 127, 10-17
Ze-Xian Low, Amir Razmjou, Kun Wang, Stephen Gray, Mikel Duke, Huanting Wang, (2014) “Effect of addition of two-dimensional ZIF-L nanoflakes on the properties of polyethersulfone ultrafiltration membrane”, Journal of Membrane Science, 460, 9-17
P.Sanciolo, N.Milne, K.Taylor, M. Mullet, S. Gray (2014) “Silica scale mitigation for high recovery reverse osmosis of groundwater for a mining process.” Desalination, 340, 49-58
Matthew B. Stewart, Stephen R. Gray, Todor Vasiljevic, John D. Orbell, Exploring the molecular basis for metal-mediated assembly of alginate gels. Carbohydrate Polymers, 102 (2014) 246-253
Ludovic Dumée, Chunfang Feng, Li He, Zhifeng Yi, Fengshua She, Zheng Peng, Weimin Gao, Connie Bastos, Justin Davies, Chi Huynh, Stephen Hawkins, Mikel Duke, Stephen Gray, Peter D. Hodgson, Lingxue Kong, Single step preparation of meso-porous and reduced graphene oxide by gamma-ray irradiation, Carbon, 70 (2014) 313-318
View a full list of Stephen's publications in VU's Institutional Repository (VUIR).
Postgraduate research students and fellows
Supervise 4 Post-graduate Research Fellows
Co-supervise 3 Postgraduate Research Fellows
Completions
5 PhD students
Current supervision
Supervision/Co-supervision of 7 PhD students
Selected research grants
Demonstration of robust water recycling (2013) $373,550 Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence and $240,000 Australian Antarctic Division
Pasteurisation for production of class A recycled water (2013) $509,542 Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence and $190,000 Melbourne Water
Standard methods for integrity testing and on-line monitoring of NF and RO membranes (WateReuse-12-07) (2013) $120,000, Water Reuse Research Foundation (USA)
Silica removal from groundwater for reverse osmosis water recovery enhancement and waste brine volume reduction (2011) $161,000, National Centre of Excellence for Desalination Australia
Development of Advanced Ceramic Membranes: A Robust Solution to Sustainable Water Treatment (2011) $405,000, ARC Linkage, $135,000 CI Ceramics and Chosun Refractory Company
Professional memberships
- Australian Water Association (AWA)
- Membrane Society of Australasia (MSA)
- International Water Association (IWA)
- International Desalination Association (IDA)
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Board member of Water Research Australia (WRAustralia)
Industry experience
CSIRO: 1990-2006
Portfolios
Areas of expertise
- Desalination
- High rate separation processes
- Integrated water management
- Membranes
- Water recycling
- Water research
- Water treatment
Contact details
- +61 3 9919 8097
- +61 3 9919 7696
- stephen.gray@vu.edu.au