Engineering

Professor Fayyaz Ali Memon

Professor Fayyaz Ali Memon

Emeritus Professor

Prof Memon was awarded the Her Majesty’s prestigious Chevening scholarship for MSc in Environmental Engineering followed by a PhD at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London.

 

Before joining Exeter, at Imperial College London, he worked for about 10 years in various capacities including as the project manager for a £2.7 million EPSRC cum Industry funded 4 year multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional project on Water Cycle Management for New Developments (WaND). He coordinated a team of over 30 senior researchers from 8 UK institutions and 20 industrial collaborators and was responsible for the delivery of high quality project outputs including over 20 water planning tools.

 

Fayyaz has led various international initiatives including:

 

  • the British Council and the Department for International Development jointly funded initiative on Capacity Building for Urban Water Demand Management in Developing Countries.
  • A 4 year multi-institutional international NERC funded project on the Fate and Management of Emerging Contaminants (FAME) to support Indian Prime Minister’s Flagship initiative - Clean Ganga Mission
  • WATERSAVE Network - an international network on water conservation and recycling (WATERSAVE) having members from over 50 UK and international public and private sector organisations. From the network platform, he co-edited a book on Water Demand Management which has also been translated in Chinese by the International Water Association.

 

Research Interests - Fayyaz specialises in sustainable water management and his research interests include:

 

  • water reuse technologies
  • water consumption trends and water using micro-components disaggregation
  • rainwater harvesting and grey water recycling
  • urban water systems analysis, life cycle analysis and carbon foot printing
  • implications of water demand management on water distribution and wastewater collection systems
  • sustainable drainage systems
  • Machine learning and multi-criteria based decision support systems
  • water-food-energy nexus
  • Net zero water management and water management in developing countries

 

Research Funding - His net contribution to successful grant applications is well over £5 million and includes the following current/recent projects:

 

  • Fate and Management of Emerging Contaminants - (£457k from NERC/EPSRC - PI)
  • Microplastics in sludge and bio-solids (£70k from UKWIR and £91k from EPSRC) - September 2018 - August 2022
  • Emerging Contaminants Management for India (£95k from NPIF and £8k from Industry) - completed
  • CSI - Catchment Scale Intelligence (£75k from EPSRC +£50k from Southwest Water - PI) - ongoing
  • SWDS - Smart Water Distribution Systems for Developing Countries (£30k from eWaterpay - PI) - Completed
  • Context specific upscaling of an innovative (Submerged Aerated filter based) wastewater treatment system and its rollout strategy for developing countries (£75k from EPSRC + £ 50k from ELIQUO HYDROK) - completed
  • Leakage segregation from in building water consumption using smart meters collected temporal data (£60k from EPSRC + £32 k from Southwest Water - PI) - ongoing
  • SARASWATI (€ 350k, FP7 EU project, PI from Exeter) - completed
  • W4I (€ 250k, FP7 EU project, PI from Exeter) - completed
  • Strategic positioning of vortex flow controls to prevent flooding (£48k from Hydro International + £60k from EPSRC, PI from Exeter) - current
  • Urban Futures (£160 k from EPSRC, Co - I) - completed
  • Ashford’s Integrated Alternatives (£100k from EPSRC, Co-I) - completed
  • Developing partnerships in Higher Education – Water Reuse in developing countries (£80k from British Council, PI from Exeter) - completed
  • WaND – Water Cycle Management for New Developments (£2.7 million from EPSRC and Industry, PM) – completed

 

Other industry supported projects include:

 

  • Development of wastewater treatment technology selection module for incorporation in the customer assisted system integration model for Shell Ltd
  • UK country report on water industry management issues. EU sponsored Aqualibrium Project
  • Performance monitoring of water efficient fixtures at Heathrow Airport
  • Whole life cost assessment of greywater treatment technologies
  • Development of life cycle assessment tool for grey water treatment technologies
  • Study of domestic water consumption patterns and quantification of wastewater discharges
  • Modelling the influence of water demand management measures on wastewater generation profiles
  • Fat, oil and grease (FOG) management for sewer systems and user behavior and education

 

Additionally, he developed a guidance for dry sanitation for inclusion in the Building Regulations (Part G) under a project sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minster, UK. He has supervised over 90 research projects at postgraduate level.

 

External Examining and Engagement- Prof Memon has been an external examiner for MSc programmes at the University College London (UCL), University of Surrey and Cranfield University. Additionally, he has been an external PhD examiner to several UK and overseas institutions. These include Imperial College London, University of New South Wales and Griffith University (Australia), Oxford Institute of Sustainable Development, University of Cranfield, University of Surrey, Nottingham Trent University, Birmingham University, the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), University College Cork (Ireland) and UCL. Fayyaz is an associate editor for the British Journal of Environment and Climate Change. 

 

Prof Memon is a Fellow of the:

 

  • Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management
  • Institute of Civil Engineers
  • UK Higher Education Academy

 

He is a Chartered Civil Engineer and a Chartered Environmentalist.

 

He has chaired several international conferences (including: AQUA360, SWM-2010 and WATEF-2015, ). He is regularly invited as a guest/keynote speaker by several prestigious professional bodies including:

 

  • the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management
  • the Royal Institution of Public Health Engineers
  • the Chartered Institution of Building Service Engineers
  • the British Hydrological Society
  • the British Council

 

He is frequently invited at universities in Switzerland, India, Australia, Georgia, Pakistan and the USA for an expert input. For COMSTECH (a ministerial standing committee on scientific cooperation, representing over 50 countries), Prof Memon led its initiative on capacity building for urban water demand management for water professionals from over 50 member states.

 

Fayyaz has over 200 publications to his credit, including 100 papers in peer reviewed journals (with many in high impact factor journals including Water Research, Chemosphere and Global Environmental Change) and over 90 in refereed international conferences, 9 book chapters and several co-edited books including on:

 

  1. Water Demand Management (also translated in Chinese)
  2. Alternative Water Supply Systems
  3. Water Management Challenges in Global Change
  4. Sustainable Water Management in Developing Countries – Opportunities and Challenges
  5. Advances in Water Supply Management

 

Research Group - Fayyaz is leading a research group on sustainable water management. The postdoctoral research fellows who have worked in his group under his direct supervision include:

 

 

Presently he is the first supervisor for the following PhD students:

 

  1. Xiaojie Zhou (Long and short term demand forecasting to understand and reduce domestic water consumption)
  2. Danyang Gao (Water-Energy-Food Nexus modelling for China)
  3. Rebecca Hall (Domestic hot water consumption and energy implication)
  4. Paul Wills (High resolution data for leakage detection and micro-component based analysis)
  5. Matthew Griffey (Integrated modelling of resources at catchment scale) - Project Poster

 

Additionally, he is the second PhD supervisor for the following scholars:

 

  1. William Addison-Atkinson (Flood risk management in developing countries)
  2. Bhavya Joshi (Synthesis of novel materials for water and wastewater treatment), LinkedIn
  3. Korinus Waimbo (Food-Water-Energy nexus and human development index)

 

Some of the recently completed PhDs under his supervision include:

 

  1. Dr William Ingram (Smart and sustainable water supply for Gambia and Tanzania), previously at Oxford University and presently at London School of Economics
  2. Dr Iman Alharsha (Investigating the impact of decentralised water management systems and optimal drainage network designs)
  3. Dr David Pryce (Sustainability evaluation of emerging decentralised wastewater treatments for developing countries) - Project Poster , LinkedIn
  4. Dr Deborah Shackleton (Predicting cholera and mitigation deployment in developing countries), presently at Imperial College London, LinkedIn
  5. Dr Nsikak Mitchel Offiong (Application of machine learning for fault detection in smart water distribution systems for developing countries), LinkedIn
  6. Dr Döndü Sarisen (Simulating intermittent water supply systems under uncertainity), LinkedIn ; YouTube
  7. Dr Daisy Harley-Nyang (Microplastics characterisation for wastewater, sludge and agricultural lands), Exeter Publications ; Plastic Science Information, Interview Summary
  8. Dr Salamatta Ibrahim (Groundwater management for Freetown), LinkedIn
  9. Dr Wa'el Abdul Bari Hussein (Multi-scale modelling of water-energy-food Nexus)
  10. Dr Christopher Newton (Startegic positioning of flow attenuation devices in sewer networks) - Project Poster
  11. Dr Sarah Ward (Rainwater harvesting in the UK: A strategic framework to enable transition from novel to mainstream)
  12. Dr Abdi Fidar (Environmental and economic implications of water efficiency measures in buildings)
  13. Dr Sturat Atkinson (A futures approach to water distribution and sewer networks (re)design )
  14. Dr Ashfaque Pathan (RBC application for low strength grey water treatment and establishment of optimal operational envelop), LinkedIn
  15. Dr Manzoor Rajput (Effectiveness of low cost green technologies for grey water resue in developing countries)
  16. Dr Gerald Riss (Events Recognition System (ERS) for Water Treatment Processes) - Project Poster
  17. Dr Irini Nikoloudi (Event Management and Post Event Response Planning for Intelligent Water Networks)

 

If you are interested in pursuing a PhD in a topic closer to Prof Memon's research interests, you can contact him for further discussion on the topic and the PhD application process. Ongoing PhD funding opportunities include:

 

 

 

Academic profiles

 

 

Teaching

 

Undergraduate modules

 

Undergraduate project supervision

 

MEng/MSc modules

 

 

MEng/MSc project supervision

 

 

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