Artificial Intelligence and Precision Fermentation for Sustainable Energy Production

Ooi Chien Wei is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Monash University Malaysia, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Net Zero Technology working within the BIO¿Trans theme. His expertise centres on bioprocess design and biocatalysis, with emphasis on integrated microbial fermentation systems and predictive bioprocess models for efficient expression of industrial enzymes and recombinant proteins. Recent research targets biomass biotransformation using efficient pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis to generate platform chemicals; he also advances biöderived ionic liquids and stimuli¿responsive polymers for novel bioprocesses, bioseparations and biosensing. Beyond core bioprocessing, his group develops food¿grade emulsions and green extraction technologies for food¿waste valorisation and recovery of phytonutrients from microalgae and agröresidues, and collaborates with industry on smart hydrogels and biocatalytic route re¿engineering, spanning enzyme engineering, production and molecular dynamics simulations. He has been a lead editor of a book published by CRC Press and has contributed book chapters to Academic Press. He has published more than 138 ISI¿indexed journal articles, holds six patents across bioprocess technology, biomass processing and smart hydrogel applications, and has secured over RM 1 million in competitive government and industry funding. His work integrates mechanistic insight, process development, scale¿up, technöeconomic analysis, and life¿cycle assessment, underpinning collaborative, industry¿facing research in bioprocessing.

Ramalakshmi Subbarayalu is an Assistant Professor (Research) in the Department of Bioengineering at Vels Institute of Science, Technology and Advanced Studies (VISTAS), Chennai. Her expertise lies in translational bioengineering, with a focus on microbial systems and advanced characterization techniques, including fluorescence microscopy, SEM, AFM, and biosensing technologies. She has received prestigious fellowships such as the Australian Endeavour Fellowship and JASSO fellowship, Japan. She has published in reputed journals while holding patents in diagnostic device development. She has also contributed several book chapters to leading publishers including Springer Nature and CRC Press, and has secured competitive research funding, demonstrating her ability to translate laboratory innovations into impactful, field-deployable technologies aligned with One Health and antimicrobial resistance mitigation.

Lo Sewn Cen is a Research Fellow at the Future Centre for Net-Zero Technology, Monash University Malaysia. She drives innovation in sustainable biotechnologies. Her work focuses on transforming chemical and agricultural waste into high-value products, supporting net-zero carbon goals and the circular bioeconomy. Dr. Lo has led and contributed to numerous industry-linked projects, bridging fundamental research with real-world applications. She brings extensive expertise in genetic engineering, bioprocessing, biotransformation, and sustainable process design, integrating innovative microbial platforms with process optimisation to enable efficient and scalable bioconversion systems.

N. Gnanasankaran is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Thiagarajar College, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. His areas of research specialization include Software Engineering, SQA, SQM, Data Science, Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics, and IoT. He has contributed more than 35 research articles in Scopus and Web of Science Indexed journals/ conferences. He has contributed four edited book volumes and has published 43 book chapters in prominent publishers. He holds eight patent work (two Indian design and one utility patent/ three UK design patent/ two German utility patent) in the field of Cyber Security, IoT, Drone Technology and Healthcare.