With the Foundation’s exponential growth since its inception, there has been a steady increase in grant applications each year. With this increasing number of applications, the Foundation’s grant advisory board has continued to do an outstanding job of reviewing and identifying the top applicants each year. In order to keep up with this growth, however, two new grant advisors have been appointed to the grant advisory board. It is with tremendous pride, that we are happy to announce the two newest members to the Tyler Lewis Clean Energy Research Foundation team: Dr. Saad Dara and Dr. Robert Legros.
Dr. Dara is the CEO of Mangrove Water Technologies Ltd., and its subsidiary Mangrove Lithium, a start-up that spun out of is PhD research at the University of British Columbia. In addition to his accolades as a clean energy researcher in the field of electrochemical systems, Dr. Dara is an entrepreneur with a track record of taking research from the lab bench to a commercial scale and has raised $15M in grants and investor funding. Dr. Dara’s expertise lies in the area of in fuel cells, redox flow batteries, lithium-ion batteries, electrochemical water treatment, and upstream lithium production. While completing his Master of Applied Science degree at UBC, Dr. Dara became good friends with Tyler, while they were both studying in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Dr. Dara had this to say about joining the Foundation’s grant advisory board:
“Tyler became a friend when we started grad school at the same time at UBC. He was someone I admired and had great respect for, on both a personal and professional level. I felt the opportunity to contribute to the foundation’s goals and support his memory could not be passed up. My hope is that I can provide insight to the foundation where projects that get funded go on to contribute in a meaningful way to the environment. I am most excited by the exposure to some incredibly talented people that apply to the foundation. There have been some exceptionally accomplished candidates and I am sure there will be many more. It gives me a lot of hope and excites me about the future.”
Dr. Legros is a Professor and Research Chair on Advanced Waste Recovery, in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal. Professor Legros bring expertise to the Foundation in the field of waste and biomass conversion processes, powder technology, multiphase contacting systems, simultaneous heat and mass transfer phenomena, drying and purification systems. In addition to supervising many graduate student research projects and publishing extensively in his field, Professor Legros is a Member of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, was the President of the Canadian Society of Chemical Engineering (2010-11), President of the Association of Canadian Chairs of Chemical Engineering (2006) and an Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering (1998-2003). Professor Legros has also worked and collaborated with former Foundation grant advisor, Dr. John Grace. Professor Legros had this to say about become a grant advisor:
“I was honored to be invited to join the TLCERF grant advisory board in 2020. Tyler’s passion for the environment and sustainability has resonated strongly with me. I am pleased to share and contribute towards many of Tyler’s values. As a researcher in the field of Chemical Engineering, like Tyler, my activities aim at promoting the waste-to resources transition, thereby reducing our negative impacts on the environment. As a member of the TLCERF grant advisory board, I am excited to play my modest part during the selection process of future recipient of this prestigious grant. The expertise I am bringing to the committee is based on a career dedicated to the training of amazing young talents in my own research activities. I am thrilled to be able to review grant applications in many different fields, from passionate individuals who share Tyler’s values. “Vive la différence” “
The Foundation is extremely happy and honored to have Saad and Robert join the board, and we look forward to having them help carve out the future direction of the Foundation. For more information about either Dr. Dara or Dr. Legros, please visit our Board and Advisors page.
