Dr. NALLAPANENI Manoj Kumar

Dr. NALLAPANENI Manoj Kumar, a transdisciplinary energy and sustainability engineer with a PhD in Digital Circular Economy & Circular Power System from the School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong. He has done two Masters, one in Renewable Energy Technologies from Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Karunya University and the other in Environmental Economics from the Directorate of Distance Education Annamalai University. He holds a Bachelor degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from GITAM University. Before joining the CityU, Nallapaneni worked as a Research Fellow at the Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia on the project focused on using solar photovoltaics as urban and rural infrastructure. Earlier to this he worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, at Bharat Institute of Engineering and Technology affiliated to Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad and Energy Engineer at Atiode Solar Systems Limited, Benin City, Nigeria. Nallapaneni is an active member of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) organizations. 

Dr. Nallapaneni mainly focuses on building sustainable, affordable, resilient, and socially acceptable energy and environmental systems across critical infrastructure sectors (CISs) by applying lifecycle thinking, nexus approach, systems innovation, circular business models, and digitalization for design and RePLiCATE approach for feasibility assessment. He worked on key sustainability challenges that include 'design and assembly of components to systems in CISs', 'performance modelling and analysis of a wide range of clean energy and environmental systems in CISs', 'food-energy-water-waste nexus', 'industrial symbiosis', 'waste valorisation and material passports', 'carbon accounting and pricing'. He possess an interdisciplinary skill set that includes performance analytics (using various approaches and tools), techno-economics (spreadsheet and tools), life cycle assessment (emission factor/embodied energy approach and LCA tools), resilience assessment (simple and systemic), leveraging digital innovation (blockchain, IoT, smart contracts, and AI). His research works are simulation, experimental, real-time empirical and location or climate-specific studies.

Dr. Nallapaneni is also into entrepreneurship; co-founded "V-Surf Limited", a startup incubated at Hong Kong Science Park with a million+ HKD funding support from CityU, HKTech 300 and HKSTP. At V-Surf Nallapaneni and his team manages food waste to produce biosurfactants in crude and/or biosurfactant derived green products at an affordable price while solving the key sustainability challenges in the biosurfactants as well as the biosurfactant derived green products value chain. He also co-founded a non-profit research organization named "HICCER – Hariterde International Council of Circular Economy Research", which is the first research and development council established to promote circular economy-centric education and research driven by circular business models for building circular, sustainable, and resilient CISs in India. At HICCER, he initiated "Mission Circular India" program for accelerating India's circular economy transition, and with his team he provides support to the institutions and industry to establish Centre of Excellence (CoE) on Circularity and Resiliency.