Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering
Professor
Contact details
Room: 401.706
City Campus
20 Symonds Street
Auckland
Phone: +64 9 923 5606
Email: b.young@auckland.ac.nz
Biography
Brent Young is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at The University of Auckland. He holds the position of Chair in Food Process Engineering and is Director of the Industrial Information and Control Centre. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Calgary.
Brent was previously an Associate Professor in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Calgary (1998-2005) and a Lecturer in Chemical Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney (1991-1998). He has also held prestigious visiting positions including an NSERC at Calgary (1995), an Erskine at Canterbury (2005) and a Gledden at Western Australia (2009).
He received his BE (1986) and PhD (1993) degrees in Chemical and Process Engineering from the University of Canterbury. He is a registered professional engineer, a Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers United Kingdom and a Vice President of the Institute of Measurement and Control New Zealand. He has co-authored over 200 refereed publications including the book "A Real-time Approach to Process Control", published by John Wiley (2nd Edition, 2006).
He was Engineers Australia John A. Brodie medallist for the best paper in the discipline of chemical engineering presented at CHEMECA for 2008 and 2009. In 2008 he also received the NZ Waste Water Association Conference best modelling paper award. In 2007 he was principal control consultant to MWH NZ responsible for their Association of Consulting Engineers NZ Award.
Brent's teaching, research and practice centre on process modelling, simulation, control and design.
He is actively involved in applied research and industrial consulting and has taught and practiced in New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
Qualifications
BE(Hons)(Chemical and Process Engineering)(Cantuar)
PhD(Chemical and Process Engineering)(Cantuar)
Grad. Cert. Higher Ed. (Teaching and Learning)(UTS)
Research interests
A summary of my biography and research is given through my inaugural lecture.
Watch my inaugural lecture - "Virtual and Real Process Engineering Worlds - A journey".
My research turns process data into useful information (by using mathematical modelling) to design and optimise manufacturing processes, in particular in the application areas of food and energy. My research experience can be further divided into two specific categories:
- Process simulation and control (in food especially dairy, light metals, oil and gas, wastewater).
- Process development and design (innovel, bio and food processes)
Research groups
Industrial Information and Control Centre
Teaching
- CHEMMAT 232 - Process Design I
- CHEMMAT 312 - Transfer Processes II
- CHEMMAT 750A and 750B - Design Project I and II
- CHEMMAT 752 - Process Dynamics and Control
Selected publications
Majid, N.A.A., Taylor, M.P., Chen, J.J.J., Stam, M.A., Mulder, A., Young, B.R., 2011, Aluminium process fault detection by Multiway Principal Component Analysis, Control Engineering Practice, DOI: 10.1016/j.conengprac.2010.12.005
Yu, W., Wilson, D.I. & Young, B.R., 2010, “Control Performance Assessment for Nonlinear Systems”, Journal of Process Control, 20 (10), 1235-1242
Montelongo, J.M.M.L., Svrcek, W.Y. & Young, B.R., 2010, “The Relative Exergy Array – A New Measure of Interactions in Process Design and Control”, Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, DOI: 10.1002/cjce.20422
Murphy, R., Young, B.R. and Kecman, V., 2009, “Optimising operation of a biological wastewater treatment application”, ISA Trans, 48 (1), 93-97
Nathen, S.V., Kirkpatrick, R.D. and Young, B.R., 2008, “The Gasification of New Zealand Coals: A Comparative Simulation Study”, Energy & Fuels, 22 (4), pp 2687–2692
Administration
Director, Industrial Information and Control Centre
Professional affiliations
- Chartered Engineer (CEng)
- Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (FIChemE)
- Professional Member of the Royal Society of New Zealand (MRSNZ)
- Member of the Society of Chemical Engineers of New Zealand (SCENZ)
- Member of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AaeE)
- Senior National Vice President of the Institute of Measurement and Control NZ (IMC)
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