TRANSFORMING BIOSOLIDS CENTRE: Final Thank You
Author Editor
Updated March 2026
Dear All,
TRANSFORMING BIOSOLIDS CENTRE: Final Thank You
As 2025 marked the end of our five-year funding of the ARC Training Centre for the Transformation of Australia’s Biosolids Resource, I write to thank you all for your participation and support of the Centre during this period.
This week we submitted our final Annual Report to the ARC for the 2025 year, reflecting on what we have achieved in our last year. Clearly with your help, we have built a strong community of biosolids industry partners, University personnel and Early Career Researchers through the Centre and are very proud of our scholars’ achievements in advancing knowledge addressing the transformation of biosolids during this time.
As a Training Centre, we have exceeded our original proposal and were involved in the training of
- 23 International PhDs,18 Australian PhDs (total 41 candidates), and
- 5 Australian Masters/Honours postgraduates.
We employed 28 Postdocs (9 Internationals) during the period and had the continued support and involvement of our 16 Chief Investigators and 27 Partner Organisations throughout the duration. While a significant number of our PhDs and Postdocs have been retained in academia, the Centre has significantly added to the biosolids industry employment pool by providing these highly qualified experts.
A recent highlight was the recognition given to our training and research impact, when the ARC Training Centre and consortium of industry partners won the Australian Water R&D Excellence Award for our “World’s First Transforming Biosolids Training Centre” at the Victoria Water Awards. Victorian Water Award winners will go on to represent the state in the national Australian Water Awards, which will be presented at Australian Water Association’s annual water conference and exhibition, Ozwater’26, in Brisbane in May.
As you know, we have a further funding application before the ARC for a Research Hub, the results of which will not be known until late July 2026. We look forward to that outcome and the possibility of some of you continuing the journey with us if successful.
We have prepared the Draft ARC Final Report which will be submitted to the ARC in coming months once final updates to funding come through to RMS. Many thanks to our industry partners for your outstanding feedback on the usefulness of the work undertaken by the Centre that is recorded in this report.
The results of our work will continue to be uploaded onto the Transforming Biosolids website and Partner&Friends SharePoint. You can find the journal publications and industry reports on this website, plus Newsletters and Annual Symposium recordings on SharePoint via these links:
- Refer to the Website’s News and Events Tab dropdown for:
- Partners&Friends SharePoint: https://rmiteduau.sharepoint.com/sites/PartnersFriends_TransformingBiosolids
Finally, I invite you to contact the leadership team should you have any questions regarding the work of the Centre:
- Dist. Prof. Andy Ball, Director – Email: andy.ball@rmit.edu.au
- Prof. Kalpit Shah, Deputy Director-Research – Email: kalpit.shah@rmit.edu.au
- Dr Aravind Surapaneni, Deputy Director-Industry – Email: aravind.surapaneni@sew.com.au
- Prof. Damien Batstone, Theme 1 Leader – Email: d.batstone@uq.edu.au
- Prof. Megan Ryan, Theme 2 Leader – Email: megan.ryan@uwa.edu.au
- Prof. Richard Stuetz, Theme 3 Leader – Email: r.stuetz@unsw.edu.au
Please also follow up with any of our researchers via LinkedIn.
Thank you again for your support.
Kind regards,
Dist. Professor Andy Ball
Centre Director, ARC Transforming Biosolids Training Centre, RMIT University
