Supercritical Girl (@cindy_supercritical) found out about the wonders of supercritical fluids from a special course in thermodynamics during her undergraduate days, where she learnt about the applications of supercritical carbon dioxide for solvent-free extraction. Ever since then, she has been fascinated with the powers of supercritical fluids and its applications.

With the Singapore-MIT Alliance (MEBCS) scholarship for both MSc and PhD studies, she began her journey of working with supercritical fluids. (Thesis title: Fabrication of controlled release devices using supercritical Fluid Techniques). She spent some time at MIT (Chemical engineering department) at Professor Jefferson Tester’s lab, learning and working with postgraduate students in MIT on supercritical fluid equipment. She subsequently developed her first set of custom built supercritical CO2 processing unit for her research. Completing her PhD in 2008, she joined leading supercritical CO2 Research and Development company in the Netherlands  FeyeCon D&I B.V as Project Leader, working on projects using supercritical CO2 for food, pharma and medical applications.

Returning home to Singapore together with her family, Supercritical Girl then joined Newcastle University, Singapore as Assistant Professor with the Chemical Engineering Program (Newcastle University in Singapore). She continues to pursue her research in supercritical CO2 applications and is committed to develop new applications for food and sustainable development. Supercritical Girl is committed to increasing the awareness and knowledge of supercritical fluid processes to the public as well as local industries. She held the role of Director of Excellence Learning and Teaching for Newcastle University in Singapore and as acting Director of Operations for Chemical Engineering Program, and was also promoted to Associate Professor in 2018.

Today, Supercritical Girl is back at her alma mater (National University of Singapore, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) where she is looking forward to new and exciting ways to enhance the learning experiences of students and to integrate her research interests with her teaching.

She believes in the advantages of supercritical CO2 research, because of the unique properties of the fluid! “With GREAT PROPERTIES, come GREAT OPPORTUNITES“