MEI Young Person's Award 2016 to Swadhin Saurabh

After opening Physical Separation '17 this morning I had the great pleasure of presenting the 2016 MEI Young Person's Award to Swadhin Saurabh, who is currently working as a Project Manager/Senior Process Engineer with Millcreek Engineering Company, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Swadhin will be 35 years old in August, and he was nominated for the award by Prof. Jan Miller, and Dr. Raj K. Rajamani, of the University of Utah, with strong endorsements from his industrial employers.

Swadhin received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Bihar Institute of Technology (Vinoba Bhave University), Dhanbad, India and M.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Utah. During his undergraduate study Swadhin developed a great interest in mechanical operations, and as a result developed an interest in mineral processing. By the end of his 2nd year, he was selected as summer intern at the Mineral Processing Division of the National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML), Jamshedpur, India. At NML, he worked with some of the best mineral processing scientists of India at NML’s pilot plant. He assisted the scientists in performing various R&D projects, particularly in flotation and gravity concentration for iron ore, chromite ore, and lead-zinc ore. In order to gain industrial experience, he then worked at the Bokaro Steel Plant of the Steel Authority of India Ltd. as a summer intern after finishing his third year. 

After graduating from BIT, Swadhin joined the Department of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Utah, with a full scholarship to pursue an M.S. in Metallurgical Engineering, under the supervision of Dr. Raj K. Rajamani, where he developed a lab-scale device to separate non-ferrous metals from waste streams using eddy current separation. This project was funded by the US Department of Energy and was managed by the Center of Advanced Separation Technologies at Virginia Tech. He presented several papers at SME conferences on that topic, one of which was selected for publication in the Separations Technologies for Minerals, Coal and Earth Resources book published by SME in 2012. His Master’s research work was well accepted by the US Department of Energy, leading to his research group receiving large amounts of research funding from the US Govt. Also, his Master’s research team filed for the first patent for that technology in 2016.

During his Masters, Swadhin worked as a summer intern in the summer of 2006 at Robinson Nevada Mining Company, Ely, Nevada, working on flotation reagent selection in copper-molybdenum flotation, and on completion of his Masters he joined an international Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) Company in the area of Coal Handling and Preparation Plant, Taggart Global, LLC (currently known as DRA Taggart, LLC) in Pittsburgh, PA as a Process/Project Engineer. At Taggart, Swadhin gained significant international experience with some of the best coal preparation engineers in the world in coal handling and preparation plant (CHPP) design, construction, and operations. At Taggart he carried out four CHPP turnkey projects in the US and worked in over 30 projects in CHPP in pre-feasibility, feasibility, EPC proposal, front end engineering and design, detailed engineering, plant commissioning, start-ups, and operations. In total, Swadhin performed commissioning and start-ups of seven coal handling and preparation plants, four of them as Lead Process/Project/Lead Commissioning Engineer. He performed international business development work for Taggart for India, USA and Canada and also worked for Taggart’s international office in Brisbane, Australia, where he was involved in many CHPP engineering projects as well as operation of Isaac Plains CHPP in Northern Queensland.

In January 2013, Swadhin joined FLSmidth USA Inc., as a Senior Process Engineer in the Global Process Technology Group, where he was involved in many EPC global mineral processing and hydrometallurgy projects in coal, copper, gold, and oil sands. Because of his worldwide experience at a very young age, in September 2014 the executive management of FLSmidth assigned him to an additional role of Key Industry Manager for Indian coal, making him the youngest Key Industry Manager in the company.  He played a key role in the development of a global team in FLSmidth in coal preparation plant design to serve the global customers. In addition, he played a significant role in training global coal preparation engineers and bringing the latest coal preparation technologies/practices to India. At FLSmidth, Swadhin completed the full engineering and design of the 2100 t/h Boikarabelo CHPP in South Africa.

In January 2017, Swadhin joined Millcreek Engineering Company as a Project Manager/Senior Process Engineer. At Millcreek he works on various mineral processing and material handling systems design, basic and detailed engineering, international business development, proposal preparation, full project execution, and commissioning and start-ups of projects of various commodities such as precious metals, base metals, coal, and industrial minerals.

Swadhin has been a member of SME since 2005. He is an active member and helps the local SME Utah chapter in organizing monthly SME meetings. From 2009-2011 he has served as Joint Secretary of the North American Alumni Association of BIT Sindri (his undergraduate college). He is also peer reviewer of several international Elsevier journals such as International Journal of Mining Science and Technology and Minerals Engineering.

Swadhin has also been a keen cricket player since his school and college days. Even after moving to the USA in the early 2000s, he actively participated at club level cricket in Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, and Brisbane in Australia and in 2016, he played for the Utah state cricket team in state level matches.

Considering his very busy life, we are privileged that he has had the time to travel all the way to Falmouth to be presented with his award, which he so richly deserves.

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