NTU-CEE Distinguished Seminar Series: Dr Christian Peters

Organized By

CEE Seminar Committee

Host By

Associate Professor She Qianhong

Topic

Bringing Ideas From Academia Into Commercial Life

About the Seminar

Emerging technologies born in academic labs often struggle to cross the “valley of death” between proof-of-concept and industrial deployment. In this seminar, we will explore the process of translation from academia into the real world: from fundamental research, through prototyping and pilot validation, to full-scale commercial operation. We will discuss the key enablers and barriers — intellectual property, scaling, regulatory compliance, funding, and market acceptance — and highlight how academic rigor and engineering innovation can be aligned with commercial imperatives.

As a case study, we focus on the journey of Seloxium, a spin-out from the University of Oxford. Seloxium took selective separation and waste valorisation ideas developed in academia and transformed them into a commercially viable technology platform that recovers valuable and critical metals from industrial waste streams. The company secured two rounds of equity funding and innovation grants to scale the technology, build modular pilot facilities, and work with industry partners to deploy the solution at scale.

Attendees will gain practical insights into how to navigate technology transfer: managing patents, proving robustness in real-world waste streams, designing modular systems for deployment, aligning with environmental regulation, and raising equity / grant funding. The seminar will provide lessons learned, best practices, and a framework for how research groups and entrepreneurs can bridge academic innovations into commercial ventures that deliver both environmental impact and economic value.

About the Speaker

Dr Christian Petersis the CEO and co-founder of Seloxium Ltd, a University of Oxford spin-out, where he leads the development and commercialisation of the company’s patented Selectal technology. He holds a D.Phil in Chemical Engineering from Oxford and earlier earned an MEng in Mechanical Engineering. His doctoral research and subsequent work focused on sustainable desalination, brine concentration and valorisation, membrane technologies, and metal recovery from industrial and mining wastewater. As part of this, he combines the rigour of academic research with hands-on engineering experience—having worked on plant design, modelling, commissioning, and operations via a Veolia subsidiary.

Christian is passionate about bringing ideas from academia into commercial life, turning proof-of-concepts into deployable technologies, particularly in the resource recovery and environmental sustainability sectors. He remains an academic visitor at Oxford and co-supervises current D.Phil students in related fields. Christian is co-author on multiple peer-reviewed journal articles spanning topics like desalination processes (including osmotically assisted reverse osmosis), valorisation of brine (including potential applications in green cement), and alternative desalination and cooling technologies.

Registration

Click here for registration
(Registration closes on 3 November 2025)