Marlene Kanga

Dr Marlene Kanga is a Chartered Chemical Engineer, an Honorary Fellow of IChemE and an experienced Chair and non-executive Director.

She was the 2017–2019 President of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO), the first chemical engineer to hold this positon. WFEO has some 100 national and continental professional engineering institutions as members, representing more than 30 million engineers. She was National President of Engineers Australia in 2013.  She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology Science and Engineering and a Officer of the Order of Australia, a national honour, in recognition “for distinguished service to engineering, particularly as a global leader and role model to women, to professional organisations and to business”.

Marlene studied chemical engineering at the Indian Institution of Technology, Bombay, India and has a Masters in process safety engineering from Imperial College London and a PhD from Macquarie University Sydney. She has been involved in the process safety engineering industry in Australia and New Zealand, for more than 30 years, developing the land Use Safety Criteria for the NSW Department of Planning which were adopted in regulations across Australia and New Zealand.

Marlene is currently a non-executive director of Sydney Water Corporation, Air Services Australia, Standards Australia and BESydney and previously of Innovation Science Australia and Chair of the Department of Industry and Science R&D Incentives Committee, the largest government support program for industry R&D. She is a mentor for start-up boards and a director of iOmniscient Pty. Ltd. which has developed artificial intelligence for video technologies.

Marlene is an Honorary Fellow of Engineers Australia a Foreign Fellow of the ASEAN Academy of Engineering and Technology and a fellow (honorary) of the engineering institutions of New Zealand and India. She was the 2018 Engineers Australia National Professional Engineer of the Year and received the 2019 CHEMECA Medal for contribution to chemical engineering in Australia and New Zealand. She has been listed among the 100 engineers making a contribution to Australia in the last 100 years as part of Engineers Australia Centenary celebrations in 2019, among the Top 100 Women of Influence and one of the Top 10 women engineers in Australia.