Associate Professor Rita Kay Henderson

Associate Professor Rita Henderson is an academic in the School of Chemical Engineering, UNSW. She joined the School as a Senior Lecturer towards the end of 2013 after spending 6 years with the UNSW Water Research Centre in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Rita works in both teaching (40%) and research (40%) where her interests are in water supply and biotechnology. She leads the Algae & Organic Matter Laboratory, which is affiliated with the UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology and is Program Leader of the Nuisance and Harmful Algae Science Practice Partnership. In November 2019, Rita was nominated and appointed to the role of Board Director of Water Research Australia, this follows engagement with their Education Program (now Research Leadership Program) first as Committee Member and then from 2016 as Chair. Rita is also a Member of the International Water Association (IWA), the Australian Water Association (AWA) and a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC). Rita is the Editor in Chief of the IWA's new H2Open Journal. 

Beyond her research, Rita is a passionate equity and diversity advocate. Having led a UNSW Faculty of Engineering project to enhance gender equity, she has since contributed on the Faculty’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee and the UNSW Athena SWAN pilot Self-Assessment Team. She is currently Chair of the Faculty's Gender equity Working Group. She is also a School Champion for Humanitarian Engineering.