Alison Lewis

Alison Lewis is a South African chemical engineer known for her research in crystallisation and precipitation (as applied to the recovery of valuable metals). She is Dean of the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and is a member of UCT’s Senior Leadership Team. A professor in UCT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, Lewis is also the founder and director of UCT’s Crystallisation and Precipitation Research Unit[.

Early life and education

Lewis attended school at Pinetown Convent School at Marianhill and then St Mary’s Anglican School for Girls in Johannesburg. She earned a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Cape Town in 1993 after obtaining a BSc and MSc in Chemical Engineering at the same institution.

Under her maiden name, Billing, Lewis served on the UCT Students Representative Council from 1983 to 1985. An anti-apartheid activist she was detained without trial in 1986 under the Section 3.1 of the 1986 State of Emergency legislation . From 1988 to 1990 as Alison Ozinsky, she was a member of the Cape Democrats in the United Democratic Front and served as the editor for the organisation’s journal, Upfront.

Academic Career

Lewis began her academic career as a senior lecturer in UCT’s Department of Chemical Engineering in 1995, becoming an Associate Professor in 2002. She became a full professor in the same department in 2007 and served as Head of Department from January 2013 until June 2015 when she was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment. She is the first woman to have held this deanship at UCT.

Lewis has a B2 Rating, from South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF). A B2 Rating is awarded to: “Researchers who enjoy considerable international recognition by their peers for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs” . First awarded to Lewis in 2009, this rating has been renewed periodically since then, with the latest renewal taking place in 2022.

In 2010 she received the NRF President’s “Champion of Research Capacity Development at South African Higher Education Institutions” Award and in 2015 she received the Distinguished Woman Scientist Award from the Department of Science and Technology at the South African Women in Science Awards for Research and Innovation.

Her contribution to water research has been recognised by two awards: the 2016 Africa Water Leadership Award and the 2021 Water Research Commission Legends Award.

In recognition of Lewis’s training, nurturing and mentoring of students at the UCT Crystallisation and Precipitation Research Unit, she received the Engineering Research Capacity Development Award from the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) in 2019 .

Lewis is a fellow of the British Institute of Chemical Engineers (FIChemE), the South African Institute of Chemical Engineers (FSAIChE); and the South African Academy of Engineering (FSAAE).

Published works

• Lewis, A.E., and Stelzer, T., 2021. Solid-Liquid Separation by Crystallization in Olayinka Ogunsola and Isaac Gamwo (Eds) Solid Liquid Separation Technologies and Application to Produced Water, CRC Press
• Lewis, A.E., Chivavava, J., du Plessis, J., Smith, D. and Smith, J-L.,2021. Innovative Reactors for Recovery of Rare Earth Elements (REEs), in Azimi, G., Oishi, T., Forsberg, K.M.M., Kim, H., Alam, S., Baba, A.A., and Neelameggham, N.R. (eds.), Rare Metal Technology 2021, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series,
• Chivavava, J., Jooste, D., Aspeling, B., Peters, E., Ndoro, D., Heydenrych, H.R., Rodriguez Pascual, M. and Lewis, A.E., 2020. Chapter 19: Continuous Eutectic Freeze Crystallization, in Yazdanpanah, N. and Nagy, Z., The Handbook of Continuous Crystallization. 2020, The Royal Society of Chemistry. p. 508-541.
• Lewis, A.E. 2019. Chapter 10.9: Evaporation and Crystallization in Dunne, R., S, Komar Kawatra., and Young, C. (Eds) SME Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Handbook, Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration. pp 1293-1300.
• Lewis, A.E. 2019. Chapter 10.10: Precipitation in Dunne, R., S, Komar Kawatra., and Young, C. (Eds) SME Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Handbook, Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration. pp 1301-1320.

• Lewis, A.E., 2017. Precipitation of Heavy Metals, in Lens, P., Rene, E. Lewis. A.E and Sahinkaya, E. (Eds), Sustainable Heavy Metal Remediation: Volume 1: Sustainable Heavy Metal Remediation: Volume 1: Principles and Processes in Lichtfouse, E., Schwarzbauer, J., and Didier, R., Environmental Chemistry for a Sustainable World, Springer, pp101-120
• Andreassen, J-P and Lewis, A.E., 2017. Classical and Nonclassical Theories of Crystal Growth, in Van Driessche, A.E.S., Kellermeier, M., Benning, L.G. and Gebauer, D. (Eds), New Perspectives on Mineral Nucleation and Growth, From Solution Precursors to Solid Materials, Springer. pp137-154.
• Lewis, A.E., McMichael, L. and Glazewski J., 2016.  Chapter 9: Water Quality, Fracking Fluids and Legal Disclosure, in Glazewski, J., and S. Esterhuyse (Eds), Hydraulic fracturing in the Karoo: Critical Legal and Environmental Perspectives, Juta and Co. pp245-263
• Lewis, A.E., Seckler, M., Kramer, H.J.M. and van Rosmalen, G.M., 2015. Industrial Crystallization: Fundamentals and Applications, Cambridge University Press, pp1-320

---