Maaz Khan

Maaz Khan is a graduate in electronic engineering with a MBA and PhD in Operations Management. He has 6 years of teaching experience at Central University AMU, National Institute of Technology, Glocal University, and is currently working as an Assistant Professor at Christ University India. He has worked as a Post Doctorate in the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar where he worked on medium density fibreboards (project TIGR2ESS University of Cambridge). He has organized international conferences, events and chaired one session in the IEEE conference Pune chapter.

Creating a sustainable form of food packaging, his innovation leverages lignin-rich material which has been mechanically extracted from the Solid Digestate waste of compressed biogas plants which release greenhouse gases. This material is then hot-pressed in the desired shape using a mould free from synthetic resin, as since Lignin gives structural strength to plants, this shape is able to hold with durability. While the extraction of lignin is typically an expensive process, the bacterial activity in the compressed biogas frees the lignin in a manner which is economic and sustainable, mitigating our dependence on single-use plastics.