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Professor Rachel Gomes joined Council in 2015 as one of the Senate members. She was appointed as an Assistant Professor in Chemical and Environmental Engineering in October 2011, following an Anne McLaren Fellowship and became Professor of Water and Resource Processing in August 2020. Rachel's research lies in process efficiency and resource resilience within wastewater treatment and process manufacturing of biomass/waste feedstocks. With a focus on high value chemicals and water quality, this covers analytics, fate, process technologies and the need for understanding bioprocess complexity when evaluating or developing a process that delivers a product - whether processing wastewater fit for reuse or chemicals/materials to a required specification.

Rachel's teaching complements her research interests in water treatment and utilises industrial collaborators for site visits, case studies and as guest speakers to support learning of the water treatment technologies and challenges. She holds two Faculty of Engineering Teaching Awards based on SET scores and her PhD supervision has led to PhD first-author peer-reviewed publications and awards including two University Endowed Postgraduate Prizes.

In 2013, Rachel was selected as a University Engineering Future Research Leader and, in 2014, became one of 20 across the UK on the EPSRC Early Career Forum in Manufacturing Research and University Representative and Trustee for the Papplewick Pumping Station Water Education Trust. She was also cited as one of two from the UK in the Top 40 under 40 Power List for the Analytical Science magazine, which was in recognition of developing novel analytics to inform on wastewater treatment and chemical process manufacture. Most recently, Rachel was one of five invited academics representing the UK at an international Water Summit with outcomes to be communicated as a White Paper.