Dr Cresha Gracy Nadar
Cresha Gracy Nadar has newly joined the Centre for Crop Science at QAAFI as a Postdoctoral Research fellow. Cresha has an engineering background in the field of Biotechnology and has pursued a Ph.D. in the field of Bioprocessing from IIT Bombay, India and Monash University, Australia. Her Ph.D. research was about developing a novel biorefinery process from fruit processing waste and performing sustainability assessment using life cycle analysis. At QAAFI, Cresha will further explore the environmental footprint assessment in the fields of food processing, biotechnology and other agriculture domains.
Researcher biography
Dr Cresha Gracy Nadar is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Crop Science, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI), The University of Queensland. Her work sits at the interface of biotechnology, bioprocess engineering, and sustainability assessment, advancing solutions for a more resilient and low-carbon agri-food future.
Cresha's research focuses on emerging biotechnologies; ongoing projects include precision fermentation for alternative food proteins, plant tissue culture for sustainable propagation, and seaweed valorisation for functional ingredients. She combines process modelling, life-cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic analysis (TEA) to evaluate the environmental and economic performance of innovative biomanufacturing systems.
Her PhD, jointly awarded by IIT Bombay (India) and Monash University (Australia), developed an integrated fruit waste biorefinery and assessed its sustainability through LCA and TEA. At UQ, she continues to bridge engineering realism with sustainability metrics, collaborating with academic and industry partners to translate laboratory innovations into scalable, commercially viable, and environmentally responsible technologies.