Professor Arun S. Mujumdar of the Mechanical Engineering Department, a recognized world leader in the inter-disciplinary field of drying science and technology, has just returned after giving a Plenary Lecture at the 14 thInternational Drying Symposium (IDS), held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on 22-25 August, 2004. This Olympiad on drying science, engineering and technology is the latest in the series founded by him in 1978, when he was a young faculty member at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Since then, IDS conferences have already held fourteen meetings in four continents. With regular participants from over 50 countries and with academic and industry representation, IDS has been the focal point for exchange of new knowledge and for dissemination of new developments in this field, and the name “Mujumdar” has become synonymous with drying technologies worldwide. The success of the series has spawned numerous major conferences devoted to this area all around the world. An international journal devoted to drying science and technologies, Drying Technology-An International Journal (Taylor and Francis, NY), was also born as a result of Prof. Mujumdar’s efforts and he has served as its Editor-in-Chief since 1988 . His Handbook of Industrial Drying has already undergone three editions and is acclaimed as the international standard reference on the subject. He has also authored several books and edited more than sixty books related to drying as well as basic heat and mass transfer.

Professor Mujumdar’s research in thermal drying started in Canada with his pioneering work on a new drying technique of using impinging jets of superheated steam for drying newsprint and tissue paper.He later expanded his research activities to include drying of agricultural products, foods, ceramics, biomass, etc., and had developed a number of novel drying concepts and dryer designs. At NUS, where he arrived in mid-2000, he has focused on techniques for drying heat-sensitive materials using heat pumps, intermittent batch drying, spray drying and pulse combustion drying of liquid-form materials to produce powders.

Using a combined experimental and modelling approach, Professor Mujumdar has demonstrated the potential of the various new drying concepts in enhancing product quality while reducing the net energy consumption and equipment size and hence the cost of drying. A similar approach has also been used in scaling up of dryers from laboratory to pilot to full scale. Prof Mujumdar has collaborated widely on a global scale with scientists and engineers on the subject and provided guidance and consultancy to numerous drying equipment makers and users world-wide to save energy and make their operation more economic and eco-friendly.

The true impact of Prof. Mujumdar’s contribution on a global scale is hard to assess with the commonlyused yardsticks since its real impact and value does not lead to citable publications but to real engineering hardware and software that is useful to industries in the developed as well as the developing world. The fact that he is invited to present plenary and keynote lectures at conferences and contribute chapters to numerous handbooks and encyclopedias is a testimonial to the true impact and recognition of his research.