School of Engineering

Professor Cristina Trois is the former Dean and Head of the School of Engineering at UKZN. Full Professor in Environmental Engineering, she is currently the NRF South African Research Chair in Waste and Climate Change (SARCHI) at UKZN. 

She moved to South Africa from the beautiful island of Sardinia in Italy in 1998 and has been working at UKZN since 1999. She holds an MScEng (summa cum laude) and a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the Department of Geo-Engineering and Environmental Technology of Cagliari University (Italy). She is a Professional Engineer (Italy) since 1997.

She is a C1 rated scientist with the National Research Foundation and her main fields of expertise are: Environmental and Geo-Engineering, Waste and Climate Change in Sustainable Cities, Waste and Resources Management, Control, Management and Treatment of landfill emissions, Renewable Energy from waste and Greenhouse gas control from zero waste in Africa and developing countries, Alternative Building Materials. 

She developed and coordinates the first Master Programme in Waste and Resources Management in South Africa. So far, she has graduated over 60 postgraduate students, and an average of 8-10 undergraduate students successfully complete their final-year dissertations under her supervision, every year. 

Prof Trois is co-author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications; she is in the editorial/review panel of several ISI Journals and actively collaborates with leading national and international Institutions.
Chair of the joint secretariat for the Southern Africa Region of the UN-IPLA Programme (International Partnership for advancing waste management services of local authorities) and the IWWG (International Waste Working Group), Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineers. Prof. Trois has over 20 years of working experience in waste management and has been the principal investigator as well as the project coordinator of many feasibility and R&D waste management/waste minimisation/treatment/design projects with municipalities in South Africa and Africa. She is advisor for waste management strategies, waste to energy projects, CDM projects and waste treatment projects for national government, DST, DEA, Sanedi, local government and the private sector.

Prof. Trois is author of over 100 publications in high-impact journals and has successfully supervised over 60 PhD and Master students. She currently leads a vibrant SARCHI research group.