Episode notes
In this engaging episode of Intrigued to Innovate, host Dr Jovan Tan sits down with Harini Ravichandran and Felicia Tan, two NUS Innovation & Design Programme (iDP) students who are turning municipal food waste into a sustainable future.
What started as an ambitious plan to address Singapore's increasing food waste problem turned into a practical showcase of resilience, ingenuity, and hands-on problem-solving.
Facing challenges like contaminated bacterial batches weeks before their final presentation and daily exposure to food waste fumes, Harini and Felicia's journey highlights the often-overlooked, gritty side of lab-based innovation.
This episode captures their remarkable transformation of carbohydrate-rich food waste (trash) into high-value lactic acid (treasure), a key material used in bioplastics. This process not only helps reduce environmental impact but also opens up new economic opportunities.
This episode uncovers:
· Why Singapore's food waste problem demands urgent, circular solutions
· How to turn procurement nightmares and contaminated samples—things that go wrong—into learning opportunities
· The power of interdisciplinary collaboration across chemical engineering, materials science, and environmental engineering
· Why soft skills—such as time management, stress coping, and strategic pitching—are more important than technical perfection
· How focusing on problems you care about sustains you through a year-long innovation challenge
Whether you're a student engineer, sustainability advocate, or simply curious about turning environmental challenges into valuable resources, understand why the greatest innovations emerge not from perfect execution, but from embracing every setback as a stepping stone.
Guests: Harini Ravichandran and Felicia Tan Mei Ling, Y3 Innovation & Design Programme (iDP) Students, National University of Singapore
Hosted by: Dr Jovan Tan
Produced by: Low Tse Han & Dr Jovan Tan
Presented by: NUS Innovation & Design Programme (iDP) at the NUS Engineering Design and Innovation Centre (EDIC)