Mike Dixon

Dr. Mike Dixon is a desalination and water treatment technology professional with 15 years’ experience working with membrane and thermal technologies in Australia, North America, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Asia. He has worked across the entire value chain with technology manufacturers, water utilities, oil and gas companies, pharmaceutical companies, and research hubs. As the current Chief Technology Officer of WaterNEXT (a water business accelerator based in Calgary, Canada), Dr. Dixon’s responsibilities include technology assessment and intake assessment. He is also a senior technical advisor, and on the founding team, of MIT start-up Sandymount Technologies. Prior to WaterSMART, Dr. Dixon was Applications Development Manager for NanoH2O, a global provider of reverse osmosis membranes that leveraged UCLA developed nanotechnology developed at the University of California, Los Angeles, to lower the cost of desalination with more than 300 installations in 40+ countries in the three years from market launch. LG Chem acquired NanoH2O in 2014. He was also R&D Engineer for the 300,000 m3/day Adelaide Desalination Plant. Dr. Dixon has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Adelaide, Australia, and business training from Stanford University, California. He is experienced with the development of intellectual property and the commercialization of new technologies. He has more than sixty publications in international journals and is an author of several books and book chapters. He has been an editor of the International Desalination Association Journal and a reviewer for the Journal of Membrane Science, Desalination and Water Research. He was National President of the Young Water Professionals for the Australian Water Association and in 2012 won the prestigious International Desalination Association Fellowship Award.