Miranda Mpeta, a 2025 MMEG grantee from Zimbabwe, is a chemical engineer with over 15 years’ experience spanning manufacturing, academia, consultancy, and mining. She is completing her PhD candidate in chemical engineering at the University of Pretoria, where she specializes in bioremediation and resource recovery of mine wastewater from gold operations. She is passionate about advancing circular economy principles and aligning with global priorities in sustainable water management. She holds an MSc in urban water and sanitation from UNESCO‑IHE Delft, Netherlands, where she graduated with distinction, and a BEng (Honours) in chemical engineering from the National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe. These qualifications underpin her expertise across wastewater treatment, process engineering, industrial effluent management, and environmental sustainability. These are complemented by a strong track record in capacity building, project development, and environmental policy and strategy review.
Her professional footprint extends across Africa and Asia through a series of high-impact projects. Recent initiatives include the treatment of fluoride‑affected rural drinking water in Kariba, Zimbabwe (SADC-GMI and World Bank), solid waste management in rural communities under the COHESA program, and environmental pollution prevention in Southeast Asia, Myanmar. She has also contributed to water and sanitation projects in peri‑urban Zimbabwe, bio-gas digester design in Papua New Guinea, and formative evaluations of emergency cholera response programs. Each project has reflected her ability to translate technical research into practical solutions with lasting community impact. Her upbringing in Zimbabwe, where mining is both an economic lifeline and a source of profound environmental harm, inspired her commitment to sustainable mining solutions and drives the urgency behind her work.
Equity and inclusion are an integral part of Miranda’s professional and community work. She is a founding member of Engineers Without Borders Zimbabwe and a member of the Water Institute of Southern Africa and the Global Sanitation Graduate School and has served as a patron for Women in Engineering at Chinhoyi University of Technology. Passionate about empowering women and youth, she mentors young girls in STEM and works closely with Zimbabwe Association of Women in Mining Associations to strengthen collaboration between artisanal miners and technical experts. Through the University of Queensland Delve Exchange program, she advances responsible mining practices across Africa while advocating for safer mining environments, improved water access, and sustainable livelihoods for women and children in mining communities.
Miranda's contributions have earned international recognition, including the 2025–2026 UNESCO‑L'Oréal Young Talent Award for Women in Science (Sub‑Saharan Africa), the Margaret McNamara Education Grant (2025), the Netherlands Government NFP Scholarship, and the J.F. Kapnek Scholarship. Looking ahead, she is focused on influencing environmental policy in Zimbabwe and scaling transformative mining solutions to empower women across Anglo-African countries, bridging the gap between innovation and practical implementation to create lifelong, generational change.
