A University of Queensland (UQ) alumnus has received the 2011 UQ Young Alumnus of the Year Award for outstanding global regulatory work.

Now a senior counsel at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Dr Kala Mulqueeny graduated from UQ with a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Laws in 1994.

Mulqueeny then became a clerk for a judge of the Federal Court of Australia, practised with firms in Australia, New York and Hong Kong, and received a Masters of Law and Doctorate of Juridical Science from Harvard Law School.

UQ, which received a large number of nominees for the award, recognised Mulqueeny as "truly an alumnus of the modern age with a career that is both dynamic in its scope and global in perspective". She specialises in legal empowerment, infrastructure and clean energy regulation, environmental enforcement, and international law.

Today, at the ADB, Mulqueeney currently manages a $2 million research project into the effectiveness of energy and water service supply regulation in south-east Asian countries and small island developing countries, including the Pacific.

In Sri Lanka, she designed and oversees a post-tsunami legal empowerment and access to justice project, which has directly helped almost 60,000 people.

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Mulqueeney is a 2011 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a 2010 Yale World Fellow. She has taught widely, including at the University of the Philippines, Hong Kong University and the Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law.