Joao B.P. Soares

Research Areas 

  • polymerization reaction engineering
  • water-soluble polymer for oilsands technology
  • polymer characterization
  • mathematical modeling of polymerization processes

Research Interests

  • polymerization reactor engineering for Ziegler-Natta, metallocene, late transition metal, free-radical and living free-radical polymerization
  • water-soluble polymers for oil sands technology
  • polymer microstructural characterization and fractionation
  • mathematical modeling of polymerization reactors and polymer microstructure
  • in-situ polymer nanocomposites

Biography

João Soares received his bachelor’s degree from Federal University of Bahia (Salvador, Ba, Brazil), and his master’s degree from the State University of Campinas (Campinas, SP, Brazil), both in Chemical Engineering. Before moving to Canada, he worked during four years as a research and development engineer for Pronor, COPENE, and Polibrasil (Brazil). He did his PhD thesis under the supervision of Professor A.E. Hamielec, in the Department of Chemical Engineering at McMaster University (Hamilton, ON, Canada) and joined the faculty in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo in 1995. On July 1, 2013, Professor Soares joined the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta as the Campus Alberta Innovation Program Chair in Interfacial Polymer Engineering for Oilsands Processing.

Prof. Soares published more than 170 articles in referred journals, written 12 book chapters, and is the author (with Timothy McKenna) of the book Polyolefin Reaction Engineering published by Wiley-VCH in 2012. He has offered 27 public and 22 in-house industrial short courses all over the world in his areas of expertise. Professor Soares is also a co-organizer in two main international polyolefin conferences: The International Conference on Polyolefin Reaction Engineering (INCOREP), and The International Conference on Polyolefin Characterization (ICPC).

Professor Soares is the Editor-in-Chief for the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering. He is also a member of the Executive Advisory Board of Wiley-VCH Macromolecular journals and responsible for the coordination of Macromolecular Reaction Engineering.

Professor Soares is a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada, and a Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario. He is the recipient of the Premier’s Research Excellence Award (2000), the Union Carbide/Dow Innovation Recognition Program (2000, 2001), and the Syncrude/CSChE Canada Innovation Award for contributions to Chemical Engineering under the age of 40 (2001). He consults for several polyolefin-manufacturing companies in Canada, USA, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.