Joao Soares, PhD

Email

jsoares@ualberta.ca

Phone

(780) 492-2858

Address

12-263 Donadeo Innovation Centre For Engineering

9211 116 St

Edmonton AB

T6G 2H5

João Soares holds a Campus Alberta Innovates Program (CAIP) Chair in Interfacial Polymer Engineering for Oil Sands Processing, and a Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Advanced Polymer Reaction Engineering.

Prof. Soares has developed an original methodology to investigate polymerization processes that integrates: 1) polymerization kinetics determination, 2) microstructural characterization, and 3) detailed mathematical modeling. The combination of these three areas of research allows for a better understanding of the polymerization process/polymer architecture continuum that is unique to Prof. Soares’s group.

Before joining the University of Alberta on July 2013, he was a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo for 18 years. He worked as a research and development engineer for Pronor, COPENE, and Polibrasil (Brazil) before joining the University of Waterloo.

Prof. Soares has published over 200 articles in referred journals, written 13 book chapters, and is the author (with Timothy McKenna) of the book Polyolefin Reaction Engineering. He has offered 30 open and 23 in-house industrial short courses all over the world in his areas of expertise. 

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, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, a Professional Engineer in the Provinces of Ontario and Alberta. He consults for several polyolefin-manufacturing companies in Canada, USA, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and has worked as an expert witness in several patent litigation cases.

1. Polymerization reactor engineering for Ziegler-Natta, metallocene, late transition metal, free-radical and living free-radical polymerization
2. Water-soluble polymers for oil sands technology
3. Polymer microstructural characterization and fractionation
4. Mathematical modeling of polymerization reactors and polymer microstructure, and 5) in-situ polymer nanocomposites.

Keywords: Polymerization Reaction Engineering, Polyolefins, Polyethylene, Polypropylene, Polymer Flocculants, Oil Sands Tailings, Ziegler-Natta, Metallocenes, Polymer Characterization