Industrial Thermochemical Conversion Group

Dr. John R. Grace is professor emeritus at Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of British Columbia. He completed undergraduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Western Ontario and a Ph.D. degree from Cambridge University.  From 1968-79 he was an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor at McGill University in Montreal.  He then moved to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver where he served as department head (1979-87), Dean of Graduate Studies (1990-96) and Acting Director of the Clean Energy Research Centre (2008-9).

He has worked on a wide range of topics, both fundamental and applied, including hydrodynamics, heat transfer and mass transfer in low-velocity and high-velocity fluidized beds, reactor modeling, scale-up, fluidized bed combustion, steam reforming, three-phase fluidization, spouted beds and removal of particulates from gas streams, and spread and modeling of contaminants in the environment. He has more than 600 publications, including co-authorship and co-editorship of seven books, mostly on fluidization, related fluid-particle systems and research related to energy processes. He has supervised more than 100 graduate students, as well as many post-doctoral fellows and visiting scholars.

Dr. Grace served as President of Membrane Reactor Technologies Ltd. from 1998 to 2003. He is Director of the UBC Fluidization Research Centre. He has served as a consultant for various companies in Canada and abroad.

He held a Canada Research Chair in Clean Energy Processes from 2001-2014 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Canadian Academy of Engineering, Engineering Institute of Canada, and Chemical Institute of Canada. Among his awards he is past winner of the R.S. Jane Award, the major award of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering, the Career Achievement Award of the Science Council of British Columbia, an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Ontario, a Killam teaching prize, the Montreal Medal of the Chemical Institute of Canada, two awards from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.