Alexander Penlidis

Alexander Penlidis is a Chemical Engineering Professor at the University of Waterloo. He has held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Engineering of Polymers with Tailor-Made Properties in 2002-2016. He is the founding co-editor and editor for the "Polymer Reaction Engineering Journal" and also served as the Associate Director and Director for the Institute for Polymer Research from 1991 to 2010.

His long-term goal is to promote in parallel interdisciplinary research for polymers with advanced technology applications. These applications would be geared towards health, biological polymers, polymeric sensors, polymeric materials for photonics, and polymeric materials for a variety of civil engineering applications.

Professor Penlidis’s current projects include kinetics and modelling of multicomponent bulk, solution, suspension and emulsion polymerizations; development of flexible simulator packages for polymerization processes; and dynamic optimization of polymer reactor operation, polymer reactor pilot-plant instrumentation and automation. He is also working on online multivariable non-linear model predictive control of polymerization reactors; high temperature terpolymerizations and depropagation studies, as well as nano-structured particle technology.

Professor Penlidis has made outstanding research accomplishments, culminating in the 1993 Canadian Society of Chemical Engineering Albright and Wilson Americas Award, for distinguished contributions in chemical engineering before the age of 40. Additionally in 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (FCAE), the highest engineering honour in the country. In light of his impressive work, Professor Penlidis has attracted more than $15,500,000 in research funding.

• polymeric materials
• Polymer Science
• polymer reaction engineering
• Process Systems Engineering
• polymer property modification
• structure-property relationships
• polymer production technology
• emulsion polymerization
• polymer reactor modelling
• polymerization kinetics
• Advanced Manufacturing

• 1986, Doctorate, Chemical Engineering, McMaster University
• 1980, Diploma of Engineering (5 years), Chemical Engineering, Aristotle University

• CHE 425 - Strategies for Process Improvement and Product Development
  • Taught in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
• CHE 543 - Polymer Production: Polymer Reaction Engineering
  • Taught in 2017, 2018, 2019
• CHE 621 - Model Building and Response Surface Methodology
  • Taught in 2019
• CHE 640 - Principles of Polymer Science
  • Taught in 2020
• CHE 725 - Research Topics in Analysis of Chemical Processes
  • Taught in 2017

• Khouri, Joseph, Penlidis Alexander, and Moresoli, Christine, Heterogeneous Method of Chitosan Film Preparation: Effect of Multifunctional Acid on Film Properties, J. Appl. Polym. Sci. (JAPS), 137(18), 2020
• Scott, Alison J, Duever, Thomas A and Penlidis, Alexander, The Role of pH, Ionic Strength and Monomer Concentration on the Terpolymerization of 2-Acrylamido-2-methylpropane Sulfonic Acid, Acrylamide and Acrylic Acid, Polymer, 177, 2019, 214 - 230
• Scott, Alison J and Penlidis, Alexander, Computational Package for Copolymerization Reactivity Ratio Estimation: Improved Access to the Error-in-Variables-Model, Processes, 6(1), 2018
• Stewart, Katherine ME and Hamilton, Ian P and Penlidis, Alexander, Investigation of the Interaction between Benzene and SXFA Using DFT, Processes, 6(2), 2018
• Mohammadi, Yousef and Saeb, Mohammad Reza and Penlidis, Alexander, Heuristic Search Strategy for Transforming Microstructural Patterns to Optimal Copolymerization Recipes, Macromolecular Theory and Simulations, 2018
• Riahinezhad, Marzieh and Romero-Zerón, Laura and McManus, Neil and Penlidis, Alexander, Design of Tailor-Made Water-Soluble Copolymers for Enhanced Oil Recovery Polymer Flooding Applications, Macromolecular Reaction Engineering, 11(1), 2017