Raymond Legge

Raymond Legge is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. During his 35-year career at the University of Waterloo he has served in a variety of administrative roles including as Assistant Vice-President Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs, Associate Dean of Engineering Graduate Studies and International Agreements, Associate Chair of Graduate Studies and Director of the Biotechnology Research Centre. His research expertise is in biochemical engineering with applications to environmental engineering, water treatment, green bioprocesses and bioseparation, with a focus on the development and application of spectroscopically based tools for monitoring, characterization and control. He has recently collaborated with a start-up in the development of a solvent-free separation process which has numerous food-related applications. The most significant advantage of this approach is the preservation of the native functionality of the bioproducts expanding the potential roster of applications for these materials. He is the recipient on two occasions of the Sandford Fleming Foundation Faculty of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award. During his career he has published over 370 refereed publications and conference proceedings along with 13 book chapters and review articles. His career Google h-index is 44 with over 8200 citations. He is a member of the Water Institute, Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology and the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research.

His research is very multidisciplinary with numerous collaborations not only with faculty members in the Department of Chemical Engineering, but other departments (e.g. Systems Design), universities and institutes. The same multidisciplinary mix will be found in the researchers and graduate students that work on the described projects.

Electrostatic-based Separation of Agricultural Flours

More recently research in the lab has focused on exploring electrostatic-based separation for the production of protein- and starch-enriched fractions from agricultural flours. This approach offers numerous advantages including retention of native structures of the feed material and sustainability. Research is also being conducted in the area of bioprocess monitoring and applying near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) to systems that can be characterised as non-soluble.

Biomimetic Engineering

Significant advances have been made in the use of enzymes in non-conventional media. These advances are ushering in a new age in the application of enzymes to organic syntheses. Efforts in this area have focused on the development of engineering fundamentals using emerging principles from the life sciences. For example, we have concentrated on the development of suitable support materials (e.g., "designer" sol-gels) for biotransformations in non-conventional media. To understand the phenomena that lead to enzyme inactivation in these systems, we have turned to various thermodynamic approaches to characterize the supports and understand fundamental aspects of protein stability and protein/protein interactions.

Drinking Water Treatment & Monitoring

The primary focus of the laboratory is in the study of natural organic matter (NOM). We have been active in a variety of areas related to measurement and monitoring of NOM, particularly through the use of fluorescence excitation emission matrices (FEEM) combined with chemometric methods. These approaches are being applied to better understand water treatment processes that involve filtration or biofiltration and to develop strategies to optimize or better control these processes. It is hoped that this research will lead to the development of novel technologies that can be applied in practice or to more insightful modeling/optimization of these processes.

Awards

• Academic Achievement Award, American Water Works Association

• Outstanding Performance Award, University of Waterloo

• Sandford Fleming Foundation Faculty of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award (twice)

• Distinguished Performance Award, Faculty of Engineering (three times)

• Award of Merit from the Canadian Society for Chemistry

• Excellence in Research Award with Dr. C. Barclay from the Research and Technology Branch of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment

• University of Waterloo Alumni Gold Medal

• Lionel Cinq Mars Award from the Canadian Botanical Association

• Invitation Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

• NSERC University Research Fellowship

• NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship (University of Texas at Austin)

Prof. Legge is a member of the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research, Water Institute and the Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology.

• Biochemical Engineering
• Protein and Biomimetic Engineering
• Enzyme Immobilization
• Biotransformation
• Applied Enzymology
• Biomaterials
• Drinking Water Treatment
• Electrostatic Separation
• Fluorescence Spectroscopy

• 1983, Doctorate, Biology, University of Waterloo
• 1976, Bachelor's, First Class Honors, Plant Biology, University of Calgary

• CHE 161 - Engineering Biology
  • Taught in 2016, 2017, 2018
• CHE 725 - Res Tpcs in Chem Proc Analysis
  • Taught in 2016
• CHE 102 - Chemistry for Engineers
  • Taught in 2016

• Vitelli, M., Mehrtash, H., Assatory, A., Tabtabaei, S., Legge, R.L., Rajabzadeh, A.R., Rapid and non-destructive determination of protein and starch content in agricultural powders using near-infrared spectroscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy, and data fusion, Powder Technology, 381, 2021, 620 - 631
  Link
• Vitelli, M., Rajabzadeh, A.R., Tabtabaei, S., Assatory, A., Shahnam, E., Legge, R.L., Effect of hammer and pin milling on triboelectric separation of legume flour, Powder Technology, 372, 2020, 317 - 324
  Link
• Zavatti, V., Budman, H., Legge, R.L., Tamer, M., Investigation of the effects of oxidative stress inducing factors on culturing and productivity of Bordetella pertussis, Biotechnology Progress, 36(1), 2020
• Yang, Y.A., Peleato, N.M., Legge, R.L. and Andrews, R.C., Towards real-time detection of wastewater in surface waters using fluorescence spectroscopy., J. Environ. Sci., 86, 2019, 195 - 202
• Zavatti, V., Budman, H., Legge, R.L., Tamer, M., Impact of oxidative stress on protein production by Bordetella pertussis for vaccine production, Biochemical Engineering Journal, 151, 2019
• Assatory, A., Vitelli, M., Rajabzadeh, A.R., Legge, R.L., Dry fractionation methods for plant protein, starch and fiber enrichment: A review, Trends in Food Science & Technology, 86, 2019, 340 - 351
• Yang, Y.Z., Peleato, N.M., Legge, R.L., Andrews, R.C., Fluorescence excitation emission matrices for rapid detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and pesticides in surface waters, Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology, 5, 2019, 315 - 324
• Tabtabaei, S., Konakbayeva, D., Rajabzadeh, A.R., Legge, R.L., Functional properties of navy bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) protein concentrates obtained by pneumatic tribo-eletrostatic separation, Food Chemistry, 283, 2019, 101 - 110
• Hassani, S., Gharechaei, B., Nikfard, S., Fazli, M., Gheibi, N., Hardre, R., Legge, R.L., Haghbeen, K., New insight into the allosteric effect of L-tyrosine on mushroom tyrosinase during L-DOPA production, Int J Biol Macromol, 114, 2018, 821 - 829
• Peleato, N.M., Legge, R.L., Andrews, R.C., Neural networks for dimensionality reduction of fluorescence spectra and prediction of drinking water disinfection by-products, Water Research, 136, 2018, 84 - 94
• Tabtabaei, Solmaz and Vitelli, Michael and Rajabzadeh, Amin Reza and Legge, Raymond L, Analysis of protein enrichment during single-and multi-stage tribo-electrostatic bioseparation processes for dry fractionation of legume flour, Separation and Purification Technology, 176, 2017, 48 - 58
• Peleato, Nicolas M and Legge, Raymond L and Andrews, Robert C, Investigation of fluorescence methods for rapid detection of municipal wastewater impact on drinking water sources, Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, 171, 2017, 104 - 111
• Peleato, Nicolas M and Legge, Raymond L and Andrews, Robert C, Characterization of UF foulants and fouling mechanisms when applying low in-line coagulant pre-treatment, Water Research, 126, 2017, 1 - 11
• Peleato, Nicolas M and Legge, Raymond L and Andrews, Robert C and others, Continuous Organic Characterization for Biological and Membrane Filter Performance Monitoring, JOURNAL AMERICAN WATER WORKS ASSOCIATION, 109(4), 2017
• Peleato, Nicolás M and Sidhu, Balsher Singh and Legge, Raymond L and Andrews, Robert C, Investigation of ozone and peroxone impacts on natural organic matter character and biofiltration performance using fluorescence spectroscopy, Chemosphere, 172, 2017, 225 - 233
• Moshtaghioun, Seyed Mohammad and Dadkhah, Maryam and Bahremandjo, Kamran and Haghbeen, Kamahldin and Aminzadeh, Saeed and Legge, Raymond L, Optimization of simultaneous production of tyrosinase and laccase by Neurospora crassa, Biocatalysis and Biotransformation, 35(1), 2017, 1 - 10
• Tabtabaei, Solmaz and Jafari, Mousa and Rajabzadeh, Amin Reza and Legge, Raymond L, Development and optimization of a triboelectrification bioseparation process for dry fractionation of legume flours, Separation and Purification Technology, 163, 2016, 48 - 58
• Dong, Gregory Ryan and Kariminia, Hamid-Reza and Chen, Zhongwei W and Parker, Wayne and Pritzker, Mark D and Legge, Raymond L, Enhancement of Electricity Generation by a Microbial Fuel Cell Using a Highly Active Non-Precious-Metal Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Composite Catalyst Cathode, Energy & Fuels, 31(1), 2016, 959 - 967
• Chen, Fei and Peldszus, Sigrid and Elhadidy, Ahmed M and Legge, Raymond L and Van Dyke, Michele I and Huck, Peter M, Kinetics of natural organic matter (NOM) removal during drinking water biofiltration using different NOM characterization approaches, Water research, 104, 2016, 361 - 370
• Peleato, Nicolás M and McKie, Michael and Taylor-Edmonds, Lizbeth and Andrews, Susan A and Legge, Raymond L and Andrews, Robert C, Fluorescence spectroscopy for monitoring reduction of natural organic matter and halogenated furanone precursors by biofiltration, Chemosphere, 153, 2016, 155 - 161
• Mirazizi, Fatemeh and Bahrami, Azita and Haghbeen, Kamahldin and Shahbani Zahiri, Hossein and Bakavoli, Mehdi and Legge, Raymond L, Rapid and direct spectrophotometric method for kinetics studies and routine assay of peroxidase based on aniline diazo substrates, Journal of enzyme inhibition and medicinal chemistry, 31(6), 2016, 1162 - 1169
• Jafari, Mousa and Rajabzadeh, Amin Reza and Tabtabaei, Solmaz and Marsolais, Frédéric and Legge, Raymond L, Physicochemical characterization of a navy bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) protein fraction produced using a solvent-free method, Food chemistry, 208, 2016, 35 - 41

• Currently accepting applications for graduate students
• Has Approved Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor (ADDS) status