Raymond Legge

Raymond Legge is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. During his 37-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 is the recipient on two occasions of the Sandford Fleming Foundation Faculty of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award.

During his career he has published over 380 refereed publications and conference proceedings along with 13 book chapters and review articles. His career Google h-index is 46 with over 9000 citations. He is a member of the Water Institute, Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology and the Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research.

Research Areas:

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.

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 2017, 2018

• Zavatti, V., Budman, H., Legge, R.L., Tamer, M., Evaluation of flow cytometry and chemometric models for monitoring and predicting antigen production at full-scale., Biochem. Eng. J., 2021
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• Rowat, S.J.A., Legge, R.L., Moresoli, C., Plant protein in material extrusion 3D printing: Formation, plasticization, prospects, and challenges, Journal of Food Engineering, 308, 2021
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• 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
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• 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
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• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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 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
• 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
• 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
• Tabtabaei, S., Kuspangaliyeva, B., Legge, R.L., Rajabzadeh, A.R. 2022. Air Classification In: Green Protein Processing Technologies from Plants, Martin, M., Hernandez-Alvarez, A.J. and Nosworthy, M. (Eds.) 30 pp. Springer Nature, UK. In press. (Accepted in 2022)