Our Team
Frédéric-Georges Fontaine (director)
Professor Fontaine joined the Chemistry Department of Université Laval in 2004 with a Ph.D. in organometallic chemistry from the University of Montreal and an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship from UC Berkeley. He has held tenure since 2013 and he has held a Tier 1 Canadian Research Chair in Green Catalysis and Metal-Free Processes since 2018. His research expertise is focused on the development of main group catalysts for the functionalization of inert molecules, including the reduction of carbon dioxide into methanol derivatives. He is also working on the use of silica and carbon materials for the catalytic conversion of CO2 and epoxides into cyclic carbonates.
Expertise: homogeneous catalysis, heterogeneous catalysis, catalyst design
- Photo: Marc Robitaille
Louis-Cesar Pasquier
Louis-Cesar Pasquier is an associate professor at the Water, Land and Environment Center of INRS in Quebec City. Since his doctoral work, he has been interested in the development of environmental technologies using mineral carbonation. His research focuses on the entire environmental sector, from waste reclamation to contaminated soil treatment, air quality and mineral processing. The work of its team covers the entire technological development, from laboratory work to demonstration scale, from proof of concept to technical/economic and life cycle analysis. This global vision enables the group to meet the many challenges imposed by the energy/ecological transition to a low-carbon world.
Expertise: CO2 capture and utilization
Anne-Marie Boulay
Anne-Marie Boulay graduated from chemical engineering at McGill University. She is an assistant professor at École Polytechnique of Montreal within CIRAIG, one of the largest international research centers on life cycle assessment (LCA). She received the SETAC Europe Young Scientist Award for her Ph.D. work. After more than 10 years on the topic of life cycle impact assessment, she has become an expert on the water footprint, providing training for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in developing countries around the world and she is the Canadian Chair of the ISO sub-committee on life cycle assessment (TC207/SC5). She is currently chairing the WULCA working group on water use in LCA for UN Environment, the LEAP working group of FAO on water use assessment, and the MARILCA working group (UN Environment and FSLCI) on marine impacts, specifically plastic litter, in LCA. These working groups lead international consensus-building processes and the scientific work into achieving harmonized methods for assessing important impact pathways in LCA, involving key method developers and stakeholders through international collaborative efforts.
Expertise: life cycle analysis, life cycle impact assessment, water footprint, impact of plastics in the environment
Josée Duchesne
Josée Duchesne has been a professor of Applied Mineralogy in the Geology and Geological Engineering Department at Université Laval since 1995. She received her PhD in 1993 for research on concrete durability and a NSERC postdoctoral fellowship on geochemistry of cement-based materials at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses mainly on concrete durability and innovative ways to improve concrete sustainability, using industrial wastes or non-traditional supplementary cementing materials. She is also interested in carbon sequestration, durability of alkali-activated materials and issues related to the oxidation of sulfide-bearing aggregates in concrete.
Expertise: concrete durability, new binders, oxidation of sulfide-bearing minerals, mineral carbonation
Louis Fradette
Professor Fradette started at Montreal Polytechnique in 2004 after spending almost 10 years in industry first as process engineer for Petro-Canada and, after completing a PhD, in multiple positions in R&D management. He has held the NSERC-Total research chair in multiphase hydrodynamics in extreme conditions from 2011 to 2016. Prof. Fradette joined CO2 Solutions Inc. in 2013, as Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice-President of process and engineering. After successful demonstration of CO2 Solutions capture technology on a large scale in 2015 and led the startup of the first large scale commercialization project in 2016 at Resolute Forest Products in St-Félicien Qc. He also leads the Valorisation Carbone Québec project, a unique 30 million dollar project aiming to demonstrate CO2 capture and utilisation for the production of value-added products on an industrial scale.
Expertise: process integration, capture, hydrogen, Fischer-Tropsch process
Patrick González
Patrick González is a professor of economics at Université Laval where he teaches economic theory and the history of economic thought. Over the years, he has published articles about economic theory in peer-reviewed journals, worked in energy and resource economics for various clients and written handbooks for students in economics. He was the editor of L’actualité économique for nine years.
Expertise: microeconomics, public economics, energy economics
Maria-Cornélia Iliuta
Maria C. Iliuta has been a professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at Université Laval since 2006. She received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and performed postdoctoral fellowships in phase equilibria thermodynamics, separation technologies, and heterogeneous catalysis at the Technical University of Denmark and Université Laval. Her research interests focus on materials development, process intensification, and environmental engineering, particularly directed towards catalysis (heterogeneous, enzymatic, and photocatalysis), separations (gas-liquid and gas-solid absorption/adsorption, and membranes), capture and catalytic valorization of CO2, waste valorization, alternative fuels/ hydrogen production, and process modeling.
Expertise: catalysis, separations, process intensification, waste valorization, process modeling
Philip Jessop
Dr. Philip Jessop is the Canada Research Chair of Green Chemistry at Queen’s University and the Technical Director of GreenCentre Canada. His research interests include green solvents, biomass conversion and the chemistry of CO2. Distinctions include the NSERC Polanyi Award (2008), the Canadian Green Chemistry & Engineering Award (2012), the Eni Award (2013), the NSERC Brockhouse Prize (2019), and Fellowships in the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is the Chair of the Editorial Board for the journal Green Chemistry, has chaired three major international conferences and helped create two spin-off companies and GreenCentre Canada, a centre for the commercialization of green chemistry technologies.
Expertise: CO2-switchable materials, green solvents, biomass conversion
Francesca Kerton
Fran Kerton is a professor of green chemistry at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and the 2019 Canadian Green Chemistry & Engineering Award recipient. She is the Chair of the IUPAC Chemical Research Applied to World Needs (ChemRAWN) committee and a member of the advisory board for the RSC journal Reaction Chemistry and Engineering. She received her D.Phil. in Organometallic Chemistry at the University of Sussex (UK) and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia. Her current research focuses on catalysis including fundamental mechanistic studies, ‘green’ solvents, chemistry of degradable and biorenewable materials, and transformations of carbon dioxide and carbohydrates.
Expertise: catalysis, polymers, renewables, green chemistry
Faiçal Larachi
Prof. Faïçal Larachi’s research focuses on devising micro/multifunctional processes and materials in the areas of energy, mineral resources and the environment, with an emphasis on implementing GHG mitigation through CO2 capture/storage. He has served as the Associate Editor for the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, and as a Member of the Editorial or Advisory Boards for the journals Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Chemical Engineering & Processing: Process Intensification, and Indian Chemical Engineer. He also held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Energy Processes and Materials. Prior to joining Université Laval, he obtained a chemical engineering doctoral degree from Institut National Polytechnique at Université de Lorraine (France), and held a post-doctoral position at École Polytechnique of Montréal. He was a visiting scientist with Total (France), the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFPEN) and the Consortium de recherche minérale (COREM) where he spent two sabbatical years.
Expertise: micro/multifunctional processes, energy, computational fluid dynamics & density functional theory simulations
Normand Voyer
Normand Voyer is a professor of bioorganic chemistry at Université Laval and the Director of PROTEO, the Quebec reserch network on protein function, engineering and applications. He earned his Ph. D. in organic chemistry from Université Laval and did a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA in bioorganic chemistry. His research interests focus on the discovery of novel bioactive molecules and artificial proteins and enzymes. He has been involved in the development of biocatalysts for CO2 capture and, more recently, on the biomimetic conversion of CO2 into useful chemicals commodities.
Expertise: bioorganic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, biocatalysis, biomimetic catalysis
- Photo: Louise Leblanc
Marie-Hélène Pedneau
Marie-Hélène Pedneau is an experienced project manager and is the coordinator of the CREATE grant that gave birth to CIRCUIT. She has held positions managing the 400th anniversary celebrations of Québec City at Université Laval, for Operation Red Nose, for the Table québécoise de la sécurité routière, for the professor emeritus of mathematics Jean-Marie De Koninck, for the Research Chair in scientific journalism and for the Frédéric-Georges Fontaine’s Canada Research Chair in Green Catalysis and Metal-free Processes. Known for her versatility and curiosity, she is multitalented. She is a great sportswoman and thrives on challenges.
- Photo: Amélia Sow