Personal Presentation

JCM Pires graduated in Chemical Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of Porto University (FEUP) in 2004 with a final classification of 16. He worked in two chemical companies (SunChemical and Tagol) and then started his PhD in Environmental Engineering in 2006 at FEUP. From 2010 to 2016, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the environmental applications of microalgal cultures, focusing on integrating processes to reduce operational costs and environmental impact. He has also participated in a research project to develop methodologies for assessing the sustainability of chemical processes. Since 2017, he has been an assistant researcher at FEUP. He was an Invited Assistant Professor at FEUP and the Faculty of Engineering of Agostinho Neto University (FEUAN) in Luanda, Angola. His teaching activity encompasses several multidisciplinary topics, including the Project of Engineering (for Chemical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, and Bioengineering), as well as Air Pollution, among others.

JCM Pires received a merit scholarship from the University of Porto in 2003 for achieving the highest grade in Chemical Engineering and the Best Student Prize from Fundação Engenheiro António de Almeida in 2005. To support his research activities, he was awarded FCT fellowships (PhD SFRH/BD/23302/2005, Postdoctoral SFRH/BPD/66721/2009, and SFRH/BPD/112849/2015). One of his research papers was ranked in the ScienceDirect Top 25 Hottest Articles of the journal Chem. Eng. Res. Des. in 2011-2014 and was considered the Top Cited Paper for 2011 and 2012. He was on the list of the world's most cited scientists (career-long impact and single-year impact) released by Stanford University in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2024 (the list contains all scientists who are among the top 100,000 in all fields or the top 2% in their main research sub-area, according to their composite citation index when self-citations are excluded). Due to his scientific outputs, he received the Scientific Recognition Award in 2019, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2026 FEUP’s Day.

JCM Pires is an integrated member of LEPABE-FEUP in the research line of Process Systems Engineering, holding a position on the Scientific Steering Committee since 2023. Considering the knowledge he acquired during his PhD, he also develops works within the field of Environmental Sciences, primarily focusing on the analysis of air and water pollution data. Concerning research projects, he is/was the principal investigator of eight research projects: (i) FCT Investigator Grant IF/01341/2015 (2017-2021); (ii) project PIV4Algae (2018-2022); (iii) Power2Biofuel (2021-2022); (iv) Environmental Management at IMPETUS (2021-2022); (v) PhotoBioValue (2022-2025); (vi) UCI4SmartCity (2025-2026); (vii) PHYBIOMED (2025-2028) and (viii) INNOVALG (2025-2028). He was also involved in other research projects (17).

JCM Pires published 108 papers (24 as first author, 4 as a single author; 64 as the corresponding author; 50 as senior/last author; 81 papers were published independently from his PhD supervisor) in international peer-reviewed journals (mainly in Environmental Science; >85% of the papers were published within 50% of the highest impact factor-Q1 and Q2- in their area of knowledge) with an accumulated impact factor of 644 and with 6673 citations (Google Scholar h-index=45; SCOPUS h-index=38). JCM Pires published 9 books (8 of them edited ones), and 33 book chapters (4 as a single author), and his research work was discussed in 91 international meetings and 7 national meetings. Since completing his PhD, JCM Pires has served as a reviewer for over 450 papers in international journals, including Chemical Reviews, Nature Communications, and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. His work was recognised by several international journals. He is an editorial board member of Algal Research (Elsevier), Bioengineering and Biotechnology (Frontiers – Bioprocess Engineering), Applied Sciences, Energies, Sustainability (MDPI), The Open Microalgae Biotechnology (Bentham) and Highlights of Sustainability.

JCM Pires completed the supervision of 7 postdoctoral researchers (1 ongoing), 2 PhD students (5 ongoing), 30 master students and 13 research fellows (1 ongoing). Concerning established international collaborations, he worked at the Institute of Chemical Technology (Czech Republic) for 5 months. Since 2015, he has collaborated on research studies with the University of Seville and the Joint Research Centre (Spain) on the characterisation and modelling of air quality. At FEUAN (Angola), he supervised two research studies for a period of two years. At the Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil), he co-supervised a PhD student for one year on wastewater treatment using microalgae. He supervised the work developed by Dr Jacqueline Rodrigues (Federal University of Sergipe) about the application of natural flocculants for microalgal harvesting. He also established collaborations with researchers in Portugal (LSRE/LCM, CEFT, among others) and abroad (University of Cambridge, UK; University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; National Central University, Taiwan, among others), resulting in 39 papers and 26 presentations at international conferences.

Áreas de Interesse

1. Natural sciences > Environmental science
2. Technological sciences > Engineering > Process engineering
3. Technological sciences > Engineering > Project engineering
4. Technological sciences > Engineering > Simulation engineering