Jesse Zhu is a Distinguished University Professor and Canada Research Chair at Western University (formerly known as the University of Western Ontario), in London, Canada. Since 1983, he has worked on many areas of fluidization and particle technology including several years at Shell in the Netherlands. With 400+ journal publications, 50+ patents, and over 200 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows supervised, he has worked on a very wide range of R&D projects, many from the industry. In addition to fundamental research, he is particularly active in technology development and transfer, with several inventions commercialized or being commercialized. Companies established by his graduate students and post-doctoral fellows have generated over $20M in sales in the materials, environmental and pharmaceutical industries.
At Western University, he established the Particle Technology Research Centre in 1999 and has served as its Director since then. He is a Fellow of Chemical Institute of Canada and Engineering Institute of Canada, and also a Fellow of Royal Society of Canada and Canadian Academy of Engineering. He has chaired many conferences including two annual conferences of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering and the 7th International Conference on Circulating Fluidized Bed. He has received many awards including three major awards from the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (Syncrude Innovation Award for Outstanding Young Chemical Engineer, Bantrel Award in Design and Industrial Practice, and R.S. Jane Award as the highest career award of the society), the PSRI Fluidization Lectureship Award by AIChE, the Premier's Research Excellence Award, the Ontario Professional Engineers Engineering Medal, and the Distinguished University Professorship and the Hellmuth Prize for Achievement in Research (the highest research award) at Western University.