Education

Juan Hincapie received his bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 2014. He obtained an industrial internship working with methods to quantify chemical conversion on polymerization reactors using gravimetry.

Later, he earned a master's fellowship from the biggest Colombian oil company focused on process optimization, reactors engineering, and computer programming, achieving a M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering in 2017. Juan spent a few months in a research stay at Stanford University (CA, USA) and presented results at KAUST University (Saudi Arabia).

Currently, he is doing a Ph.D. in POLYMAT, Basque Center for Macromolecular Design and Engineering, under the supervision of Prof. José M. Asua and Dr. Nicholas Ballard.

Research

He worked for five years for the R&D department in a Colombian company leading the waterborne polymer dispersions for coatings (acrylic-based). His experience is related to product development (emulsion and solution polymerization), scale-up, and Computational fluid dynamics. He has had the opportunity to manage many projects related to rheology enhancement of polymeric materials, reduction of residual monomer and VOC's (Volatile Organic Content), but also projects related to changing the conventional raw materials for more sustainable solutions.

His current research is focused on the fundamentals of emulsion polymerization, understanding the phenomena that take place in the aqueous phase.

Polymerization Processes Group

Publications