José Carlos Pinto has worked for the Programa de Engenharia Química / COPPE, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brasil, since 1991 and has held the position of Professor Titular since 2002. José Carlos has also been a permanent member of the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Química, Instituto Militar de Engenharia, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brasil, since 2011.
Although he is a carioca ( he was born in Rio on July 13, 1963 ), José Carlos moved to Salvador - BA with his family in the early 70s, where he learned enjoying Caetano Veloso's songs, having thousands of acarajés and where he received a Bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering in January, 1986. In the beginning of 1986 José Carlos moved back to Rio de Janeiro, where he had been accepted as a graduate student in Programa de Engenharia Química / COPPE. During his PhD thesis, José Carlos had the opportunity to carry out part of his research plan in the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Wisconsin, Madison - WI, USA. His PhD thesis was developed in the general area of Dynamics of Polymerization Reactors, and was supervised by Professors Evaristo Chalbaud Biscaia Jr. ( PEQ / COPPE / UFRJ ) and W. Harmon Ray ( DCE / UW, at Madison ).
From December 1998 to March 2000, José Carlos had the opportunity to spend 15 months in Salvador - BA, where he developed a Pos-Doc research project in the general area of Modeling and Simulation of Propylene Polymerizations, working in the research group supervised by Dr. Antônio Gomes de Mattos Neto, in Polibrasil Resinas SA (now Suzano Petroquímica). During this time, José Carlos remembered the good old times in Salvador, ran after the Trio Elétrico many times, gained some weight (after all, where else can we have the delicious acarajés in every corner of the city ?), and developed a commercial process simulator for propylene bulk and slurry polymerizations called SIMULPOL (versions 3.0 and 4.0). The process simulator SIMULPOL is available for those interested in these polymerization systems.
In 2005 José Carlos spent six months in Aracaju, Sergipe, Brasil, as a Visiting Professor of the ITP – Instituto de Tecnologia e Pesquisa, of Unit – Universidade Tiradentes. During this period, José Carlos collaborated with the start-up of a new graduate course on Process Engineering ( Mestrado em Engenharia de Processos ), learned how to dance the “forró” and finished his first book of poems. This book was published by Editora Frutos in 2006 and is entitled Palavras ( Words ).
In 2004 José Carlos and some of his colleagues (Enrique Lima, Márcio Nele and Príamo Melo) founded a company named AikeTech. The main purpose of AikeTech was providing technical solutions for in-line monitoring and control of chemical processes in general, and particularly for polymerization processes. AikeTech was closed in 2009 for societary reasons, but continuous efforts for development of advanced tools for modeling and control of polymerization processes have been made, with the intervenience of Fundação COPPETEC. More recently, José Carlos has coordinated the construction and installation of a multipurpose polymerization pilot plant, for production of polymer materials for clinical and commercial tests. The main pursued objective is the scaling-up of products and processes developed in the lab, for posterior commercial use.