Professional Bio

Dr. José M. del Valle was born in 1959 in Santiago (Chile). He received a B.Sc. in Industrial and Chemical Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Católica (UC) de Chile (Santiago) in 1986, a M.Sc. in Food Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) in 1989, and a Ph.D. in Food Science from University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) in 1992. He was hired by the Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering Department of UC in 1992, where he currently holds a position as Associate Professor. There, he started his research on supercritical fluids in 1999, and has developed considerable expertise on CO₂ extraction of vegetable and other biological substrates over the last nineteen years. He stayed on sabbatical in the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg (Germany) in 2002-2003, Universidad de Valladolid (Spain) in 2011, and University of Notre Dame (Indiana, US) in 2011-2012 working respectively with Prof. Gerd Bunner on scCO₂ extraction of solid substrates, Prof. María José Cocero on solute partition between CO₂ and vegetable matrices, and Prof. Joan Brennecke on CO₂ solubility in ionic liquids. He is currently in a one-year sabbatical in Tecnologico de Monterrey (Tec) (Monterrey, Mexico) supporting Prof. Jorge Welti-Chanes, the leader of the strategic research focus group on Emerging Technologies in Tec, on the development of research and development capabilities on separation processes for food and biological materials using scCO₂. In Chile, Dr. del Valle collaborates with Prof. Juan de la Fuente from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, who specializes on phase equilibrium aspects of scCO₂ extraction and fractionation processes. He has authored or co-authored 76 ISI publications, and four book chapters.