Costas Tzoganakis

Costas Tzoganakis is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He leads research in polymer engineering, focusing on reactive extrusion, rubber devulcanization, and sustainable bio-based polymers. As Chief Technology Officer of Tyromer Inc., a Waterloo startup, he commercializes green technologies for tire rubber recycling. His work includes developing hydrosilylation-modified polypropylene and supercritical CO2-based devulcanization processes, recognized through patents and industry collaborations like Milliken.

Education: PhD in Chemical Engineering (McMaster University, 1989), Dipl. Eng. (Aristotle University, Greece, 1983).

Research Interests: Polymer reactive extrusion; rubber devulcanization using supercritical CO₂; plastics/rubber nanocomposites; bio-based polymers; polymer processing analytics; mathematical modeling of polymer processing.

Awards: Syncrude Canada Innovation Award (2000), Heinz List & Hermann Awards (SPE, 2015/2018), James L. White Innovation Award (2018), En-Hui Yang Award (2022), Fellowships from CIC, SPE, and CAE.

Teaching: Courses include CHE 211 (Fluid Mechanics), CHE 543 (Polymer Reaction Engineering), and NE 333 (Macromolecular Science). Recent courses focus on polymer processing and sustainability.

Grants & Patents: Over 15 patents, including methods for polyolefin modification and devulcanization. Active in scaling lab innovations to industry via Tyromer Inc.

Labs: Leads the Polymer Processing Research Group at Waterloo, focusing on extrusion technology and sustainable materials development.