Iván Darío Gil ChavesDr. Gil is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at National University of Colombia – Sede Bogotá. He received B.S. and MSc degrees from National University of Colombia. He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at University of Lorraine (France) and National University of Colombia (under joint supervision). Gil has participated in some industrial projects in the area of process design and control; mainly he has collaborated with representatives of Aspen Technology in Colombia in advanced process control applications. He was also instructor at Andes University in Colombia. Currently, he teaches university courses in modeling and simulation, process control, reaction engineering and process design. In addition, he presents some short courses in advanced process control and process synthesis and optimization. Dr. Gil is co-author of several publications in peer review journals on process design and control. His research interests include biofuels, with emphasis on fuel ethanol and the use of extractive distillation to dehydrate mixtures ethanol-water; modeling, simulation and control of reaction and separation operations; nonlinear geometric control and vapor liquid equilibrium. Javier Ricardo Guevara LópezJavier Guevara holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from National University of Colombia. He is a process engineer with experience developing Conceptual, Basic and Detailed engineering for oil & gas industry. Guevara works as process engineer in Y&V - Bohorquez Ingeniería SAS in Colombia. His interests include process design, process simulation, gas processing, relief systems, and upgrading of gas plants. José Luis García ZapataGarcia Zapata is a Researcher with the Heavy Oil and Oilsands group at Alberta Innovates Technology Futures (AITF) in Edmonton, Canada. He holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Chemical Engineering from the National University of Colombia (2010) and the University of Alberta (2013), respectively. García has worked as a Process Engineer for BRINSA S.A., a salt and chlor-alkali Company in Colombia, and has been responsible for the design and commissioning of pilot scale reactors for heavy oil upgrading at the University of Alberta. His interests include process design, pilot plant, produced water treatment, and upgrading of heavy oil. He is registered as an Engineer-in-Training in Alberta. Alexander Leguizamón RobayoAlexander Leguizamón is a graduate student at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from National University of Colombia and is currently carrying out his master in Chemical Engineering at NTNU. Alexander has worked in distillation process design and simulation. He carried out a design project of a formaldehyde plant with Dynea in Lillestrøm, Norway. He is currentlystudying with the process systems engineering group at NTNU and working on a plantwide process control project for sweetening of syngas for the Swedish chemical company Perstorp. Gerardo Rodríguez NiñoDr. Rodríguez is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at National University of Colombia – Sede Bogotá since 1988. He teaches Mass Transfer Operations, Material Balances, Chemical Engineering Laboratory courses in the area of Unit Operations. He obtained B.S., MSc and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from National University of Colombia. He was the chief of the chemical engineering laboratories during 5 years, and in charge of coordinating the laboratory essays for the industrial applications. He has participated in different projects for enterprises such as Preflex, Vaselinas de Colombia S.A, Coljap, Cyquim de Colombia, Carboquímica S.A, Epsa and Alcalis de Colombia. In the last years he has developed research projects in Ethanol dehydration by extractive distillation with ethylene-glycol and glycerine for the production of fuel alcohol, and in the study of the usages of fusel oil generated in Ethanol production. His research interests include distillation design, esterification, catalysis and essential oils production.
