CIC Fellowship is a senior class of membership that recognizes the merits of CIC members who have made outstanding contributions across multiple areas:
- Scientific, Engineering and Technical Contributions
- CIC, CSC, CSChE Service
- Management of Science, Engineering or Technology
- Teaching, Mentorship, and Public Awareness
In general, candidates have made contributions in all four areas with outstanding contributions in a subset. Nominations are made by the CIC membership, either individually or by Local Sections and Subject Divisions. Nominations for CIC fellowships are completed by filling in the FCIC Nomination Form and sending it to the awards team at awards@cheminst.ca. Nominations are reviewed by the CIC Fellowship Committee, a four-member committee of peers, that makes recommendations to the CIC Board for approval. New Fellows are announced and certificates are presented at an awards ceremony held in conjunction with annual conference of the Canadian Society for Chemistry or at the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering. View the CIC Fellowship Nomination Terms of Reference / Guidelines.
Fellowship Committee Terms of Reference
Nomination deadline: November 15 annually
The 2025 Fellows of the CIC are:
Nicolas Abatzoglou, FCIC
Université de Sherbrooke
Dr. Nicolas Abatzoglou is Professor, ex-Head of the Department of Chemical & Biotechnological Engineering and running Director of the Chemical Engineering program of the Université de Sherbrooke.
A specialist in Process Engineering involving particulates in reactive and non-reactive environments, is the Director of the GRTP (Group of Research on Technologies and Processes).
His teaching area is the Capstone Design, Chemical Reactors, Pharmaceutical Process Engineering, Biorefineries and Reflexive Method in R&D definition, Innovation and Technology transfer.
From 2008 to 2022, he has been the holder of the Pfizer Industrial Research Chair in Pharmaceutical Processes. He has numerous collaborations at national and international level and served as one of the Leaders in Canada’s NCE Network BioFuelNet on Biorefining. He is the Leader of the Canadian side of the projects GOLD and ICARUS funded by HORIZON Europe. He is co-founder of the company Enerkem Technologies, precursor of Enerkem, a spin-off in the field of energy and materials from renewable resources.He has received many academic and professional awards, and he is a world-renowned researcher and technology transfer expert. His scientific production includes 200+ publications, keynotes, plenaries and invited lectures, patents and book chapters. He is Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Engineering Institute of Canada.
Diane Beauchemin, FCIC
Queen’s University
Diane Beauchemin obtained a Ph.D. in 1984 from l’Université de Montréal. After working as a Research Associate at the National Research Council of Canada, she joined the Department of Chemistry at Queen’s University in 1988 and became Full Professor in 2001.
She is arguably the most experienced academic researcher in inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry in Canada. Her research on improving this technique and expanding its range of applications to environmental analysis, geochemical exploration and risk assessment of food safety, has resulted in industrial sponsorships of all her sabbatical leaves, several industrial contracts, industrial positions for most of her students, and repeated invitations to write articles and book chapters.
She has received numerous awards for teaching and for research. Most notably, she was the first woman to receive the 2017 Maxxam Award from the CSC and the 2018 Gerhard Herzberg Award from the Canadian Society for Analytical Sciences and Spectroscopy, which led to the 2019 Clara Benson Award from the CSC and 2024 Environment Division Research and Development Dima Award from the CIC. Her research resulted in over 198 publications, 3 books, 14 book chapters, 136 invited presentations, 16 broadcast interviews, and 260 contributed conference presentations
Shaffiq Amin Jaffer, FCIC
TotalEnergies
Shaffiq A Jaffer is a chemical engineer with degrees from the University of Alberta (BSc) and McMaster University (PhD) and is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (FCAE). Currently, he is the Vice President of Corporate Science and Technology Projects for North America at TotalEnergies (TTE). He helps define key scientific/ technological challenges to achieve TTE’s NetZero emissions 2050 goal leading to external research partnerships with academia and government labs. The research areas of focus are Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS), Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), Hydrogen, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy Production, dispatchable power generation and Energy Storage. He has been a proponent of technologies like Photovoltaics, electrification of chemical processes, carbon dioxide electro-conversion, direct air capture and self-driven laboratories for materials discovery leveraging developments in Artificial intelligence and robotics. He has worked for P&G and Koch-Glitsch in research and engineering roles. As an adjunct professor at University of Toronto and University of Alberta, he supervises graduate students and guest lectures. He has ~60 journal publications spanning a broad variety of science and engineering subjects.
Chérif F. Matta, FCIC
Mount Saint Vincent University
website
Chérif F. Matta, B.Pharm.Sci., Dipl., PhD, HDR, FRSA, FRSB, FInstP, FRSC, FAAS, FAAAS, is a Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU), an Honorary/Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie, Laval, and Saint Mary’s Universities, and a Visiting Professor at Zewail City of Science and Technology (Egypt). After completing his PhD under Richard F. W. Bader at McMaster University, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Toronto (with John C. Polanyi) and Dalhousie University (with Russel J. Boyd). His research, disseminated in around 200 publications including four books, spans quantum chemistry, theoretical astrochemistry, and mitochondrial biophysics. He has received awards including the Polish Ministry of Science’s “Distinguished Visiting Professor”, Science Atlantic Speaker of the Year, NSERC-Acfas “Preuve par l’image” Prize, MSVU’s Award for Research Excellence, the MGSM Silver Jubilee Prize, and the J. C. Polanyi Prize in Chemistry. Prof. Matta is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. He has served in several leadership roles including Chair of the Interdisciplinary Adjudication Committee of the Canada Research Chairs Programme and is currently a Member of the Commission for Quantum Crystallography of the International Union of Crystallography and of the Canadian National Committee for Crystallography.
Peter James McLellan, FCIC
Queen’s University
website
Jim McLellan is co-founder and Academic Director of the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre (DDQIC) and has been a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Queen’s for 34 years. He was Head of Chemical Engineering for 11 years, and served as President of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering. Jim is an active researcher in statistical/machine learning, plastics circular economy, and university-anchored innovation/entrepreneurship ecosystems, and project co-lead on a $7.9M Genome Canada-funded Open Plastics project for plastics valorization using biochemical techniques, and PI of “PLASTICS: PLastics Affordances through Science and Technology Innovation for Circular Solutions” NSERC CREATE grant. Jim has collaborated with > 20 major companies/ startups from biomedical devices to advanced materials, biomanuacturing and hydrocarbons. Before joining Queen’s, Jim was a senior control applications engineer at Petro-Canada. Jim has won teaching awards at faculty-wide, university-wide and province-wide levels. Jim is National Associate Academic Director of the Invention to Innovation program for science-based entrepreneurship, and leads the i2I Faculty Innovation Fellow initiative. Jim has helped found and deliver innovation programs regionally, nationally, globally. The DDQIC Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation program for young African Entrepreneurs has supported >4000 participants over the past four years, from 350 universities across 49 countries in Africa.
Jennifer van Wijngaarden, FCIC
York University 
website
Jennifer van Wijngaarden earned her PhD at the University of Alberta and completed a NSERC PDF at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She is currently Professor and Chair of Chemistry at York University. Her groundbreaking and internationally recognized spectroscopic research in the microwave and infrared regions has been conducted on both innovative custom-made instruments and at the Canadian Light Source (CLS). Her development of novel infrastructure to generate short-lived species of interest to astrochemistry, combustion and chemical vapour deposition and techniques for de-mystifying complex spectral data using automated assignment strategies are internationally recognized. She has a long record of continuous service to the CSC/CIC in numerous roles including sustained contributions to the PTC division executive, CSC accreditation committee, CSC Director of Conferences and as technical program chair for CCCE2020. She is a dedicated mentor who actively engages in outreach to her community to encourage elementary and high school students to pursue STEM careers. She was a member of the NSERC Discovery Grant Evaluation group, serving as Section Chair in 2019, a two-term member of the NSERC RTI panel and has served on the Board of Directors of CLS, Canada’s largest national science facility, since 2017.