A DuPont research and development specialist will speak at 9:30 a.m. Friday, March 3, on the West Virginia University campus as part of a Chemical Engineering Department seminar series.

Jan J. Lerou will lecture on Multiscale Reaction Engineering in the Chemical Industry in the National Research Center for Coal and Energy, Assembly Room A.

The lecture will be part of the Union Carbide Corp. Jean B. Cropley Distinguished Seminar Series in Chemical Engineering. The series was established in 1994 in honor of Jean Cropley, a retired Union Carbide research fellow who has been a friend and colleague to the department.

Dr. Lerou is technical manager of Nylon Intermediates R&D at DuPonts Sabine River Laboratory in Orange, Texas. He has held various engineering and management positions in his 15 years at DuPont and been instrumental in the commercialization of several new processes. He has published more than 30 scientific papers and been awarded eight patents.

He is an adjunct professor of chemical engineering at the University of Delaware and a visiting professor of chemical engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France. He serves on the industrial advisory boards for the chemical engineering departments of several universities.

Lerou has a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Gent, Belgium. He did postdoctoral work at the University of Houston as a Fulbright-Hays senior fellow.