Education

Ph.D., University of Delaware, 1985
B.S., Georgia Tech, 1977 Registered Professional Engineer, State of Delaware

Appointments

Dow Chemical Professor, Clemson University, 2013-Current
Professor, Clemson University, 1996-2013
Associate Professor, 1989-1996
Assistant Professor, 1985-1989

Marie Curie Fellow, National Technical University of Athens (Greece), 2008-2009, 2011

Humboldt Research Fellow, Technical University Hamburg-Harburg (Germany), 1994-1995

Process Development Engineer, Proctor and Gamble Company, 1977-1980

Research Focus: Sustainable Energy and Materials Research

Dr. Thies is the Dow Chemical Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Clemson University. He received his Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech, co-oping while an undergrad for what is now Potash Corp. in Augusta, Ga. He then worked in Process Development at Procter and Gamble on Jif peanut butter and Duncan Hines cakes for 3 years. After getting fat on that, Thies was ready to return to academia, and received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. At Clemson, he was selected as the National Outstanding AIChE Student Chapter Counselor in 1990, was awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship with Gerd Brunner at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg 1994-1995, and received the McQueen Quattlebaum Award for Research Excellence at Clemson in 1999. Thies has served on the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal Carbon and on the Editorial Board for The Journal of Supercritical Fluids. He was a Marie Curie Fellow with Doros Theodorou at the National Technical University of Athens 2008-2009, 2011 and organized and ran (with Amod Ogale) the World Conference on Carbon in 2010, the largest conference in the world dedicated exclusively to carbon.

Thies is the author of 90+ refereed journal publications, 4 patents, 4 book chapters, and has directed over $12 million in externally funded research. His research interests are focused on materials and energy research where thermodynamics, phase behavior, and separations play key roles, with an emphasis on poorly defined, oligomeric systems. Current systems of interest include lignin and liquid crystalline PAH oligomers for energy and materials applications.

When not in Earle Hall, Thies enjoys running, unicycling, whitewater paddling on the Chattooga River, travel, wilderness hiking and camping, languages, apologetics, and working on his 66 Mustang.

Courses Taught

ChE 2200, Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics I
ChE 3070 and 4070: Unit Operations Laboratory I and II
ChE 3210, Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics II
ChE 3300, Mass Transfer and Separations
ChE 4320, Process Development, Design, and Optimization of Chemical Engineering Systems II
ChE 8040, Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics
ChE 8230, Mass Transfer and Stagewise Contact Operations
ChE 8340, Polymer Thermodynamics