Orlando Rojas


Orlando J. Rojas is a Venezuelan-born Canadian materials scientist and professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and also, a visiting professor at Aalto University in Finland.
He holds the position of Canada Excellence Research Chair in Bioproducts, with appointments in the Departments of Wood Science, Chemistry, and Chemical & Biological Engineering. He presently is also the scientific director of the UBC Bioproducts Institute.

Research career

Rojas received his B.Sc. from Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela, an M.Sc. from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and a Ph.D. from Auburn University. He completed postdoctoral research at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.
Rojas then joined the University of British Columbia in 2019 as Canada Excellence Research Chair in Forest Bioproducts. He directs the Bioproducts Institute at UBC, which develops renewable and sustainable materials from forest biomass. He leads the research group of Biobased Colloids and Materials, focusing on renewable nano- and microparticles, sustainable processing, and bioinspired functional materials.
His research interests include: Renewable nano- and microparticles from plant-based sources, Sustainable biomass processing and green chemistry, Biomimetic and bioinspired materials with hierarchical structure, and Functional materials for catalysis, sensing, and controlled release
In August 2025, Rojas was ranked at the top 2% of researchers in the world at the area of polymers having a very high c-score of 3.5912. Until October 2025, the entire research work of Rojas has received more than 54,000 citations at Google Scholar.

Recognition