Chemical engineer Niels Jensen (‘81 PhD) reflects on his long career in Canada and Denmark

Throughout his career as a chemical engineer, Niels Jensen (‘81 PhD) has focused his attention on the development of computer-aided process design and process safety promotion at various industrial companies throughout North America, including Imperial Oil. Originally from Denmark, Jensen received his MSc in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 1973, and following his move to Canada in 1976, earned his PhD in 1981.

Directly after graduation, Jensen played an integral role in the design and development of the Imperial Oil Sarnia Polyethylene Plant in Sarnia, Ontario, one of the largest and most integrated fuels, chemicals manufacturing and petroleum research facilities in Canada. It was during this time that he met and married his Canadian wife, Anna, with whom he would eventually have four children.   

In 1988, Jensen accepted an associate professor position at the Technical University of Denmark where, among his many roles (including research), he taught process control courses until his retirement.  

Niels and Anna at dinner in Copenhagen 2024

Diagnosed with the bone marrow disease Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) in mid-life, Jensen has been a long-time patient advocate and global spokesperson for the disease, which continues to this day. He resides in Slangerup, Denmark, with his wife Anna.

I started PhD studies in the [then called] Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Alberta in January, 1976, after several health challenges and delays because of the paperwork required due to my epilepsy. In the summer of 1977, I was about one and a half months into my PhD when my supervisor, Dale Seborg, announced he was moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara. He offered to take me along. 

At first, I agreed to move to California but that summer my brother announced that he was getting married in September. In August at a Saturday gathering in the home of my good friends Karen and Jim R. Hawkins, I announced that I was dropping out of the PhD program and moving back to Denmark. By Monday morning, word had already spread to several faculty members, including professor D. Grant Fisher who offered to be my supervisor for the rest of my PhD studies as I had already passed the preliminary exam. After that, the department secretary told me that the chairman of the department, Frederick Otto, would like to have a talk. Professor Otto made it clear that they had funds for me to continue my PhD studies, but I told him that I really wanted to attend my brother's wedding in Denmark the following month. He then offered me a sabbatical from my PhD studies during the fall semester so I could attend the wedding.

I travelled to Denmark for my brother's wedding at the old middle age church in Farum — a suburb of Copenhagen, and returned to the U of A in January 1978, completing my PhD studies under the joint supervision of professors D. Grant Fisher and Sirish L. Shah in late 1980. During that fall, I looked for a process control job in Canada and landed a position with Esso Chemical Canada, in Sarnia, Ontario. Just before Christmas, I returned to Denmark to apply for immigration to Canada. 

Niels in Copenhagen in December 2023

I officially immigrated to Canada in the spring of 1981, passed my PhD examination at the U of A and started working for Esso Chemical Canada on the Imperial Oil Sarnia Polyethylene Plant (SPEP), which was under design at that time. After attending courses at Exxon in New Jersey, I joined the design team at the Lumus Offices in northeast Toronto and moved into an apartment near the Ontario Science Centre. While working in Toronto, I met Anna at the St. Lawrence Lutheran Church. She was the chair of the youth group and lived in a student house near Honest Ed's Market in the west end. In December 1981, I relocated to Phoenix, Arizona, for the testing of the computer control system for SPEP. Anna and I had a long distance relationship for about a year, during which she visited me in Phoenix, and at Christmas, I visited her at the student house.

We got married in July, 1982 at the community church in the company town of Kemano, British Columbia. It was supposed to be a double wedding, but the boyfriend of Anna's sister broke up with her a couple of months before the wedding. Kemano could only be reached by boat two times a week. Our honeymoon was in a company cabin next to the lake that supplied the water for the Alcan power plant. We had a few wonderful days in the cabin, and left Kemano on a seaplane, which taxied right up to our plane to Toronto at the Vancouver airport. We just walked from the seaplane to the one that flew us home! In Toronto, there was a party at the student house, and early the following morning, we drove to Sarnia.

The first year we lived in an apartment on the Sarnia waterfront at the St. Clair river, relocating to a new townhouse when our first child was on the way. I had an iron ring due to my studies at the U of A, and decided to take the P.Eng. exam to join the Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO). The first time I failed, as I was unfamiliar with essay type answers which were required on the exam. But the second time, I passed. As I mentioned, I participated in the startup of the Sarnia Polyethylene Plant (SPEP) and implemented a Kalman filter, which controlled two main polymer properties by adjusting two concentration ratios based on laboratory measurements every two hours. We also looked at implementing expert systems at SPEP, but the product slate changed often and required frequent reaction transitions from producing polymer A to producing polymer C, as market demands changed. 

A few years after the SPEP startup, and a missed opportunity to move to Saudi Arabia, I moved to the gas cracker, which supplied the raw material for SPEP. There, I worked closely with Louis Michaud on providing flexible interfaces for the operators to turn computer control functions off or on, as the situation required, under close collaboration with one of the operators on the development of new control applications. Louis and I also introduced Statistical Process Control (SPC) for monitoring the gas cracker. SPC showed when the furnace engineer adjusted the oxygen to the furnace.

After five years in Sarnia, my wife Anna suggested we move to Denmark since we visited almost every year. I was motivated, since Imperial Oil had overlooked me when they needed a control person for an upgrade at the Kalundborg Refinery. In the fall of 1987, my former supervisor, professor Sten Bay Jørgensen, negotiated on my behalf to create a junior position in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). However, a junior position would mean a significant cut from my position as departmental engineer at Imperial Oil, and I told professor Jørgensen that I could not accept that position. Within two weeks, he successfully negotiated with DTU to upgrade the position to associate professor. So our family of two boys, Eric and Jason, and my wife Anna and I moved to Denmark on December 23, 1987. In the Toronto airport I sold my Saab 900 to Anna's sister for a dollar. After moving to Denmark, we had to adjust to living without a car, but we found a house just ten minutes from the town's central bus station with connections to Hillerød, Frederikssund, Farum and Allerød.

Between Christmas and New Year, I wrote my application for the associate professor position in chemical engineering at DTU, and handed it in on the first workday of 1988. While my application was being evaluated, professor Jørgensen hired me as a research assistant. As I was the only applicant, the evaluation committee declared that I was qualified for the position, and on April 1, 1988, I became associate professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering.  

At the same time, Anna discovered that she was pregnant with twins. We moved into a rowhouse, which we still live in. We expected the twins to be born in August, so I had to decline a trip to a conference in China during that month. That was good because Anna went into pre-labour a month early and was admitted to the local hospital in Hillerød. When the hospital called early one morning in August, I woke up my brother Flemming and asked him to drive me to the hospital at 6:00 a.m. We did not know the sex of our twins, but around 10 a.m., I left the hospital as the proud father of Natalie and Juliette.

At DTU, I was initially teaching elective process control courses. Later, I was appointed department manager for the support staff/non-academic staff and I also started teaching an elective process safety course as well as a unit operations laboratory course. During that period, all experimental work in the department became subject to a process safety screening. The experiment ranged from small high pressure equipment to pilot plant size equipment related to power plants. After about 20 years I had a disagreement with the then chairman of the department. Such a situation can only end one way — I stopped working at DTU.

A few years before, I had been diagnosed with the bone marrow disease Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS). I was treated with erythropoietin (EPO) and a growth factor medication, and my blood numbers improved to slightly below the lower limit. I started reading about my disease, created a website with information in Danish. When I was first diagnosed there was no information for patients in Danish. I contacted the MDS Foundation about their rather inefficient website and was invited to an event in Scotland about new patient support groups and was photographed by the American photographer Ed Kashi. I was also invited to the 2011 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting in San Diego for the opening of an exhibition featuring six MDS patients from around the world. 

Two years later, I founded an MDS patient support group here in Denmark, but after two years we were still struggling to reach 50 members, so we merged with the larger patient group LyLe, which also covered lymphoma and leukemia.

Still active in a patient support function as a volunteer, I am now able to read most medical journals. I have reported from several congresses such as the 2016 European Hematology Association (EHA) annual meeting in Copenhagen, EHA 2018 in Stockholm, the virtual EHA in 2020 during COVID-19 and the 2022 hybrid conference in Vienna. I now serve as a patient advocate with the blood cancer unit at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, and also with the Nordic MDS Group.

Our four children have grown up! The oldest Eric lives in Høje Taastrup, which is another suburb of Copenhagen. He is a physics engineer and is currently working on a hearing aid that can tell which direction a sound originates. The second son, who was also born in Canada, moved back to Canada to complete his bachelor of sociology, and has since added a master’s degree and a PhD. Currently he works for the Bank of Canada in Ottawa. The two twin daughters live in the Kaktus Towers in central Copenhagen. The youngest Juliette works at the jewelry company Pandora and the oldest, Natalie, works for the Danish investment bank Saxo Bank. My Canadian wife also still works with patients who need respirators. 

Niels and Anna on harbour cruise in Halifax - August 2023

I still exchange Christmas letters with a friend and his wife, both of whom I met during my first year at U of A, but have lost contact with all the other people from my time in Edmonton, including those I met at the U of A, at the Grad House and at the Danish Lutheran Church in North East Edmonton.

I am happy that I completed my PhD studies at U of A, and the opportunities it has afforded me.