Jim Lattner

Dr. James Lattner has more than 40 years of experience in technology development in the petrochemical industry. He has a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology and a PhD from the University of Houston. He started his career with Exxon Chemical Company as a process designer, eventually moving into technology support, new technology startup, and technology development. He worked most of his career in Chemicals R&D at ExxonMobil, specializing in process development, reaction engineering, and scale-up. He led the development and built pilot plants for new olefin monomer development (ethylidene norbornene, 1,4- hexadiene, 1-hexene), methanol-to-olefins and benzene to cyclohexanone and phenol. He retired as Chief Engineer from ExxonMobil in 2019. Since then, he has been teaching Chemical Engineering courses at the University of Houston (unit operations and reaction engineering) and working as a consultant in the development of technology for the conversion of renewable feedstocks to petrochemicals. In his spare time, he enjoys sailing, building furniture, and restoration of vintage homes