Carla Hajjar

Carla Hajjar holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal. She is currently a Postdoctoral research at École de technologie supérieure (ETS) and Polytechnique Montréal. Her research focuses on many aspects of life cycle assessment. With the supervision of Prof. Andrew Henderson, she is creating a parametrized life cycle inventory LCI model using statistical clustering methods to enhance the assessment of the environmental impacts of leather tanning. This project is funded by the Leather & Hide Council of America LHCA. In addition, she is developing spatially-explicit models using global climate and hydrological datasets to analyze the spatial variability on terrestrial acidification, freshwater and marine eutrophication from regional to continental and global scales.

Carla is an active member of the scientific committee of the international working group MarILCA, supported by UNEP-Life Cycle Initiative. During her PhD, supervised by Prof. Anne-Marie Boulay and Prof. Cécile Bulle, she modeled fate and characterization factors for microplastics emissions in the marine environment. In her model, she identified most influencing parameters on the transport and impacts of the particles. In her ongoing research, she is enhancing and regionalizing these characterization factors for the two most recent impact methods: IMPACT World + and GLAM.

During her PhD, she supervised Master students and collaborated in many projects that resulted in multiple scientific publications. She also assisted in teaching two courses at Polytechnique Montréal: GCH8210-Pollution and Ecotoxicological Risks and GCH6313-Environmental Modeling of Toxic Emissions. She also volunteered in the student committee of CIRODD (Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche en Opérationnalisation du Développement Durable) where she planned research projects and helped raise awareness about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Research interest: life cycle inventory, leather tanning, life cycle impact assessment, plastics impacts, fate modelling, characterization factors, aggregation

Awards, grants & fellowships:

2024 – CIRODD Scolarship

2023 – Michèle-de-Tremblay Scholarship of Excellence

2022 – Jury’s first Prize and Public’s first choice at the 3 Minute Thesis competition

2022 – CIRODD Scolarship