José Carlos Lopes graduated in Chemical Engineering in 1977 at FEUP, the University of Porto Engineering School. That same year, he joined the Chemical Engineering Department of FEUP as a Teaching Assistant.
In 1979, he started his Ph.D. studies at the University of Houston (Texas, USA) Department of Chemical Engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in Multiphase Fluid Dynamics in 1984 under the guidance of the late Professor Abe Dukler. He then joined Schlumberger Ltd. as a Research Scientist, where he worked at Schlumberger-Doll Research Center (Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA) until the end of 1986 and at Schlumberger Cambridge Research (Cambridge, UK) in 1987, conducting research in Well-Bore Multiphase Flows.
Returned to FEUP in 1989 and joined the R&D Unit LSRE. In 2005, he founded Fluidinova, a spin-off from FEUP, Portugal's first nanoparticle-based products company. Since 2010, he has been back at FEUP, teaching in the Chemical Engineering Department and pursuing research at the LSRE-LCM in Product Engineering.
Since 2012, he has been a delegate of the Working Party on Mixing, WPM, of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering, EFCE. In 2016, he co-founded a new spin-off company, MICE, commercializing novel methodologies for RIM, reaction injection molding, and plastics production technology.
In 2019, he was the founder of CoLAB Net4CO2 - Network for a Sustainable CO2 Economy, for the development of new processes and products using the NETmix technology.
Since September 2023, he joined as CTO the recently created  Portuguese STAR INSTITUTE - Science & Technology Applied Research Institute - focused on the automotive industry, led by Stellantis, a global automaker and provider of innovative mobility solutions.
Author of thirteen patent applications, with seven granted. Published >100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. Supervised 20 PhD theses and 13 MSc dissertations.