Remembering the Late John Lloyd Gainer: A Beloved Educator

When John Lloyd Gainer retired in 2005 after 39 years in UVA’s Department of Chemical Engineering, about 50 CHE majors, graduate students and faculty turned up for the department’s end-of-year picnic wearing blue T-shirts printed with “I [Heart] Gainer.”

That gives you an inkling of who the University of Virginia lost on July 28, 2025, when Professor Emeritus Gainer died at age 87.

“John Gainer was a complete engineering faculty member: teacher, advisor and researcher,” said his longtime friend and colleague, UVA CHE professor emeritus Donald Kirwan. “I learned a lot from him, especially always keeping students’ interests in mind, whether teaching, advising or discussing policy issues.”

Kirwan and others who knew Gainer well describe someone who used ingenuity and humor in the classroom and in the lab, a community builder who viewed the University and the department as extensions of his own family, and an inventor who worked tirelessly to develop a drug to improve cancer treatments.

Most of all he was a beloved teacher.

Among several teaching awards, he earned the 1981 UVA Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award given to faculty who show “unusual concern for students” and make “a significant contribution to the life of the University.”

“That’s really the essence of what John was,” said Michael L. King, Gainer’s one-time master’s advisee, former Halsey Distinguished Visiting Professor and a professor of practice in the department. “He was so proud of that. It’s the one award he kept in a prominent place in his home where he could see it.”

He also received the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Mac Wade Award for service in 1992.

The accolades aren’t surprising for the son of two West Virginia public school teachers who, in a 2013 interview, said he always considered teaching a two-way exchange of ideas and intellectual curiosity with his students.

He recalled how he left a job at Union Carbide, despite being happy there, because he realized it wasn’t the right path for him. Gainer said he picked Charlottesville out on a map of the United States and waited for a faculty position to open, arriving at UVA Engineering in 1966.

Something About his Style

“It was just so obvious he cared,” said James Sonnett, a former undergraduate and the department’s 2022 Halsey Professor, of what made Gainer such an effective educator. Sonnett is currently a managing partner of a Redwood Innovation Partners, a science and engineering consulting firm. 

Andres Clarens, a 1999 B.S. alumnus who’s now a professor in civil and environmental engineering at UVA, also sensed how much he cared. And there was something about his teaching style that kept students engaged.

“Maybe it was the funny anecdotes that made the content come alive,” Clarens said. “He had a knack for making challenging concepts approachable. He had a deadpan sense of humor. It was easy for us students to connect with him.”

Sonnett recalled dinners Gainer and his wife, Susie, hosted with Kirwan and his wife for the undergraduate class. Gainer made the department feel like family, he said. That culture exists today, with regular department gatherings including the annual Thanksgiving potluck, trivia nights, and longstanding monthly graduate happy hours where Gainer was once a frequent attendee.

Always making time to mentor students and other faculty was another refrain from those who knew him. As an advisor, Gainer was direct, succinct, often funny and always kind, Sonnett said.

“When I was struggling with going to graduate school or going to work, he said, ‘You can always go to work.’ Those six words made a huge impact on me instead of six paragraphs of why I should stay in school.”

Gainer was also known for his colorful examples, like making the case in his applied surface chemistry class for why a drink would go to your head faster if you lapped it like a cat versus using a straw to drink from the bottom. 

King took that class and recalls it as one of the best of his college career, including his Ph.D. courses.

But Gainer’s gift went beyond technical teaching.

“John had a unique way of building confidence in students so they believed they could do something,” King said.

Gainer was so famous for saying “Fantastic!” when his students did well, King had a neon sign made of the word for the professor’s bookshelf. Gainer would light it to celebrate a student’s accomplishment. This coaching and encouragement didn’t lessen expectations, though.

Graduate researchers who weren’t putting in the effort found “Please see me” notes on their apartment doors.

“He was kind of a task master, but you didn’t mind doing it because you knew that he was not doing it for himself. He was doing it for you and to move science forward,” King said.

Research for Good

He approached research in practical ways — the same way he mentored students, said Amanda Stennett, one of Gainer’s last Ph.D. advisees.

“He focused on growing students into effective researchers, to get you ready to leave and pursue your career,” said Stennett, now a vice president at Fresenius Medical Care. “He really helped me improve and gain confidence by giving me just enough direction to get started on things but requiring me to figure out the rest.”

Over his career, Gainer advised 31 Ph.D. students, 70 master’s students and countless undergrads. He remained friends with many of them.

He also published dozens of papers, some of them in collaboration with Kirwan. 

“John was a very intuitive, imaginative researcher while I was perhaps more analytical and theoretically based,” Kirwan said. “That actually was a good combination for carrying out research projects and for co-advising research students.”

An engineer to the core, Gainer also championed the true purpose of research: applying new knowledge and discoveries to help people. 

One day a student asked him about how oxygen moves from red blood cells into plasma and then into the body’s tissue — a process called diffusion. The question led Gainer to another lifelong calling: His invention of a drug molecule that makes oxygen-deprived tissue, such as deadly tumors, more receptive to treatment by reoxygenating the tissue.

Taking advantage of UVA’s School of Medicine for collaboration opportunities, Gainer patented the drug compound and co-founded Diffusion Pharmaceuticals to develop the technology as a way to improve cancer treatments. He didn’t retire from Diffusion until 2020 and even then, kept exploring new uses for the drug.

In his professional role, Sonnett worked with Gainer as recently as last year on potential new applications. Regardless of obstacles, Gainer was “cheerful and relentless” in pursuing treatments for hypoxia-related conditions, Sonnet said.

Gainer, a devoted husband and father, also relished time with Susie, his wife of 44 years, sons David and Jamie, and three grandchildren, who survive him.