Sharing Good Times with Friends in the CRE Division: Past, Present and Future

I was a graduate student when I first became part of the CRE division, probably 20ish years ago. This community welcomed me then, gave me space to grow, and was a place I have made many friends. Not long after that, I became a professor, and began organizing sessions, then area 20A, and then Area 20 during a time of substantial growth in the Division. I am grateful to all of the help people provided, and to those who continued that work after me. The CRE division remains today one of the largest and most vibrant divisions in AICHE, and is still a place to find new friends to grow with. I will share some of this in my talk. I will also look to the future, to talk about how we can continue building capacity to share good times, and also our work with each other. Over the past decade my group and I have been exploring data sharing strategies for scientific publishing (Examples of Effective Data Sharing in Scientific Publishing). I will talk about this work, and how our community could make small, but systematic steps forward in how we share our work with each other and the broader scientific community. This includes the use of social media (e.g. YouTube research talks), and leveraging virtual meeting formats for smaller, shorter, and more focused interactions like @CAT. I believe this will strengthen our community further, and lead to more opportunities to share good times in the future.