Neil Yeoman

Neil Yeoman is a 2001 retiree from Koch-Glitsch, LP and a chemical engineering enthusiast. For almost all of his 15 years with Koch, from early 1986 until his successor was hired shortly before his retirement, Neil was the company’s Director of Research and Development. Among other things he did at Koch, Neil was the inventor and/or developer, or one of the inventor / developers of Flexeramic® (ceramic) structured packing, HcKp™ high capacity random packing, Fleximax® high performance random packing, the MaxFrac® high capacity tray, the BiFrac® high capacity tray, Flexipac® HC™ super high capacity structured packing, and KG’s unique then state-of-the-art vapor distribution technology. 

Before Koch, for almost 26 years, from 1960 to 1986, Neil worked for Scientific Design Company (SD) in a variety of positions, including seven years as a Process Manager, four years as a Senior Process Manager, a little over a year as VP & Director of Administration, and seven years as VP & Chief Chemical Engineer. Among other things he did at SD, Neil designed 21 process plants and process plant revamps that were eventually built, mostly from positions of technical charge. All were successful. Nine of those projects were first-of-a-kind. Some of these were based on the dozen or so new chemical processes Neil helped develop, of which about half were eventually commercialized. For about twenty years Neil was the editor and primary author of the SD process engineering manual.  

Before SD, from 1957 to 1960, Neil worked for General Foods at Maxwell House Division Research, mostly in plant improvement projects.  

Neil has been a member of the Design Practices Committee (DPC) of Fractionation Research, Inc. since the DPC’s founding in 1976, serving eight years as chair, from 1981 to 1989, and as secretary since 2002. He was also one of the founders, in 1990, of the Separations Division of AIChE, and, in 2010, of the Virtual Local Section of AIChE, and he has served as treasurer of each since their foundings. Neil served two 3-year terms (2005-2007 & 2009-2011) as a national director of AIChE; he was on the Institute’s Membership Committee from late 2004 to early 2008, and again from 2009 to 2011; and he has been on the AIChE Admissions Committee since late 2005, currently as Vice Chair. Neil was on the AIChE Career & Education Operating Council from 2008 through 2010 and on the Nominating Committee in 2005, 2006, and 2012. In 2008 he was the driving force behind the Blue Ribbon Committee that brought forth the new Institute awards for industrial achievement, an activity with which he is still involved. Neil also served on an Institute level committee formed to review the AIChE Fellows program (2008-2011) and he was a member of the Blue Ribbon Committee on AIChE Government Relations (2010-2011). 

Neil has a B.Ch.E. from Polytechnic Institute of New York University and an M.S. from Columbia University. He is a Fellow of AIChE; a(n officially inactive) registered professional engineer in Kansas, Louisiana, New York, and Texas; and a listed inventor on 28 US patents. In 2007 Neil was the winner of AIChE’s Award in Chemical Engineering Practice; and in 2010 he received the Gerhold Award of the Separations Division for his lifetime of contributions to separations technologies and also the Separations Division’s inaugural Service Award. 

Neil has been serving his community in a variety of ways since moving to Merrick, NY in 1962. His current activities include the Historical Society of the Merricks, whose treasurer he has been since its1975 founding; the Solid Waste Advisory Committee of the Town of Hempstead (since 1988); and the South Merrick Community Civic Association, whose treasurer he has been since 2006 and whose webmaster he has been since 2007. The Town of Hempstead has about 760,000 residents. Neil was the founder, in 2004, and is the current leader of the roughly 100 member Senior Observers Club at Nassau Community College where he has been an auditing student (senior observer) since a little before his retirement.