James B. Rawlings, Professor and Mellichamp Process Control Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been chosen by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) to deliver the organization’s John M. Prausnitz AIChE Institute Lecture for 2025. AIChE’s 77th annual lecturer, Rawlings will describe his research devoted to the theory and application of chemical process modeling and predictive control of chemical industry processes on November 5 at the 2025 AIChE Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts (November 2–6).
The Prausnitz AIChE Institute lectureship is awarded to a distinguished member of AIChE who has made significant contributions to chemical engineering in their field of specialization. The lectureship is endowed by the AIChE Foundation in honor of John Prausnitz, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who pioneered the field of engineering-oriented molecular thermodynamics. The lecture is a highlight of each year’s AIChE Annual Meeting — a foremost educational forum for chemical engineers working in research and development.
Professor Rawlings's research interests are in the areas of chemical process modeling, monitoring and control, nonlinear model predictive control, moving horizon state estimation, and molecular-scale chemical reaction engineering. He has documented his research in numerous articles and has coauthored three textbooks: “Modeling and Analysis Principles for Chemical and Biological Engineers,” 2nd edition (2022), with Michael Graham; “Model Predictive Control: Theory Computation, and Design,” 2nd edition (2020), with David Mayne and Moritz Diehl; and “Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design Fundamentals,” 2nd edition (2020), with John Ekerdt.
A chemical engineering alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin (BS) and the University of Wisconsin (PhD), Rawlings spent one year at the University of Stuttgart as a NATO postdoctoral fellow and then joined the faculty at the University of Texas. He moved to the University of Wisconsin in 1995, and then to the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2018, where he is co-director of the Texas-Wisconsin-California Control Consortium.
Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Rawlings is also a Fellow of AIChE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the International Federation of Automatic Control.
About AIChE: AIChE is a professional society of more than 60,000 members in more than 110 countries. Its members work in corporations, universities and government using their knowledge of chemical processes to develop safe and useful products for the benefit of society. Through its varied programs, AIChE continues to be a focal point for information exchange on the frontier of chemical engineering research in such areas as nanotechnology, sustainability, hydrogen fuels, biological and environmental engineering, and chemical plant safety and security. More information about AIChE is available at www.aiche.org.