Dan Hickman is a Senior R&D Fellow in the Engineering and Process Science department of Dow’s Core Research & Development organization. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Iowa State University (1988) and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota (1992) in the field of short contact time catalytic monolith reactors.
In his 27 years with Dow, Dan has served as a subject matter expert and technical leader in reaction engineering and process development for numerous reaction systems across a variety of Dow businesses and technologies. As a reaction engineering expert, his experience includes working with stirred tank reactors, fixed bed reactors, trickle bed reactors, and fluidized bed reactors. His contributions at Dow include the conceptual design of new reactor systems for three commercial processes and the development of training and resources that facilitate efficient and reliable reactor scale-up from the laboratory.
Dan began his career at Dow in 1992 on the Research Assignments Program, gaining initial experience generating kinetic data and building kinetic models, modeling thermal runaways in various systems, and collaborating in the development of a new polymerization process. In 1993, Dan joined the Central Research & Development Engineering lab, the precursor to his current organization.
Dan holds 17 U.S. patents and is an author of 25 journal articles and book chapters and more than 200 internal Dow reports. Dan was named the Mid-Michigan AIChE Chemical Engineer of the Year in 2014, received the CRE Practice Award from the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division of AIChE in 2015, and currently serves the global reaction engineering community as a member of the board of directors for ISCRE, including serving as the chairman for ISCRE 24, held in Minneapolis in 2016.