Risk-Based Process Safety Decision-Making for All Engineers

Gary has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara and has been working in Process Safety since 1992 when the OSHA and EPA regulations were first published in the US.  In his 40+ years of experience, Gary has worked in specialty chemicals and petrochemicals in every facet of process safety and loss prevention.

With over 17 years in the middle East with Saudi Aramco he worked in areas of offshore production, drilling, refining, gas plant processing, terminal marine facilities and more.  His background includes conducting comprehensive...Read more

Mr. A.M. (Tony) Downes is an independent PSM consultant. Mr. Downes has more than 40 years of industrial experience in operations and PSM with DuPont, Bayer, Westlake, FMC, and Honeywell. He has led over 100 PHAs and conducted over 100 incident investigations. Before retiring to form Downes Process Safety LLC, he was the Global Process Safety Advisor at Honeywell Performance Materials. He has led the development and implementation of PSM programs for more than 30 years, rising from site level to corporate director level.

Mr. Downes is a recognized expert in Digitalization to improve...Read more

Louisa Nara is the Technical Director of the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). Louisa comes to AIChE/CCPS after 15 years with Bayer where she held positions of increasing responsibility including: Manager Process Safety and Crisis Management; Director of HSE, Security and Emergency Response at Bayer’s largest US Manufacturing site; and, Director, Risk Management and Compliance, NAFTA. Prior to joining Bayer, Louisa also gained significant experience in process safety, engineering, and HSE with Diamond Shamrock, PQ...Read more

Frank Renshaw is a certified process safety professional, certified safety professional, and certified industrial hygienist currently serving as an EHS consultant after 35 years with Dow Advanced Materials (formerly the Rohm and Haas Company).

He held various positions at Rohm and Haas including: EHS Director for Specialty Materials, Corporate Safety Director and Corporate Industrial Hygiene Director. He chaired the company’s Code of Safe Manufacturing Practice Committee, coordinated a business-wide initiative on closed system chemical operations, and led Major Accident Prevention...Read more

Ken Tague, BS ChE, CSP, CCPSC has over 40 years of operations and process safety experience in PVC manufacturing and agricultural processing.  He has been involved with process safety program development, process hazard analysis, Layer of Protection Analysis and PSM program auditing.  He served as lead auditor in over 100 PSM program audits before retiring from Archer Daniels Midland Company  in 2019. He has done training on the PSM regulation, Process Hazard Analysis, Layer of Protection Analysis, PSM program auditing,...Read more

Venkat Venkatasubramanian is the Samuel Ruben-Peter G. Viele Professor of Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering, professor of computer science (affiliate), and professor of industrial engineering and operations research (affiliate) at Columbia University. He earned his doctoral degree in chemical engineering at Cornell University, master’s degree in physics at Vanderbilt, and bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the University of Madras, India. He taught at Purdue University for 23 years, before returning to Columbia in 2011.

Venkat's research interests are...Read more