Reflections on being a Fellow in my professional life: My election came late, after I had mostly retired, so it had little effect on any promotions or job opportunies. I suppose it was an advantage for the little bit of expert witness work that I did in the decade after my election. However, being able to say that I was the first female Fellow lends some special credibility when I speak to the students at the local Houston Community College. As a woman, I was a minority in my profession. My family had limited financial assets, but I was able to get an excellent education by working and...
My professional life has been profoundly influenced by being an AIChE Fellow. I was selected to Fellow Grade in 1990. It would have been earlier from my first nomination in 1987 by my students and colleagues at the University of Florida, but I did not have the required 25 years’ experience of that time. The students were crushed at the rejection. They were successful later, though we all were disappointed with the delay since I was no longer in Gainesville to celebrate with them. This experience helped motivate me to later join the successful effort to remove an actual number of years from...
Klaus Nölker, PhD, graduated from Ruhr Univ. in Bochum, Germany, in 1994 with a Master of Science in mechanical engineering. He received his PhD in process engineering in 1998. He joined thyssenkrupp Uhde the same year and worked in engineering, research and development (R&D), and commissioning of ammonia plants. Later, he became head of the ammonia process group. Since 2009, he leads the process team in Uhde’s fertilizer division, which includes ammonia technology.Read more
Bernd Mielke, PhD, graduated from Ruhr Univ. in Bochum, Germany, in 1997 with a Master of Science in mechanical engineering and a PhD in 2001 on the design of adsorptive gas separation processes by expert systems. He joined thyssenkrupp Uhde in 2001 and worked on basic and detailed engineering of ammonia plants, plant commissioning, plant revamping, and troubleshooting. He is the head of the ammonia process group at thyssenkrupp Uhde, conducting all process-related engineering tasks on technologies such as gray, blue, and green ammonia, as well as ammonia cracking.Read more
Jeffrey L. Silverstein, PhD (Phone: 201-739-6850; Email: jlsilverstein@optonline.net), holds a PhD in chemical engineering from The City College of New York and has more than 35 years of experience as a process analyst with American Cyanamid Company/Cytec Industries. He is now a private consultant under the business name Process Simulation Express LLC, providing process engineering and process analysis services for small- to medium-sized chemical companies. Silverstein specializes in process simulation, design, and analysis. His expertise is in distillation systems. He was the in-house...Read more
