Meet Some of AIChE's Recently Elected Fellows

Featured in the February print issue of CEP

32/33   in the series AIChE Recently Elected Fellows

Fellow Candidates are nominated by their peers and generally have about 25 years of significant practice in chemical engineering. They should also have demonstrated significant service to the profession and have been a member of AIChE for at least 10 years. 

Please see below to learn more about some of AIChE's recently elected fellows, who are also featured in the February print issue of CEP.

Fernando J. Aguirre, P.E

Fernando J. Aguirre is Senior Vice President, Contracts and Services at Heat Transfer Research, Inc. (HTRI). During his 27+ years at HTRI, he also served as Director of Research; Director of Marketing and Technical Training; Director of Marketing and Business Development; Vice President, Sales and Business Development; and Senior Vice President, Global Sales. He received his undergraduate chemical engineering education from Universidad T.F. Santa Maria, Valparaiso, Chile, and his MS and PhD in chemical engineering from the Univ. of Pittsburgh. He is a leader of AIChE's Management Div. and the Dallas Section, and is a licensed Professional Engineer in Texas.

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Frances H. Arnold

Frances H. Arnold is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Biochemistry, and Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, where her work focuses on protein engineering by directed evolution, with applications in energy, chemicals, and medicine. She co-founded the companies Gevo, Inc., to make fuels and chemicals from renewable resources, and Provivi, Inc., to develop nontoxic modes of agricultural pest control. She is a recipient of the Millenium Technology Prize and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and is a member of all three U.S. National Academies. She earned her PhD in chemical engineering form UC Berkeley.

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Linda J. Broadbelt

Linda J. Broadbelt is the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor and Associate Dean for Research in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern Univ., where she chaired the Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering from 2009 to 2017. Her extensive AIChE activities include programming and leadership roles in the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Div., the Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum, the Nominating Committee, the Meeting Quality Task Force, and the Executive Board of the Program Committee. She is an associate editor of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research.

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Efstratios N. Pistikopoulos

Efstratios N. Pistikopoulos is the Texas A&M Univ.'s Energy Institute. His research focuses on sustainable energy systems and the environment; multiparametic programming and model predictive control; and the integration of design, control, and scheduling with applications in smart manufacturing and personalized healthcare. Prior to Texas A&M, he was a chemical engineering professor at Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He earned a chemical engineering diploma from Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki and a PhD in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon Univ.

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W. Vincent Wilding

W. Vincent Wilding is Professor and Associate Dean of Engineering and Technology at Brigham Young Univ. (BYU), where he has also chaired the chemical engineering department. He has developed courses addressing engineering ethics, chemical process safety, and environmental engineering. He has served as BYU's AIChE Student Chapter advisor and as a leader of the Great Salt Lake Section. Since 1998, he has been co-principal investigator for AIChE's Design Institute for Physical Properties (DIPPR) 801 Project, Evaluated Process Design Data. He received BS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from BYU and Rice Univ., respectively.

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Timothy Zygula, P.E.

Timothy Zygula is a senior process engineer with BASF Corp. (Port Arthur, TX), where he has extensive experience with styrene and ethylene monomer production and process design. In AIChE, he is a longtime leader of the Ethylene Producers Committee. As a member of the Equipment Testing Procedures Committee, he was a contributing reviewer for the book "Trayed and Packed Columns: A Guide to Performance Evaluation" (Third Edition).  HE holds BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering from McNeese State Univ. and the Univ. of South Florida, respectively. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in Louisiana.

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