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This fall, Pittsburgh, PA — a hub of U.S. industry and manufacturing — will welcome thousands of chemical engineering researchers and practitioners, who will survey the field’s achievements and future prospects at the 2018 AIChE Annual Meeting, which will be held Oct. 28 through Nov. 2 at the Steel City’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
The meeting’s organizers have cast their eyes to the future, assembling a program that emphasizes new research and emerging opportunities for the profession. Advances in manufacturing with chemical engineers at the helm take a prominent position in the meeting’s technical program. Many of the meeting’s special sessions also emphasize themes related to manufacturing, while offering attendees a century-spanning overview of chemical engineering’s evolution, current opportunities, and future horizons.
Register
First, if you're not registered, there's still time to join us: Register here.
And second, keep this main link handy for all things AIChE Annual: www.aiche.org/annual
Getting around the Annual Meeting
The 2018 Annual Meeting will take place at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Be sure to consult our events calendar to locate each event you plan to attend. Also helpful is our onsite info guide which includes info on transportion, onsite registration hours, and much more.
AIChEvents app
Stay connected and up-to-date with our AIChEvents app! This powerful app will put you ahead of the game at the Annual Meeting. Build a personalized schedule, bookmark exhibitors, take notes, download event handouts and presentations, and much more. Learn more.
Topical conferences
Topics in process intensification and modular manufacturing underscore an expanded Next-Gen Manufacturing Topical Conference, which will illustrate the ways that chemical engineers are creating new modes of manufacturing. Building on past conferences devoted to smart manufacturing, sessions will explore breakthroughs in additive manufacturing and 3D printing, as well as cybersecurity, Industry 4.0, and more.
Microbes at Biomedical Interfaces is another new frontier receiving its own topical conference. Here, engineers, scientists, and physicians will discuss how chemical engineering principles can help solve healthcare challenges, including novel materials and techniques for medical applications and infection control.
Another debut is a new conference on Immunotherapy and the revolution in cancer treatment. Whereas immunotherapy developments — ranging from protein therapeutics to cell-based therapies such as tumor-targeting T-cells — have thus far been the province of biologists, immunologists, and clinicians, this conference provides a new venue through which chemical engineers and leaders in immunotherapy can interact and identify areas of potential collaboration.
See the full list of topical conferences.
Featured events
How will the world’s energy portfolio evolve in the years ahead? Is there a path to truly sustainable energy? A panel of thought-leaders will tackle such questions on Monday, Oct. 29, at the special session The Future of Energy in the Region, Nation, and World.
A special session on Tuesday, Oct. 30, takes a retrospective look at the past half-century of the chemicals and fuels sectors, and asks the provocative question “What the Heck Happened?” The session will elaborate on several disruptions (e.g., the oil crises of the 1970s, the rise of shale gas, financial sector maneuvers) to what had been the industries’ status quo — and will consider how those influences have directed the field’s trajectory.
AIChE’s very first Annual Meeting was held in Pittsburgh in 1908. To commemorate AIChE’s 110 Years, on Tuesday, Oct. 30, the meeting programmers have invited leaders from academia, industry, and national labs to describe their visions for chemical engineering’s future.
Also observing a milestone in 2018 is AIChE’s Women’s Initiatives Committee (WIC), which marks its 20th anniversary with a symposium “Celebrating Women in Chemical Engineering.” The Tuesday, Oct. 30, event features 20 invited talks by prominent women in chemical engineering who will discuss the contributions of women chemical engineers across career stages and fields of practice. The WIC anniversary symposium is supported by a grant from the AIChE Foundation.
In August, the AIChE Journal publishes its inaugural “Futures” issue, showcasing research conducted by early-career chemical engineers. At the Annual Meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 30, the work of six of these future pioneers will form a new session, AIChE Journal Futures: New Directions in Chemical Engineering Research.
You can find a full list of featured events here, listed by day.
Featured lectures, panels, and workshops
The John M. Prausnitz AIChE Institute Lecture, Wednesday, Oct. 31. Klavs Jensen, the Warren K. Lewis Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, underscores the meeting’s emphasis on advanced manufacturing with his lecture entitled “Accelerating Development and Intensification of Chemical Processes.”
The Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering Lecture, Tuesday, Oct. 30. This lecture will be given by the Institute’s 2017 Acrivos Professional Progress Award recipient, Orlin D. Velev, INVISTA Professor at North Carolina State Univ. In his talk, “Microscale Engineering of Responsive, Flexible, and Reconfigurable Particle Structures,” Velev will discuss the engineering principles underpinning novel classes of dynamically reconfigurable structures, with examples including magnetically reconfigurable gel networks, shape-changing microbots, and inks for 3D printing.
The P. V. Danckwerts Memorial Lecture, Monday, Oct. 29. Co-sponsored by AIChE, the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE), the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), and Elsevier, this year’s lecture will be delivered by Sang Yup Lee, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). In his talk, “Biotechnology to Help Achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals,” Lee will describe how biotech is poised to help the United Nations achieve its global goals in the realms of climate change, sustainable production, and improved health and well-being.
AIChE’s Society for Biological Engineering (SBE) will present its Daniel I. C. Wang Award for Excellence in Biochemical Engineering and the James E. Bailey Award in Biological Engineering. The D. I. C. Wang Award Lecture is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 29, with a presentation by award recipient John G. Auniņš, Chief Technology Officer at Seres Therapeutics, Inc. The James E. Bailey Award Lecture, slated for Tuesday, Oct. 30, is highlighted by a talk from honoree Jeffrey Hubbell, the Eugene Bell Professor in Tissue Engineering at the Univ. of Chicago.
CCPS will hold a Process Safety Faculty Workshop, which teaches chemical engineering professors how to incorporate process safety into their existing curriculum and the importance of process safety education for undergraduates. The focus of this workshop is to demonstrate and practice course-relevant problems which introduce process safety concepts with little to no extra time.
See the full listing of featured lectures and panels.
Exhibits
The Annual Meeting exhibit, coffee breaks, & poster receptions will be located in Exhibit Hall B, David L. Lawrence Center. Don't miss a section dedicated to organizations focused on process intensification and modular chemical processing. Learn more.
Recruitment fair
Whether you're looking for a job, or looking to hire, the recruitment fair is the place to be. Details here. Be sure to also check out our Career Services Workshop.
Technical program
You can find a listing of all technical programming here.
Annual Meeting Engage Community
Interested in discussing your favorite sessions or events with other meeting attendees? Or just looking for logistics information about the Pittsburgh area? If you're a registered Annual Meeting attendee, feel free to post or answer questions in our 2018 Annual Meeting Community.
Visiting and getting around Pittsburgh
If you don't know the city, check out ideas for sights, restaurants, and things to do while you're not at the Annual Meeting: Discover Pittsburgh
Join the conversation on social media
Be sure to join ChEnected on Twitter @ChEnected and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AIChE/. Learn more on how you can join the conversation.
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