2025 Year in Review

As we have now moved into the final quarter of 2025 and towards the AIChE Annual meeting in Boston, please find below a review of highlights of the CRE Division Year.

Highlights

• The CRE Division remains healthy in terms of membership and financial status, reflecting the creativity and hard work of the CRE Board in meeting member needs. There are currently about 521 members in the Division.

• The Division embarked on an ambitious forward-looking initiative in 2022 to establish the CRE Endowment. The goal remains to raise $250,000 to create long-term financial stability to support division initiatives in perpetuity, such as the various division awards and the discovery and advancement of technology solutions that address energy and sustainability challenges. Thanks to many generous donors, we are approaching $100,000 in the endowment, which currently generates an annual income of over $3,700.  The CRE Board encourages everyone to contribute! Please see this link to make your contribution.

• We have previously announced Dr. Milad Abolhasani of NC State University as the recipient of the 2024 Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos Early Career Investigator Award and Dr. Michael Reynolds of Shell Catalysts and Technologies as the recipient of the 2025 CRE Division Practice Award.  Both of these awards will be presented at the CRE Division dinner at the Annual Meeting.

• The division continues to invest in and recognize our young talent with the awarding of 20 graduate student travel grants. The awardees have been introduced through our social media communications, and the awards will be presented at the CRE Dinner.  Four of these awards are sponsored through the CRE Endowment in honor of Dr. Billy Bardin & Linh D. Le, Prof. Umit S. Ozkan, Prof. Bob Davis, and Prof. Jim Dumesic.

• The CRE Division created a task force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in 2020 with the goals of identifying and providing creative solutions to challenges that limit representation of women and minorities in the CRE division. This task force developed and continues to sponsor oral presentation sessions recognizing early and mid-career scientists in academia, industry, or national laboratories that are making outstanding contributions in research, teaching, and/or service to our profession as well as panel sessions that support networking and community building for new and established members of CRE.  This year’s annual meeting sessions are noted below. In addition, the DEI Taskforce established a mentoring program in 2022 that pairs graduate student mentees with mentors from academia, industry, and/or national laboratories to boost interactions amongst members of our community at different stages of their careers and to create a welcoming and engaging atmosphere where graduate students can connect with members of the AIChE CRE community. This program welcomes both new mentee and mentor participants. Learn more about the DEI Taskforce at the following link.

• The CRE Division remains one of the largest and most active within the AIChE, including having one of the largest technical programs at the Annual meeting based on the strength, diversity, and innovation within our field. At the upcoming Boston meeting we have more than 80 oral technical sessions with about 560 presentations, and a poster session with ~150 participants. In addition, there are several sessions in recognition of various awards and outstanding contributions to the community. These include sessions honoring our 2024 Wilhelm Awardee (Fabio Ribeiro), our 2024 Early Career Awardee (Milad Abolhasani), a career achievements session honoring Umit Ozkan, and a session in memoriam of Al Vannice. Additional sessions organized by the CRE DEI Task Force recognize Pioneers of CRE Joaquin Resasco, Wan-Ting (Grace) Chen, Theodore Walker, Felipe Polo-Garzon, and Paul Lewandowski (sponsored by Cell Press and Chem Catalysis journal), Mid-Career Researchers in CRE Sara Yacob and Steven Crossley (sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Reaction Chemistry & Engineering journal, and provide a professional development panel and morning reception targeting graduate students, postdocs, and early-career scientists with tips on navigating the academic landscape. We are all proud of the growth in the CRE Division over the past years, and we are excited to highlight the work of researchers and practitioners from across academia, industry, and national laboratories through sessions such as these each year.

• The CRE webinar series continues to provide timely training and updates on CRE research spanning national labs, industry, and academia. This year’s webinars included topics of creating winning CRE award application packages, CRE graduate student travel award nominations, and presenting impactful conference talks. A fourth webinar on a research topic will be presented in December. The webinars are archived on the CRE website here.

• The DEI Taskforce and Social Media teams have coordinated to highlight various outstanding members of the CRE Community through LinkedIn and X, formerly known as Twitter aligning with Heritage Months to recognize the positive intersections of personal identity, professional accomplishments, and community support.

• The AIChE Chemical Engineering Technology Operating Council (CTOC) requires a bylaws refreshment for the AIChE Divisions and Forums every five years.  This year is a renewal year for the CRE Division, and a draft update is in review. Please look for a membership call to vote on our revised bylaws later this year.

• We will be recognizing in 2026 an outstanding early career practitioner with the biennial CRE Division Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos Early Career Investigator Award.  Please keep an eye open for the call for nominations for this award after the new year.

Leadership Opportunities – Nominations Open

To continue to improve our broader membership engagement, we are now seeking nominations (self-nominations accepted) for several open CRE leadership positions for the 2026 board and committee positions. If you have interest in leadership opportunities, please contact Bihter Padak, CRE Division Past-Chair and head of the nominating committee, by email at bpadak@uci.edu. Serving as a leader in the CRE Division is a great way to build a network within and to give back to our community. Your nominations are requested by November 30, 2025.

  Open positions for 2026 are as follows:

• 2nd Vice Chair of the Division (in line for Vice Chair and Chair)
• Board of Directors (3 positions)
• Diversity and Inclusion Task Force Member (2 open positions)

The CRE Division strives to be the community of choice for those with interests in catalysis and reaction engineering. We welcome any feedback, input, or comments you may have to improve the CRE Division.  I would like to personally thank all of the current and past CRE Division officers and board members who have voluntarily and enthusiastically served in many ways to make the CRE Division one of the most successful divisions of the AIChE.

Thank you for your membership and please encourage your colleagues to join our division. We hope to see you at the Annual Meeting in Boston! Our annual CRE dinner is on Monday, November 3rd, at 7pm at Rochambeau in Back Bay.

Keith Hutchenson, Covation Biomaterials

CRE Division Chair 2025

Keith.Hutchenson@CovationBio.com