1. What has being an AIChE Fellow meant to you in your professional life?
Becoming an elected Fellow of AIChE is not something I ever thought possible.
As a former English literature and contemporary poetry major in college, when I chose to change majors to chemical engineering halfway through my freshman year at Johns Hopkins University, my advisors all raised an eyebrow but gave me their sincerest blessings and encouragement.
It was an uphill battle from the start.
While most of my peers were polishing off their multivariable calculus credits, I was writing term papers on 19th century British poetry. But it was due to the good graces of three chemical engineering professors in particular (two thermodynamicists and a genomics researcher) that I somehow survived. Those teachers became mentors and to this day, have become lifelong friends.
So while I’m incredibly proud of becoming an AIChE Fellow, it is also a testament to the power of believing in someone that you have no business believing in. They saw something in me that I never saw in myself. They reshaped the entire trajectory of my career, which has since taken me from poetry to electrochemical engineering, from data centers and mobile phone software to quantum computing. So becoming a Fellow has been about being grateful, being appreciative, and being a little bit lucky.
2. Do you have a particular experience as an AIChE member that you would like to share?
Located on the San Francisco Bay fourteen miles from downtown San Francisco, watching the sun set over the ocean on Berkeley Point is stunning. If the waves were moving just right, eating dinner at the HS Lordships Restaurant located at the edge of the water could feel like you were setting sail on a nautical adventure.
Though I had been a member since my sophomore year of university, it was not until I relocated to San Francisco that I got directly involved with my AIChE Local Section, starting with the Northern California Section, whose business meetings were held at HS Lordships.
At these meetings, surrounded by good food and good conversation, I found myself surrounded by top leaders and engineers from Silicon Valley, oil and gas, pharma, and biotechnology. I immediately felt welcomed. And it is thanks to that first group of energetic, engaging chemical engineers that evening at the edge of the sea, that I felt a calling to join them in their programming and networking events and to support their members. Many have remained close friends and colleagues and it is thanks to their enthusiasm and camaraderie that I was able to grow to the point of earning my Fellows nomination a decade later.
3. What do you feel should be the expectations from Fellows currently?
Just as many Fellows have benefitted from the mentorship, sponsorship and tireless volunteering of others that have accompanied us throughout our careers, maintaining that sense of leadership and guidance of all aspects of AIChE members should be central to our role.
Whether it’s continuing to serve AIChE members through our work in local sections, divisions and forums or choosing to raise up that one student or speak at that one classroom, we must role model the art of giving back, which is a critical element to the Institute’s longevity as it continues to attract and retain the best possible engineers across our profession.
Austin S. Lin (May 17, 2025)
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