2025-2026 AIChE Chicago Elected Officers |
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| Chair: Lance Baird | Lance Baird is the owner of Lance Baird, LLC specializing in Renewable Energy and is a co-founder of RenewAgility, LLC. Lance retired from Honeywell UOP after 37 years of service, including 15 years on worldwide technical service assignments and 22 years in various roles in technology development. He holds 21 patents with 16 applications pending and is a 6-sigma black belt. Lance graduated from Washington State University with a BS in Chemical Engineering. He is currently serving AIChE Chicago as the Chair-elect and previously served as House Committee Chair. |
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| Past Chair: Matt Walters | Matt Walters worked as an engineering consultant at Exponent through May 2023. At Exponent, Matt provided incident investigation and process safety consulting services, including the investigation of fires, explosions, and chemical releases. This June, Matt will be joining the U.S. EPA Region 5 headquarters in downtown Chicago within the Air Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Section. Matt holds B.S. degrees in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from Purdue University, as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a licensed Professional Engineer in Illinois. Matt is an active member of AIChE, including presenting conference papers, chairing technical sessions at the Global Congress on Process Safety, and serving on a book development committee for the Center for Chemical Process Safety. Locally, he was the Co-Chair of the 2021 Midwest Regional Conference (MRC) and Chair of the 2022 MRC. |  |
| Director at Large: Ha Dinh (continuing) | Ha Dinh is currently an Offering Manager for Naphtha business in Honeywell UOP Lifecycle Solutions and Technologies, where she is the product owner for Isomerization catalysts and refining adsorbent and collaborates with R&D in new product development and commercialization. Ha joined UOP in 2015 as a Research and Development Scientist, focusing on kinetic modeling and optimization for commercialization of new technologies. Her subsequent roles include Technical Sales Engineer in Integrated Project Solution group working on technical proposals and customer specific studies, and Project Development Manager for Naphtha new capital and equipment projects. Prior to that, Ha obtained a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington at Seattle in 2008 and her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Lamar University, a member of Texas State University in 2015. She is a Senior member of AIChE and part of AIChE Process Development Division leadership. She also served as Vice- Chair Programming and Section Chair in the Chicago Section. Ha also leads and supports multiple education outreach programs at UOP outside of work. |  |
| Director at Large: Reza Mostofi (continuing) |
Reza Mostofi is a principal engineer at UOP's Process Equipment Skill Center, situated in Rosemont, IL. With a tenure at UOP dating back to 2003, Reza has been a member of the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling team, delving into various UOP technologies to enhance performance, troubleshoot issues, and study revamps. His expertise lies in multiphase flows and heat transfer, with a focus on optimizing different facets of the Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) process. He earned his Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago. Throughout his career, Reza has made many contributions to the field, holding over 30 US and international patents and sharing his research at numerous conferences and in technical journals. He is also a fellow of AIChE and active member of particle technology forum and Chicago local section. On the local level, Reza has served as the Chicago section chair and hold many other positions and has been involved in planning and executing the section’s Midwest Regional Conference for many years. Reza has served as the PTF vice chair for 2012-2014 and chair for 2015-2016 term. He was also a member of CEOC & SIOC and served as SIOC chair in 2016 and CTOC chair is 2022. In recognition of his outstanding contributions, Reza was honored with the AIChE Shining Star Award in 2019. |
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Proposed Slate for 2025-2026(Requires voting by May 31, 2025) |
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| Chair-Elect: Aida Amini Rankouhi |
Aida Amini-Rankouhi is currently a Lead Technical Sales Engineer in Hydroprocessing at Honeywell UOP, where she develops and provides technical support for Honeywell UOP’s hydrocracking catalyst offerings. Aida began her career with Honeywell in 2018, working in the Process Modeling team as an R&D Scientist, where she developed kinetic-based process models and software tools for yield estimation in refinery process units. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tehran and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Wayne State University. Aida is a Senior Member of AIChE and has been actively involved in the AIChE Sustainable Engineering Forum. She was awarded the AIChE SEF Student Best Paper Award in 2018 and has co-chaired multiple sessions within the forum in recent years. |
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| Director at Large: Jeff Zalc | Jeff earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Rutgers University and completed a two-year postdoctoral research position at the University of California at Berkeley. Since 2005, he has worked in BP’s central refining technology group and is currently a Principal Engineer in the Process Modeling & Simulation group. His work involves the development and implementation detailed, equipment-based models of various petroleum refining process (mostly catalytic reforming and hydroprocessing); the tools are used for unit health monitoring, catalyst forecasting, troubleshooting, optimization, crude and feedstock selection, and capital investment decisions. Since 2015, Jeff has also taught at Illinois Tech as an adjunct professor, offering upper-level courses on Chemical Process Design, Chemical Process Simulation, and E3 (Energy, Environment, and Economics). He received the chemical engineering department’s Hamid Arastoopour Excellence in Teaching Award in 2022 and 2025. Jeff is also a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and is a licensed Professional Engineer in Illinois. He lives in Aurora with his wife and two daughters. |  |
| Programming Co-chair: Jacob Saldinger | Jacob received his bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Rice University after which he worked for 3 years in Houston in natural gas process equipment design. While in Houston, he was active in the South Texas AIChE chapter on the Young Professionals leadership team. He then pursued a PhD in chemical engineer at the University of Michigan researching novel strategies to model combustion chemistry. After graduating, he joined bp’s Advanced Fuels team and currently works in hydroprocessing at bp’s Whiting refinery. Jacob is the author of 13 engineering publications and is a licensed Professional Engineer. | |
| Programming Co-chair: TBD | ||
| Secretary/cvent: Kashif Uddin | Kashif Uddin received his Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology. He has been working as a Process Engineer for over 8 years now in various industries ranging from estomeric materials manufacturing, biopharma, agrochem and EPC. He's held various positions ranging from Process/Project Engineer to R&D Process Engineer. He currently is a Sr. Process Engineer for CB&I in Plainfield. |  |
| Treasurer: Adam Kanyuh | Adam Kanyuh is a Fellow in Honeywell UOP’s Engineering Department. With over 30+ years’ experience in process design, Adam has been involved in the design of Propane Dehydration Units as well as other light olefin technologies since 2005 and is the holder of 10+ patents. Adam has a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago, is a fellow member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He is married with two boys. |  |
Other Volunteers |
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| Social Media/ Publicity: Sanaz Taghvaii Arabi | Sanaz Taghvaii is currently a Technical Service Specialist in Aromatics Technologies at Honeywell UOP, where she provides customer support in troubleshooting, data analysis, and unit performance monitoring. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she also served as the AIChE UMass Chapter Education Chair during her undergraduate studies. Following graduation, she continued her involvement with AIChE, volunteering with the Houston Chapter in social media outreach and actively contributing to the AIChE Chicago Section since 2019. |
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| Outreach/Historian: Janet Werner | Janet Werner is in the Process Design Development group at Honeywell UOP where she supports the development of new technologies. She earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from University of Illinois. Janet has served the AIChE Chicago Section in the past as Chair, Newsletter Editor, and Webmaster. Janet has also been involved in the Midwest Regional Conference Committee on the Sponsorship SubCommittee and the Hospitality Sub-Committee. Janet has also volunteered in the AIChE Chicago Young Professionals Committee on the Programming Committee, Membership Committee, and Webmaster. She received an AIChE Shining Star award in 2015 for her contributions to the Chicago Local Section. |  |
| Membership: Dennis Decote | ||
| Young Professionals: Allison Nordvall | ||
| Young Professionals: Nicole Jugovich | ||
| Logistics: Elizabeth Ibarra | Bertha Elizabeth Ibarra Lopez has been a member of the AIChE since 2016, holds a MS in Chemical Process Engineer from University of New South Wales, Australia (2013, AU), received her BS in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Central del Ecuador, Ecuador (2011, ECU). Elizabeth currently works at Becton Dickinson and Company as a Lab Technician and has collaborated in the Pharmaceutical Industry (US), academia and government positions (ECU, AU). Since 2023 she has been involved in the Chicago Local Section, volunteering for the MRC 16th edition and 2024-2025 logistics committee. Elizabeth looks to keep helping the Logistics Committee 2025-2026 and contribute with the team. |
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| Logistics: Cecilia Escalante | ||
| Logistics: Daniele Reyes | ||
| Newsletter: Bob Tsai | Bob Tsai is in the Technical Sales Tools group at Honeywell UOP and is responsible for supporting and improving the execution of customer proposals via software-based solutions. He has been with Honeywell UOP for almost 13 years and within the company has worked in consultancy (Integrated Project Solutions) and innovation (Engineering Innovation Group) areas as well as Process Design and Modeling roles in R&D. He has been granted over 10 patents during his career. Bob holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Within AIChE Chicago, he was CoChair of Programming from 2016-2018, Chair and Past Chair from 2018-2020, Director from 2020-2023, and served as Chair of the 2021 AIChE Midwest Regional Conference. |  |
| Newsletter: Ethan Caesar | ||
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