2022 Election for the 2023 Board of Directors

Dr. Norma A. Alcantar is Professor and Associate Dean for Research in the Dept. of Chemical, Biological, and Materials Engineering at the Univ. of South Florida. She is a global pioneer in developing innovative, natural technologies for environmental, medical, and industrial applications, including improving access to clean drinking water, oil spill cleanup, and cancer tumor cell treatments. She was inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame, and is a Fellow of AIChE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Inventors. She currently holds 23 patents. As an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellow, she chairs the Committee for Underrepresented Minorities and is a Biomedical Engineering Society (BME) Organizations Leading Diversity (BOLD) committee member. Alcantar received a Core Fulbright U.S. Scholar Fellowship and an Excellence in Innovation Award, and in 2017 she accepted a Jewish National Fund’s Faculty Fellowship to visit Israel as a U.S. academic representative. From 2005 to 2019, she was a departmental mentor and director for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority Scholars Program to advance the careers of students underrepresented in STEM fields. She earned her PhD in chemical engineering from the Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, and her BS from the National Autonomous Univ. of Mexico.

Statement

Chemical engineering is a discipline that leads all fronts of science and technology. Some of today’s most impactful research, including projects in sustainability, water treatment, food protection, climate change, alternative fuels, synthetic biology, battery development, resource optimization, and design for green engineering, were created or developed by chemical engineers. Not only do we work at the frontiers of entrepreneurship and innovation, we’re also instrumental in shaping the technology of tomorrow. As a member of AIChE’s Board of Directors, I pledge to:

• Be an advocate for how chemical engineers are needed more than ever to compete with national and global challenges. I firmly believe we need to tell our story and describe the importance of chemical engineering for the progression of science and technology in the next five to 50 years.
• Promote our profession and highlight involvement in progress locally, nationally, and internationally, especially in environments where both foreign and domestic graduate and undergraduate students are pulled into other disciplines. I will work to diversify and, more than ever, show our strengths to solve the problems and challenges we encounter in our communities, industries, start-ups, universities, and societies.
• Advocate for eradicating inequality and guide policy for increasing the participation of underrepresented group members in our decision-making. The strength of AIChE is its diversity.

Omolola (Lola) Eniola-Adefeso is the Associate Dean for Graduate and Professional Education in Engineering and the University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Univ. of Michigan. She received her BS in chemical engineering from the Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a PhD from the Univ. of Pennsylvania. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). Eniola-Adefeso’s research in the design and evaluation of particulate carriers has contributed significantly to advancing the field of vascular-targeted drug delivery. Recent discoveries from her lab led to three U.S. patent filings, one of which is licensed to Asalyxa Bio, Inc., with Dr. Eniola-Adefeso as the Chief Strategy Officer. She serves as Deputy Editor for Science Advances, is on the board of directors for BMES, and is a member of the external advisory board for biomedical engineering at the Univ. of Florida and Boston Univ. Her research is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the National Science Foundation. Recent notable awards include the AIChE Minority Affairs Committee’s (MAC) Grimes Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering and a BMES MIDCAREER award.

Statement

I am honored to stand for election as a Director of AIChE, and to represent our discipline and colleagues in this critical capacity. I am eager to work with the AIChE leadership — the President and other members of the Board of Directors — in formulating educational, outreach, and advocacy agendas and policies for the chemical engineering community. I have been active in leadership and governance at various levels within the AIChE community, with a demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in leading MAC’s Minority Faculty Forum.

If elected:

• I will commit to supporting policies that position AIChE as the preeminent organization for chemical engineers, positioning the chemical engineering community to lead the world in tackling critical societal issues through innovative research and technology. We must reestablish chemical engineering’s dominance in environmental research and system engineering to achieve this goal.
• I will build on existing work to expand the international reach of AIChE and work to promote the inclusion of AIChE members of all backgrounds.
• Overall, I will ensure that we uphold the academic and professional qualities and high standards that keep us faithful to the core AIChE mission — “to promote excellence in chemical engineering education and global practice.”

I welcome your comments and feedback at lolaa@umich.edu and look forward to the opportunity to serve you on the AIChE Board.

Hugh James is the Chief Executive Officer at Project Commercialization Group (PCG), Inc. Chemical engineering is challenging, changing, and exciting. Hugh’s long career has taken full advantage of this fact. He has worked in industries including engineering and construction, gas, fertilizers, chemicals, power, pipelines, mining, and venture capital — with experiences ranging from small to Fortune 100 organizations. His work has involved living in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Australia. Accomplishments include Korea’s LNG import plan; starting an energy development company; structuring Australia’s first coal seam methane (CSM) project; and running a Canadian mining investment. His last overseas assignment, in Saudi Arabia, ended in 2011. He now focuses on challenging startups. Hugh has participated in AIChE panels on entrepreneurship and early-stage investing. He has held corporate and advisory board positions in foreign and U.S. organizations, including an LNG development company board and an advisory board commercializing a technology developed at Princeton University. He earned his chemical engineering BS and ME degrees at Texas A&M Univ., and a doctoral-level engineer’s degree from MIT. He also participates in AIChE’s Central Florida and Virtual local sections.

Statement

AIChE’s scope has expanded with activities like the Society for Biological Engineering and RAPID Manufacturing Institute. These, combined with efforts promoting inclusivity and educational programs for members, further broaden the scope. More importantly, efforts to attract young people have dramatically changed the membership’s composition to better reflect society. All this has positioned AIChE to be a leader in Industrial Revolution 4.0 merged with Internet 5.0 to combine virtual and physical technologies for solving water, food, sustainability, medicine, and climate challenges.

The Board’s job is to incorporate the needs and aspirations of AIChE stakeholders. Board members will need to listen and work conscientiously. I pledge to do both. The email address hrobertjames@gmail.com is set up for your communication with me as a candidate and subsequent Board member. Use it to send me your thoughts and questions.

AIChE’s growth in a changing industrial landscape creates opportunities with challenges. Some have mentioned the following: (1) Facilitating the nexus between industry and universities on needs of strategic importance; (2) Increasing the involvement of startup companies and their employees in AIChE local and global programs; (3) Aiding member entrepreneurship through programs like Corp-Up.

I have served on boards both inside and outside the United States, have worked for foreign and American companies, and have had men and women supervisors of different cultures. I feel honored that the nominating committee has chosen me as a candidate and promise vigorous involvement in the Board representing AIChE’s stakeholders.

Todd M. Przybycien began his career at Monsanto Agricultural Co. before joining the chemical engineering faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 1991 and launching a teaching and research program in biomanufacturing. He then spent 20 years on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon Univ. (CMU), also becoming founding head of the Biomedical Engineering Dept. He returned to RPI in 2018. He has collaborated with a range of large and small biotech companies with support from CESMII, FDA, the Gates Foundation, NIIMBL and NSF. Within AIChE, he chaired the Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Div. and served as the Area 15c (Bioengineering) program chair. He has served on the managing board of AIChE’s Society for Biological Engineering since 2010, and on CEP’s editorial board since 2014. He is a Life Member and Fellow of AIChE.

Statement

We face grand, and increasingly existential, challenges. Climate. Water. Food. Energy. Health. Equity and inclusion. Chemical engineers and allied scientists and technologists have the knowledge, tools and responsibility to drive the needed changes and innovations. The National Academies’ newly issued report “New Directions for Chemical Engineering” is organized around this message. AIChE has been addressing grand challenges via its entities including IfS, RAPID, ISWS, FEED, CEI, SBE, the AIChE Foundation, and others. AIChE should explicitly organize, advertise, and recruit around the central theme of grand challenges — to rally and provide opportunities for each of its members to work impactfully in one or more of these grand challenge areas, and to attract new members so that we can collectively move the needle. I want to help catalyze this transformation of AIChE. We are being called to act.

In 2023, AIChE should begin work on its next strategic plan, providing a timely opportunity for transformation around the grand challenges theme. The current plan identified six priorities — leadership, communities, content, diversity and inclusion, societal issues, and transformational technologies — designed to continue the trajectory of the prior decade, and provides a springboard for the proposed transformation. We need to transparently evaluate progress on the metrics for success of the current plan and prepare for the next. I am experienced in strategic planning, having led the collaborative development of three successive plans for CMU’s nascent Biomedical Engineering Dept., and co-led the faculty experience component of CMU’s university-wide Strategic Plan 2025. I enjoy generating and executing ideas with others.

I have benefitted both professionally and personally from my membership in AIChE since my student days, and would be honored to roll up my sleeves as a director. Please feel free to share your thoughts about AIChE, its role in developing solutions to grand challenges, and the realization of its strategic plan at przybt3@rpi.edu.