Catalysis and Reaction Engineering (CRE) Division -- (Group 20)

American Institute of Chemical Engineers

Newsletter

June 24, 2002

Statement from the Chair

This Newsletter brings the CRE membership up to date on the following items:

·        The Spring 2002 AIChE meeting held in New Orleans;

·        The status of the Fall 2002 AIChE meeting in Indianapolis;

·        The status of our awards programs; and

·        Planned changes in our programming procedures for 2004.

I welcome suggestions, new ideas, comments, etc. at mburka@nsf.gov.

Maria

This Newsletter is only being sent via e-mail.  The cost of sending hard copies is prohibitive.  It is formatted with direct links to the relevant people and web sites.

Executive Committee (click on e-mail addresses to communicate directly with members)

Directors 2002-2004 (serve for three years):

Directors 2001-2003 (serve for three years):

Directors 2000 – 2002 (serve for three years):

Ex-Officio – AIChE Liaison:

Julio Ottino

Northwestern University

Department of Chemical Engineering

Evanston, IL 60208

Phone: 847-491-3558

Fax: 847-491-3728

ottino@chem-eng.northwestern.edu

Spring 2002 AIChE Meeting

The CRE Division had not participated in programming at the spring AIChE meetings in the past.  We deviated from this policy at the March 2002 meeting.   A number of topicals were featured, and we decided to participate in two of them: Green Chemistry and Fuel Cells.  While attendance was generally strong at these it was extremely difficult to get people to present papers.  For this reason, the CRE Division will revert to its past policy of not programming at Spring AIChE meetings.

There was also an officers meeting, at which AIChE personnel greatly outnumbered "officers."  A number of items were discussed:

(a)    Membership in AIChE and in the individual divisions continues to be a serious concern (CRE is presently deemed to be doing well since our membership is growing). AIChE wants to help the divisions get more members (out of a total of ~55,000 AIChE members only ~15,000 are members of specific divisions) and will showcase each division individually in an issue of AIChE Extra.  There was also talk about each division’s having a booth at the annual meeting, etc.

(b)   AIChE is operating at a deficit and various strategies are being examined to decrease that deficit.  Charts showing use of members' dues were presented.

(c)     AIChE is updating its database and a series of activities are in the works.  Dues payments will be payable on-line, snail mail will be sent to all members asking for their latest e-mail addresses and electronic elections will be more widespread (CRE has already implemented this).  Some people were concerned about privacy issues and AIChE assured us that the e-mail addresses will not be made available to other organizations.

(d) There will be a change in the membership grades. 

Fall 2002 AIChE Meeing

The CRE Division is participating in 52 sessions at the Indianapolis AIChE meeting in November, 2002.  The sessions’ times, room assignments, etc. are being finalized at this time.  “Proposals to present” (PTPs) submissions for CRE sponsored and co-sponsored sessions were excellent, and we were able to get duplicate sessions for those sessions that had more than 18 papers submitted.  That is the good news.  The bad news is that some of these duplicate sessions had to be scheduled on Friday.  As one very astute member pointed out, if the meeting was held in Tahiti, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, or some such, this kind of angst could be totally avoided – people would not mind staying over an extra few days.  The American Chemical Society routinely holds their meetings in Hawaii in December but AIChE has not caught on.  As always, we are one step behind.

CRE Division Banquet

As noted in the last Newsletter, the Executive Committee debated the issue of changing the November CRE Dinner format.  Discussion centered around the rigidity of the banquet structure, its expense – which discourages some people from attending, especially students – and the desirability of an alternate evening event which would better foster communication among members.  A suggestion was to have either an open reception, or one costing some nominal amount such as $10, where we served hors d’oeuvres.  This would be primarily funded by ten or more companies, each contributing $1,000, in return for being able to set up posters in the reception area.  After some reasonable amount of time, the group could have a short award ceremony followed by the CRE Practice Award recipient’s presentation at the end.  We were not able to change the format in time for the November Indianapolis meeting, and will have a banquet on Monday night, November 4, 2002.  Tiby Leib will have an opportunity to begin working on changing the format for the 2003 November meeting in San Francisco.

Awards

CRE Division Practice Award

The first two Practice Award recipients were Louis Hegedus in 2000 and Tom Keane in 2001.  With two years’ experience selecting award recipients, the Executive Committee at its meeting in Reno decided to revise the selection criteria.  These changes were posted on our web site at Princeton and sent to all members as part of our last newsletter.  We also strongly encouraged CRE division members to submit nominees – from all the various research communities including catalysis and reaction engineering – with little success.  We plan to reexamine the procedure and what can be done to get more nominations.  All suggestions are welcome.

CRE Student Travel Awards

In 2000 and 2001 each, ten awards were given out at the November meetings.  We plan to continue this tradition in 2002.  Jack Hudson is handling selection of the awardees this year.

Poster Session Award

We will experiment in 2002 with awards for the best poster session in catalysis and the best one in reaction engineering (the poster session, #20016 will be on Tuesday afternoon, after the pm sessions).  Each award will consist of a plaque and $200.00. 

Programming

As CRE programming has increased each year for the fall AIChE meetings, the job of programming chair for the division has become too time-consuming for one person, especially since that person was also doing everything else as chair of the division.  A committee studied the programming issue and a CRE programming chair position has been established.  Linda Broadbelt has agreed to take on this task for the division, starting with the November 2004 meeting.  Tiby Leib will complete the programming task he has already begun for 2003. 

Three subgroups have been formed, each will have their own management structure. 

These groups will start off with the following appointed chairs:

20a: Catalysis – Bob Davis

20b: Reaction Engineering – Martin Abraham

20c: Topicals – has not been confirmed to date

The whole programming committee will meet in Indianapolis during the lunch break on Wednesday, November 6th.  Linda will provide a framework for the operation of the subgroups, timelines for what needs to be done and when, and her vision on how she plans to coordinate programming for the CRE division.  This is your opportunity to get involved and be heard.  Everyone is welcome to attend this first meeting.  The group will then divide and the three subgroups, each of which will finalize its individual rules and operating procedures, including for example, some mechanism for selecting/electing chairs and co-chairs, selecting sessions, etc.   It is important to reiterate that it is our sincere hope that this will not cause a schism in the CRE division, which we hope will remain cohesive and interactive.  The new structure will also enable us to better focus on developing important topical sessions in emerging areas.

If you are interested in being involved with programming, please contact Linda Broadbelt at broadbelt@northwestern.edu.

Web Site

Sundar is our webmaster and the web site is located at Princeton at http://multiphase.princeton.edu/aiche-cre.  Please send information about meetings including subject matter, location, contact information, cost, etc. to Sundar at sundar@princeton.edu to post on the web site.

Items for Newsletter, Web Site or CRE e-mails

Members are encouraged to contact any of the CRE officers to submit items they would like included in division e-mails sent out periodically to members, in future editions of the newsletter, or placed on the web site.