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by Gordon Ellis -
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Candidates for AIChE Fellow are nominated by their peers and must have significant chemical engineering experience (generally 25 years). In addition, they must have demonstrated significant service to the profession as well as have been a member of AIChE for at least 10 years.
Please see below to learn more about some of AIChE’s recently elected Fellows. More Fellows will be introduced in future issues of CEP.
Nimir Elbashir
Nimir Elbashir is a professor in the chemical engineering and petroleum engineering programs at Texas A&M Univ. at Qatar. He also directs the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Gas and Fuels Research Center. He gained early experience as a researcher at BASF’s R&D Catalysts Center. Today, his research focuses on designing advanced reactors, catalysts, and processes to convert natural gas, coal, and CO2 into ultraclean fuels and chemicals. In this area, he chairs the ORTYX GTL Excellence Program in Gas to Liquid Technology. He is also leading a program to convert greenhouse gases to high-quality multi-walled carbon nanotubes.
Omolola (Lola) Eniola-Adefeso
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. Her research in the design and evaluation of particulate carriers has significantly advanced the field of vascular-targeted drug delivery. Recent discoveries from her lab have resulted in three U.S. patent filings, one of which is licensed to Asalyxa Bio, Inc., with Eniola-Adefeso as the Chief Strategy Officer. She is a director of AIChE, and among many affiliations, she is President-Elect of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Thomas H. Epps III
Thomas H. Epps III is the Allan and Myra Ferguson Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Univ. of Delaware (UD) with a joint appointment in Materials Science and Engineering. He is Director of the Center for Research in Soft Matter and Polymers; Director of an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at UD called the Center for Hybrid, Active, and Responsive Materials (CHARM); and Deputy Director of UD’s Center for Plastics Innovation — a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. Epps is also co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Lignolix, Inc. — a start-up focused on valorization of biomass waste.
Allan Guymon
Allan Guymon is the Sharon K. Tinker Process Safety Professor at the Univ. of Iowa, where he served as chair of the Dept. of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering from 2012 to 2022. He currently serves as the co-director of the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program in nanoscience and nanotechnology, and he is also the director of the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on Photopolymerization. His research has been documented in more than 115 journal articles. Among his activities, he has organized several AIChE symposia and he has lectured to thousands of high school students on opportunities in polymers and chemical engineering.
Robert M. Kelly
Robert M. Kelly is the Alcoa Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State Univ., where he directs the biotechnology program. His research on extreme thermophiles has focused on biocatalysis and protein stability at high temperatures, novel features of microbial physiology and genetics at elevated temperatures, heavy metal biotransformations, the search for life on other solar bodies (astrobiology), and metabolic engineering aimed at the production of bio-based fuels and chemicals from native and transgenic lignocellulose and through CO2 fixation powered by sulfur oxidation. He chairs the Academic Advisory Board of AIChE’s Society for Biological Engineering.
David F. Silarski, P.E.
David F. Silarski, P.E., is an independent contractor and engineering technical specialist with more than forty years of engineering process, project, and operating experience. He has applied his knowledge and experience in process hazard analyses and safety management to refineries, petrochemicals, aromatics, naphthalene, methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), tetralin, catalysts, gas and liquid fuels, olefins, crystallization, isomerization, hydrodesulfurization, hydrogenation, hydrodealkylation, and all types of separations. His AIChE activities range from service as general arrangement chair for an AIChE Spring Meeting to leadership in the Delaware Valley, Coastal Bend, and South Texas (Houston) local sections.