2021 Election for the 2022 Board of Directors

Billy B. Bardin, PE, is the Global Digitalization Director for Dow. He joined Union Carbide/Dow in 2000 and has held global leadership roles in research, development, and manufacturing. He developed and commercialized technologies including catalytic processes for feedstocks/derivatives, processes for olefins production, and digital manufacturing. Bardin created new approaches for promoting technical excellence and fostering career development.

Bardin served on AIChE’s Board of Directors (2017–2019) and chaired the Audit Committee. He also served on the Career and Education Operating Council (CEOC) and the managing board of the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS). He is a Trustee of the AIChE Foundation, a leader of the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Div., and a member of the South Texas and Eastern North Carolina sections. He is a leader in the Licensing and Professional Development Committee and the Disabilities Outreach and Inclusion Community. Bardin was the founding Chair of AIChE’s RAPID Manufacturing Institute. He is a Fellow and Life Member of AIChE.

Bardin holds a BS ChE from North Carolina State Univ. (NCSU) and MS/PhD ChE from the Univ. of Virginia (UVA). He is a Professional Engineer in West Virginia. Bardin is a leader on academic and industrial boards at Purdue Univ., NCSU, UVA, the MxD manufacturing institute and the Journal of Advanced Manufacturing & Processing. He has been recognized numerous times, most recently as a Visionary Leader by the National Association of Manufacturers.

Statement

There is no better time to be a chemical engineer. The opportunities to impact societal challenges are great. Technologies are evolving at an increasing pace, disrupting the ways we live, work, and learn. Expectations for equitable resource dissemination, sustainability, and inclusion of all communities continue to elevate. As the global leader of chemical engineering, AIChE is a significant contributor to solving our challenges.

As your President, I will drive the following priorities:

• Enhance the alignment of AIChE, industry, academia, national laboratories and other stakeholders to deliver innovative solutions today and to develop tomorrow’s leaders.
• Grow capabilities for AIChE to deliver on-demand knowledge, allowing users to add skills and institutionalizing the virtual approaches developed during the pandemic so that global communities continue to connect.
• Expand AIChE’s educational offerings with the Institute for Learning and Innovation, including a focus for operators and technicians, in addition to engineers and students, improving equity and inclusion.
• Position AIChE for investments in national infrastructure, growing our global influence in safety, sustainability, advanced manufacturing and intensification through RAPID, CCPS and other technical entities.

I am humbled to be nominated to be your President. I am grateful for your vote and look forward to hearing your ideas on making AIChE stronger and more impactful. Contact: bardinbb@dow.com.

Amos Avidan is a consultant and a retired energy and construction executive. He served as Senior Vice President and corporate manager of engineering and technology at Bechtel Corp., where for 16 years he led people, technology, engineering, and capital projects teams. Prior to Bechtel, he spent 20 years at Mobil Corp.

Amos has an interest in established and emerging energy systems and technologies, sustainable economic growth and its impact on society and the planet, and addressing global challenges. He has authored and co-authored numerous technical publications and patents. He holds a BS degree from the Technion, and a PhD from the City University of New York, both in chemical engineering. Amos taught the AIChE course in fluidization in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and served on the AIChE Board of Directors from 2006–2009. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009.

Statement

AIChE has always aspired to be of value to its members and to society as a center of excellence for the chemical engineering profession in the U.S. and globally. I believe this overarching goal will continue to drive our vision, while the challenges facing the planet and society — and chemical engineers in particular — will keep changing. The challenge of improving the quality of life of more than seven billion people as sustainably as possible, while addressing the increasing threats posed by global warming, degrading environments and biodiversity, cybersecurity, pandemics, etc., pose increasing challenges, but also increasing opportunities for chemical engineers.

My particular areas of interest are:

• Enhancing and adjusting the AIChE value delivery mechanism in an era of increased remote work and continuous learning, increased use of automation and AI, and rapidly emerging new technologies.
• Encouraging chemical engineers to be more proactive in their communities and to promote more awareness of what chemical engineers do to provide balanced, sustained economic growth while helping protect the environment. Engineers can help society, and particularly the media, non-governmental organizations, and governments, by proving real data, model simulations, and especially lifecycle data and tools to create an understanding of the impact of new technologies and proposed solutions. This will encourage better policies and improved awareness.
• Despite long-term efforts to improve diversity and equity in the chemical engineering profession, we still have a way to go. We need to keep looking for better ways to encourage STEM education and more access at all levels to women and to underrepresented minorities while not leaving anyone behind.

Paulette Clancy is a professor and the inaugural Head of the Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins Univ. She also serves as the Samuel and Diane Bodman Professor Emerita of Chemical Engineering at Cornell Univ. and as Chair of the faculty oversight team for Advanced Research Computing at Johns Hopkins’ High-Performance Computing facility.

Her research group is recognized as one of the leading computational groups in atomic-scale modeling of materials and algorithm development. Her current work aims to develop machine learning algorithms to accelerate the search for optimal materials processing protocols. Her research group has always been focused on electronic materials, but it also includes more esoteric projects include xenobiology (Life on Titan) and a screening of therapeutic oligomers to maximize antibacterial ability. She has won numerous awards for mentoring, service learning, civic engagement, and promoting the careers of those from under-represented groups.

Statement

I am honored to be a candidate for the Board of Directors of AIChE. My platform will help implement AIChE’s commitment to support the chemical and engineering professions, especially in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), in which I have been active for more than three decades. I will represent the voices of those who want to see improved representation at all levels and who have been traditionally underrepresented in the profession. We still face challenges in this regard.

While chemical engineers are leaders in embracing change and forging new frontiers of chemical research, I think that the chemical engineering academic curriculum is ripe for modernization. I will be interested in helping to catalyze discussion of a modern curriculum for chemical engineering. In terms of research, I would like to help represent the areas of machine learning (ML) and computation, which is in an explosively growing regime. Some forethought on the impact of ML/AI on curriculum and research would be a good topic for discussion by the Board and the community at large.

I have been a leader of chemical engineering departments at two universities, currently lead the high-performance computing faculty group at Johns Hopkins, and have led research institutes. I was one of the early chairs of AIChE’s Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum (CoMSEF) and remain committed to its success. I continue to derive benefits from AIChE membership ranging from AIChE’s sponsorship of a DEI conference for department heads planned for 2020 (but delayed by COVID) to the networking opportunities that it affords all its members.

I welcome your questions at pclancy3@jhu.edu.

David Dixon joined AIChE as a student and recently became an AIChE Fellow. He served for four years in the military, primarily overseas, and worked for Dow Corning in process development before earning his PhD in chemical engineering from UT Austin. He then began his academic career at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Over his career, he has been Principal Investigator for an NSF-I/UCRC BioEnergy Center; a department chair; helped start a PhD program; and was a Fulbright Scholar. He has also developed university-level partnerships with German and Mongolian universities, and is extending these efforts into Mexico and South America. His research has been funded by DOD, NSF, EPA, and industry — in diverse areas such as protective membranes, water remediation, and applied solar energy. David received his university’s 2019 Presidential Award for Outstanding Professor.

Statement

I have found the opportunities within AIChE to network, present, and learn to be extremely valuable — especially through meeting people and learning innovative ways to enhance teaching and research. I’ve been an AIChE Student Chapter Advisor, a Group 4 (Education) Program Committee Chair (2004–2005), and involved in international student activities. I remain active in the Student Chapters Committee (Chair 2006–2007), have chaired the Career and Education Operating Council (CEOC; 2020), and am active on the Chem-E-Car Competition organizing committee, where I have been involved since its inception.

There are three areas in which I’d like to devote my time and energy to help advance AIChE as the Global Home of Chemical Engineers — which supports a discipline that is becoming more diverse and arguably a critical career that will contribute to solving the growing challenges facing our world.

Evolving Educational Needs — The Institute for Learning and Innovation provides a unique platform to expand AIChE’s value to its members, as well as to the global industries and entities that hire chemical engineers.

Supporting Membership — The challenges of the past year provide opportunities to make the world smaller and our reach larger. We need to continue to find ways to reinforce AIChE as the professional organization for ChEs to be involved in, from students to retirees.

Building Global Value — AIChE’s international distribution of members is expanding, and many are students who will soon graduate. We have challenges and opportunities in finding the best ways our Institute can support all of our global members.

It is humbling to be nominated to serve on the AIChE Board, and I look forward to the chance to work with AIChE in this new role. Please feel free to contact me at david.dixon@sdsmt.edu.

Anne O’Neal is Manager of Process Safety Culture and Competency at Chevron, and an AIChE Fellow. Her 40-year career includes senior positions in process safety, as well as health, environment and safety. She founded Chevron’s early technical career development program after assignments in process engineering, operations, maintenance, and strategic planning. She also created Chevron’s first management system approach to process safety.

She earned her BSChE from the Univ. of California, Davis, where she was a founding member of the Center for Women in Engineering. An early participant in AIChE’s Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) and an advisory board member since 2005, she and colleagues pioneered Process Safety Faculty Workshops. She also co-led the API/IPECA sustainability reporting guidelines development.

Statement

If elected, I will continue to champion the essential work of CCPS — saving lives, protecting the environment, and contributing to thriving economies through the prevention of process safety incidents.

I’ve seen first-hand the spark lit with great teaching, and the vital role ethics and risk awareness play in undergraduate engineering education. My Chevron work with early career professionals inspired the first AIChE Process Safety Faculty Workshop, subsequently adopted by several member companies. Learning matters — and AIChE’s Institute for Learning and Innovation plays a critical sustaining role.

As AIChE’s influence expands through CCPS, the RAPID Manufacturing Institute, the Society for Biological Engineering, and the Center for Hydrogen Safety, we must sustainably address grand challenges at scale. We serve those challenges best with the efficiency, effectiveness, and clear roles and responsibilities brought through good governance and robust policy. As a Board Officer for the Boy Scouts of America, I have been responsible for policy and governance for over a decade, recently overseeing a merger to more efficiently, effectively, and sustainably serve youth. I’ll bring that same passion to this role.

While we tackle society’s grand challenges, we can’t ignore the barriers and headwinds society presents to encouraging and enabling engineers and scientists from all walks of life to contribute and to thrive. IDEAL (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism, Learning) is essential for a thriving profession and for our Institute to bring the world’s best minds to solve her most challenging problems. My mother encouraged me to combine my knack for chemistry, math, and physics into studying chemical engineering — an opportunity not available in her day. AIChE’s Board members must play a similarly active role in transforming headwinds into tailwinds for the benefit of all.

I’m honored by this nomination and look forward to serving you.