American Institute of Chemical Engineers Names New Officers and Board Members for 2013

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERS NAMES

NEW OFFICERS AND BOARD MEMBERS FOR 2013

NEW YORK – The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) announced that Phillip R. Westmoreland, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University and executive director of the University’s Institute for Computational Science and Engineering, will become the 2013 president of the nearly 45,000-member organization. 

Westmoreland succeeds 2012 President David A. Rosenthal, who is manager of reliability delivery and asset management for Jacobs Engineering Group. Joining them on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee will be Otis A. Shelton, who will serve as president-elect in 2013 and as president in 2014. Shelton recently retired as director of corporate safety and environmental services assessment program for Praxair facilities worldwide. Christine B. Seymour was elected Institute secretary, and will also serve on the Board and Executive Committee.  Seymour is an associate research fellow in Global Chemistry and Manufacturing Controls at Pfizer Inc.

Also newly elected to three-year terms as members of the Board of Directors were: Timothy J. Anderson, distinguished professor at the University of Florida and director of the statewide Florida Energy Systems Consortium; Thomas F. Degnan, manager of breakthrough and leads generation for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering; Paula T. Hammond, the David H. Koch Chair professor of engineering in the chemical engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; and Annette A. Johnston, senior project manager at Abbott Laboratories’ Diagnostics Division. 

Westmoreland, an AIChE Fellow, has previously served on the AIChE’s Boards and on the boards of AIChE’s Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum, of which he was founder, the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum, and the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division.

He has also served on the boards of, the Combustion Institute, and the Council for Chemical Research. He is a trustee and past president of the educational nonprofit CACHE Corporation. He began service to the Institute as public relations chair and secretary in the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Section. He was Chair of the Central New England Section, and Chair of the National Program Committee. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from North Carolina State University, an M.S. in chemical engineering from Louisiana State University and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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