AIChE Names New Officers, Board for 2019

The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) announced today that Kimberly Ogden, Director of the Institute for Advanced Energy Solutions and a Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Arizona, will become President of AIChE in 2019. Ogden succeeds 2018 President Christine B. Seymour, Director at Pfizer Inc. Monty Alger, a professor of chemical engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, will become 2019 President-elect, and will succeed Ogden as AIChE President in 2020. Additionally, Joseph D. Smith, Laufer Endowed Energy Chair in the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, and Chief Technology Officer at Elevated Analytics, LLC, was elected to a three-year term as Secretary, beginning in 2019.

Newly elected members of the AIChE Board of Directors are: Ana P. Davis, Head of Health, Safety, and Environment in North America at Syngenta; Erin N. Kane, President and Chief Executive Officer of AdvanSix Inc.; Cato T. Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D., University Professor, Albert and Wilda Van Dusen Distinguished Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Director of The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Center for Biomedical, Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences, and Director of The Institute for Regenerative Engineering at the University of Connecticut; and David D. Sholl, the John F. Brock III School Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The directors serve three-year terms.

Ogden’s research focuses on bioreactor design for the production of alternative fuels from algae, guayule, and guar, as well as energy/water nexus research. She was the engineering technical lead for the U.S. National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts. Her research in converting algae to biofuel continues through a Regional Algal Feedstock Testbed program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The goal of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of year round cultivation, and to obtain long term outdoor algal cultivation data that will be available to the public for use in modeling and other research efforts. Ogden is a Fellow of AIChE and is co-chair of AIChE’s International Society for Water Solutions. She earned her PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Colorado.