NEW YORK – The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) announced that Maria K. Burka, program director in the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems Division of the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia, will become president of the 40,000 member organization in 2011. Burka is the second woman to hold the presidency since AIChE’s founding in 1908.
Burka succeeds 2010 President Henry T. “Hank” Kohlbrand, a recently retired executive with The Dow Chemical Company. Joining her on the Board of Directors will be David A. Rosenthal, who will serve as president-elect in 2011 and as president in 2012, and Andre R. Da Costa, who will begin a three-year term as treasurer. Rosenthal is the manager of reliability and asset management for Jacobs Engineering in Houston, Texas. Da Costa is an engineering manager with Chevron Corporation in Bakersfield, California.
Also newly elected to three year terms as directors were: T. Bond Calloway, Jr., alternative energy research manager at Savannah River National Laboratory, in Aiken, South Carolina; Karl V. Jacob, fellow and technical manager for solids processing in Engineering Sciences at The Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan; Freeman Self, a process engineer with Bechtel in Houston, Texas; and Katherine S. Ziemer, associate professor of chemical engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Burka, an AIChE Fellow, has served on AIChE’s board of directors and is a past chair of the group’s Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division and its National Capital Section. She has also been a leader in the Computing and Systems Technology Division, the International Committee, and AIChE’s participation in the Washington Internships for Students of Engineering Program. She has served on the Admissions and Women’s Initiatives committees. A B. S. and M.S. graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she received a Ph.D. from Princeton University, with all of her degrees in chemical engineering.
Before joining Jacobs Engineering earlier this year, Rosenthal’s career in manufacturing competitiveness and asset reliability has included a variety of consulting and staff assignments, including 28 years with Rohm and Haas. An AIChE Fellow, Rosenthal previously served the Institute as treasurer and a member of the board of directors. He has been active in several local sections, chaired the Management Division, and served as chair of the 1996 Spring Meeting. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Drexel University and an M.S. from the University of Texas.
Da Costa has 24 years of diversified industrial chemical engineering experience across four continents. Since coming to the U.S. in 1999, he has served AIChE as a member of the Board of Directors and as chair several groups, including of the Executive Board of its National Program Committee, the Separations Division, the Northern California Section, and as co-chair of the 2006 Annual Meeting. The co-inventor on 18 patents, Da Costa received a M.Sc. from the Mendeleev University in Russia and a Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales in Australia.
