(97a) Women in Chemical Engineering Community (WIC) Panel

The Women in Chemical Engineering Community (WIC) invites you to attend this interactive panel. Inspiring, successful, engaged, and experienced women leaders from academia and industry will share their journeys with us. Women navigate unique paths throughout their journeys that impact their careers and lives and those of others in many different meaningful ways. Come listen to these journeys and get motivated and inspired. The panel will start with short introductions from our panelists. The floor will then be open to attendees to ask questions to our panelists. The panel will conclude with words of wisdom from our panelists.

Saadet Ulas Acikgoz has been working for Honeywell UOP for the past 15 years. She is currently the Senior Manager of R&D Process Modeling and Optimization group. Prior to that, she held several specialist and management positions within the UOP R&D organization where she was involved in scale-up and commercialization of several UOP process technologies, development of new tools to improve experimental efficiency and commercial data analytics. During her career at UOP, she co-authored more than 15 UOP patents and patent applications.

Saadet first joined the AIChE as a student member and she has been involved in the programming of AIChE Spring National Conferences since 2009, serving in roles as Session Chair, Co-Chair and Topical Chair. She co-authored and presented several papers in the AIChE Spring National Conferences and the Annual Fall Meetings since 2004. She served as a 3 year director, treasurer, second vice chair, first vice-chair, chair and past chair for the Fuels & Petrochemicals Division (F&PD). She also chaired the Annual Meeting F&PD programming and now serving as the vice-chair for the F&PD Spring Meeting programming.

Saadet is also serving on the AIChE Executive Board of the Program Committee and the AIChE Chemical Engineering Progress Editorial Advisory Board.

Saadet received her MS and PhD Degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering with a specialization in process systems engineering. She holds a BS Degree in Chemical Engineering from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.

Wendy Young is the Sales & Marketing Manager for Chemstations, providing process simulation software solutions through the CHEMCAD product suite. Her experience includes working with technology developers and users in a broad range of industry areas: chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing, refining, and water treatment. Wendy obtained her B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University (1997) and her MBA from Rice University (May 2020).

Wendy has demonstrated commitment to AIChE by supporting local sections (founded YP Group of South Texas Section), growing membership (Chaired Membership Committee), and donating to the Foundation (Silver level). She’s privileged to work with colleagues across industry, academia, and government through her past service as Chair of the Young Professionals Advisory Board (now YPC), on the Board of Directors (2007-2009), and Chair of CTOC (2017). Wendy advanced AIChE’s leadership in addressing global challenges as a founding Co-Chair of AIChE’s Water Initiative (now ISWS). She was the Co-MPC for the 2015 AIChE Spring Meeting and was elected to Fellow in 2016. She was elected as the AIChE Treasurer for 2021 through 2023.

Jennifer Mize is passionate about protecting people, property, and the environment through the application of risk-based process safety. Over the course of her career, she has developed expertise in relief design and risk assessment and is committed to sharing her expertise with others as a supervisor and mentor and through her volunteer commitments with the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS). Jennifer is currently the manager for the Process Safety Design group at Eastman. She is in her first year of a 3-year director term for the East Tennessee Local Section (ETLS) and has enjoyed serving in several other roles for the local section during her time at Eastman, including serving as Chair in 2003. At the Institute Level, she is serving as Second Vice Chair of the Safety & Health Division. Within CCPS, Jennifer is the Chair of the Process Safety Incident Database (PSID) Steering Committee and a member of the CCPS Process Safety Professional Certification (CCPSC) Managing Committee and Exam Committee. She is the 2022 Vice Chair of the Process Safety Management Mentoring (PSMM) Conference in the 18^th Global Congress on Process Safety. In addition to her support of AIChE, she is a contributing member of the ASME Section XIII Committee on Overpressure Protection.

Jennifer graduated from Auburn University in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering. She is a registered professional engineer in Tennessee and holds CCPSC certification.