Thomas F. Edgar, PhD, is Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and Director of the UT Energy Institute. Dr. Edgar received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
For the past 40 years, he has concentrated his academic work in process modeling, control, and optimization, with over 200 articles and book chapters. Edgar has co-authored two leading textbooks: Optimization of Chemical Processes (McGraw-Hill, 2001) and Process Dynamics and Control (Wiley, 2010) and has received major awards from AIChE and ASEE. Dr. Edgar was the 1997 President of AIChE.
Tom Edgar is co-founder of the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC; https://smart-process-manufacturing.ucla.edu/), which developed a research roadmap to address smart, zero-emission, energy-efficient manufacturing. SMLC recently received an $8 million award from the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program of DOE to develop software for saving energy in two industrial test beds. Other multidisciplinary projects he directs includes research projects on sustainable power grids funded by Pecan Street/DOE and NSF IGERT.