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by Gordon Ellis -
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The rank of Fellow is AIChE’s highest grade of membership and is achieved only through election by the Board of Directors. Nominated by their peers, candidates for AIChE Fellow must have significant chemical engineering experience (generally 25 years), must have demonstrated significant service to the profession, and must have been a member of AIChE for at least 10 years.
Here are some of the recently elected Fellows. More Fellows will be introduced in future issues of CEP and here on ChEnected.
Richard B. Dickinson
Richard B. Dickinson is a professor of chemical engineering at the Univ. of Florida, where, as department chair, he expanded his department’s facilities, endowments, and Master’s program. In research, he has made seminal contributions in areas that include cell motility, microbial adhesion, and cytoskeletal filament dynamics. He is also a division director at the National Science Foundation, with responsibilities in areas such as sustainable chemical manufacturing, research on the International Space Station, and synthetic biology. He served as Meeting Program Co-Chair for the 2019 AIChE Annual Meeting. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering at the Univ. of Minnesota.
Richard K. Grenville
Richard K. Grenville is Director of Mixing Technology at Philadelphia Mixing Solutions Ltd. and an adjunct professor at Rowan Univ. and the Univ. of Delaware. He has developed methods to account for non-Newtonian fluid behavior and for suspension of particles in stirred tanks, and is investigating the role of mixing in suspension and emulsion polymerizations. Within AIChE, he is a leader of the North American Mixing Forum, and he has given seminars on mixing at local section and student chapter meetings and at the Annual Student Conference. He received his PhD in chemical engineering from Cranfield Institute of Technology (U.K.).
Ram B. Gupta
Ram B. Gupta is a professor and the Associate Dean for Faculty Research Development at Virginia Commonwealth Univ. (VCU), where he helps to advance research in all the school’s engineering disciplines: biomedical, chemical, computer, electrical, mechanical, and nuclear engineering. Prior to joining VCU in 2014, he was Director of the Energy for Sustainability Program at the National Science Foundation. He is the author of several books, including the recent titles Gasoline, Diesel and Ethanol Biofuels from Grasses and Plants and Compendium of Hydrogen Energy. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering at the Univ. of Texas at Austin.
David L. Silverstein
David L. Silverstein is a professor of chemical engineering at the Univ. of Kentucky, Paducah, where he directs the College of Engineering’s Extended Campus programs. His research interests include the professional development of faculty, conceptual learning tools and training, and guided inquiry through simulation. Among his AIChE leadership roles, he is the Founding Chair of the Education Div. and the current past chair of the Chemical Engineering Technology Operating Council (CTOC). He received AIChE’s Herb Epstein Award for Technical Programming and the Outstanding Student Chapter Advisor Award. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering at Vanderbilt Univ.
Kamalesh K. Sirkar
Kamalesh K. Sirkar is Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Foundation Professor of Membrane Separations at New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is known for his contributions to membrane science and technology, and his AIChE leadership encompasses decades of conference programming, particularly in the area of separations. He has chaired 21 AIChE meeting sessions on membrane separations and organized the Separations Technology Symposiums at five AIChE-supported Sino-U.S. conferences. In addition to leadership roles in the Separations Div. and other AIChE groups, he is an AIChE mentor to his undergrad and graduate students.
Richard Turton, P.E.
Richard Turton, P.E., is the chair of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at West Virginia Univ. (WVU), where he holds the Bolton Professorship for Outstanding Teaching. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering at Oregon State Univ., where he conducted his doctoral research in the area of heat transfer and fluidized-bed technology under the mentorship of Octave Levenspiel. Prior to joining WVU, he worked as a process engineer for Pullman-Kellogg Co. (U.K.) and Fluor Engineering and Construction (U.S.). He is the lead author of the textbook Analysis, Synthesis, and Design of Chemical Processes. He is a licensed professional engineer in West Virginia.