Meet Some of AIChE’s Recently Elected Fellows

Jane P. Chang is the William F. Seyer Chair and Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on novel atomic layer controlled thin-film deposition and patterning processes to synthesize the compositionally controlled and conformal coating of complex oxides and metals. This work has applications in electronics, microsensors, and energy-storage devices. She has organized numerous national and international conferences, including symposia about plasma science and atomic-scale processing. She is spearheading a new AIChE Annual Meeting topical conference on Material Interfaces as Energy Solutions.

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Jingguang Chen is the Department Chair and Thayer Lindsley Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia Univ., with a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. After working at Exxon Corporate Research, he started his academic career at the Univ. of Delaware, where he directed the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology. He is the co-author of 23 U.S. patents and 440 publications. He is also President of the North American Catalysis Society and the lead principal investigator of the Synchrotron Catalysis Consortium. Among numerous honors, in 2020 Chen received AIChE’s R. H. Wilhelm Award for Chemical Reaction Engineering.

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Ioannis George Economou is Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M Univ. at Qatar, where his research focus is on the molecular thermodynamics and molecular simulation of complex chemical systems. Earlier in his career, he directed the Molecular Thermodynamics and Modeling of Materials Laboratory at the National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos” in Athens, Greece. Before joining Texas A&M, he was Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi. He has published numerous papers in the AIChE Journal and he has delivered 45 presentations and chaired technical sessions at AIChE Annual Meetings.

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Surya K. Mallapragada is Distinguished Professor and the Carol Vohs Johnson Chair of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Iowa State Univ., where she is also the Associate Vice President for Research. Her research interests include polymeric nanobiomaterials for drug, gene, and vaccine delivery; neural tissue engineering; and bio-inspired materials. She has authored more than 185 publications and is Editor of Materials Science and Engineering: R: Reports. She has been a leader of AIChE’s Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Div., and also served on the Executive Board of AIChE’s Program Committee.

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Raffaella Ocone is the Chair of Chemical Engineering at Heriot-Watt Univ. (Edinburgh, Scotland), where her research is in the modeling of multiphase reactive systems for the development of responsible technologies in the energy arena. She began her chemical engineering training at the Università di Napoli, Italy, before earning her PhD from Princeton Univ. In 2007, she was appointed Cavaliere by the President of the Italian Republic. In 2019, she was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to engineering. Also in 2019, The Financial Times named her one of the 100 Most Influential Women in Engineering.

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Kevin Whitty is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering at the Univ. of Utah. His research focuses on the development of advanced energy technologies and CO₂ capture, and he is actively engaged with those communities worldwide. Within AIChE, he has served as student chapter advisor and as an organizer of Chem-E-Car activities. He has also chaired many sessions at AIChE Annual Meetings, including ten consecutive years of contributions to the Chemical Looping Processes series. In 2016, he received AIChE’s Professional Achievement Award for Innovations in Green Process Engineering.

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