(300a) Background and Discussion about Retaining Women Engineers

Dr. Urmila Diwekar is currently President of the Stochastic Research Technologies LLC, and the Vishwamitra Research Institute (VRI, www.vri-custom.org), a non-profit research organization that she founded in 2004 to pursue multidisciplinary research in the areas of Optimization under Uncertainty and Computer-aided Design applied to Energy, Environment, and Sustainability.

From 2002-2004, she was a Professor in the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Bio-Engineering, and Industrial Engineering, and in the Institute for Environmental Science and Policy, at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). From 1991-2002 she was on the faculty of the Carnegie Mellon University, with early promotions to both the Associate and the Full Professor level.

In chemical engineering, she has worked extensively in the areas of simulation, design, optimization, control, stochastic modeling, and synthesis of chemical processes. She has made major contributions to research on batch distillation, and this work is well recognized. She is the author of more than 165 peer-reviewed research papers, 7 books, and 15 chapters, and has given over 350 presentations and seminars, and has chaired numerous sessions in national and international meetings. In separations, she is well-known for her pioneering work in batch distillation design, simulation, optimization, and optimal control.

She has published more than 31 peer-reviewed journal papers, 65 presentations (15 plenary/keynote presentations), and conducted 11 educational workshops on this topic. She has also published the first book on this topic. This is an authoritative, first of its kind book which is widely used all over the world. This book received excellent reviews and the second edition of this book was published in early 2012. She is the author of a comprehensive software package for batch distillation simulation, optimal design, and control called MultiBatchDS which is used in pharma and specialty chemical companies in USA, Europe, and Asia.

In this session, she will give her personal opinion about how to maintain women in the industry.