AIChE Foundation Awards Grants to Eleven Innovative Initiatives

The AIChE Foundation is pleased to announce that 11 innovative AIChE initiatives have been awarded grants for the first cycle of funding in 2016.  Bi-annually, the AIChE Foundation invites Operating Councils and Board Committees to submit funding proposals for new impactful projects benefiting AIChE members and the chemical engineering profession. 

Thanks to the generosity of Annual Fund donors, the AIChE Foundation has granted over $75,000 in funding to support these 11 innovative projects.

The next grant funding cycle will open on March 31, 2016. For more information, please contact giving@aiche.org and or call 646-495-1342.

2016 Funding Projects

• International Student Chapter Leadership Development Travel Grant
  The development of AIChE’s international undergraduate Student Chapters is one of the cornerstone initiatives in AIChE’s plan to increase its global presence, recruit international members and serve the profession as it is practiced throughout the world. The International Student Chapter Leadership Development Travel Grant is awarded on the basis of leadership involvement in student chapter activities, academic achievement, and financial need. The AIChE Foundation is delighted to have supported this important program for two consecutive years in 2014 and 2015. For more information, click here.    

• 3D-Manufacturing Panel at AIChE Annual Meeting
  The Institute will host a 3D-Manufacturing panel at the 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Francisco in hopes to educate chemical engineering professionals about the latest new trend of technologies and discuss where the advancements are headed. 

• AIChE Ethics Project - Retraction Watch
  The Licensure and Professional Development Committee (LPDC) will be hosting have a half-day session this fall at the 2016 Annual Meeting in San Francisco to highlight issues with retractions due to ethical issues with academic papers. The committee hopes to invite a representative from "Retraction Watch" to present and discuss this matter. This program follows a successful kick off at the 2015 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City when Allan McDonald was invited to speak to students about ethics. The Foundation is delighted to continued its support of AIChE's developing Ethics entity. For more information on the AIChE Foundation funded 2015 Student Brunch Keynote "Ethics Lessons Learned from the Space Shuttle Disaster", please click here.

• Engineers Without Borders (EWB-USA) Grant with Student Conference Participation
  EWB-USA projects provide chemical engineers opportunities to participate in international projects and to collaborate with engineers from other disciplines. This year, two EWB projects along with chemical engineering students will attend and present their dynamic life-changing work at the Institute meetings (Annual and Spring). This lifetime opportunity increases student engagement with AIChE, encourages students to develop leadership skills, and raises the visibility of AIChE as the global home for chemical engineers. For more information, click here.  

• Identifying the Grand Challenges in Chemical Engineering
  In 1988 the National Research Council (NRC) published “Frontiers in Chemical Engineering: Research Needs and Opportunities”, a comprehensive report outlining the remarkable potential of the chemical engineering profession to affect every aspect of American life. It also outlined a comprehensive roadmap for 10-15 years to turn promising research opportunities into reality, while guiding university educational efforts to embrace new frontiers of the profession. The wider engineering community has started a process of setting up a future vision of their profession for the next several decades. In fact, the National Academy Engineering came up with 14 Grand Challenges in Engineering, outlining the big gaps engineers need to solve to ensure survival of our civilization.  This summer AIChE will host an inaugural workshop in the NY office, where representatives of AIChE Forums and Divisions will discuss the roadmap of how to come up with the Institute's own grand challenges and frontiers of chemical engineering.

• Global Societal Initiatives Committee (GSIC) Encouraging Global Engagement - Student Conference Initiative 2016
  In partnership with local Engineers Without Borders (EWB) student chapters, the GSIC will coordinate a 3 multi-year education program in efforts to educate and bring awareness of global engagement at the AIChE Student Regional Conference. This dual collaboration includes a diverse array of panel presenters including AIChE professionals and chemical engineers, whom have participated in EWB. For more information, click here.   

• High School and Middle School OutReach Program
  The OutReach program is targeted for local high schools (city and suburbs) and focuses on encouraging students to stay in school and study math and science. Traditionally, this program is conducted every year at the AIChE Spring Meeting.  The OutReach program gives high school students the opportunity to interact with industry professionals and includes presentations from keynote speakers, such as NASA Astronaut Al Sacco and other practicing chemical engineers doing a world of good. The 2016 program will also include an interactive game about engineering and an open panel discussion which will allow students to engage directly with practicing engineers. For more information, click here.  

• Process Engineering - Educating our community
  The Career and Education Operating Council (CEOC) aims to develop a plan to raise awareness and further understanding of process engineering and its diverse impacts on the profession and society. As a first step, the CEOC will host an in-person all-day focus group of experts in the field of process engineering from the AIChE community to better develop the potential program and identify some strategies to achieve success. For more information, click here.

• USA Science and Engineering Festival - AIChE Booth
  The USA Science and Engineering Festival is a biannual week-long science-based exposition that exposes upwards of 200,000 students and adults to the presence of science and engineering globally.  As one of over 700 presenters at the Festival, AIChE has the opportunity to engage a large number of students in an environment conducive to influencing them to consider a future career in these respective fields. In fact, at the 2014 Festival, the AIChE booth had 700-1000 visitors over the 3-day period thus making the booth one of the most impactful methods of outreach for the Institute. For more information on the 2016 Festival in Washington, D.C., please click here. 

• 2016 Global Student Video Competition
  Annually at the AIChE Student Conference, each student chapter from around the world has the opportunity to create a 2-5 minute video presentation of the competition’s chosen Chemical Engineering topic and or one of its subtopics. Over the summer, each video is reviewed to ensure it has sufficient detail, accurate information and the required technical criteria specific to each topic. The top 5 videos voted as the Public Choice and Judge’s Choice Winners by the public and AIChE’s governing committee (academic and industrial professionals) are announced at the Annual Student Conference. The AIChE Foundation is delighted to continue its support of this engaging student program. For more information, click here.
   
• ​AIChE Projects Program at University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
  Founded in May 2015, the AIChE Projects program based in the University of California, San Diego, is the first of its kind that is designed to simultaneously serve students and the local community. ​Students are provided technical and leadership experience through the program, while the teams themselves are carefully designed to address urgent and critical issues that UC San Diego as well as the global environment as a whole faces. ​The four teams under the AIChE Projects Program are Vapor-Compression Desalination, Oceanic Phosphorous Recovery, Materials & Composites Engineering, and Hybridized Renewable Energy. Each of the teams have been designed to address imminent, local issues like the California drought, oceanic dead zones, poor recycling habits, and continental oil depletion, respectively. For more information, click here.  

  Join us today and support a trailblazing project:
  Give now