Grossmann honored as 2024 AIChE Prausnitz Institute Lecturer

Ignacio Grossmann, the Rudolph R. and Florence Dean University Professor of Chemical Engineering and former department head at Carnegie Mellon University, has been selected by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) to deliver the John M. Prausnitz AIChE Institute Lecture for 2024.

AIChE's 76th annual lecturer, Grossmann will discuss his application of models and algorithms in the optimal synthesis and planning of sustainable chemical process and energy systems on October 30 at the 2024 AIChE Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA.

About the Prausnitz Lecture

The Prausnitz AIChE Institute lectureship is awarded to a distinguished member of AIChE who has made significant contributions to chemical engineering in their field of specialization. The lectureship is endowed by the AIChE Foundation in honor of John Prausnitz, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who pioneered the field of engineering-oriented molecular thermodynamics. The lecture is a highlight of each year's AIChE Annual Meeting, a foremost educational forum for chemical engineers working in research and development.

Grossmann's work and achievements

Grossmann's main research interests are in the areas of discrete/continuous optimization, optimal synthesis and planning of chemical processes and energy systems, supply chain optimization, and optimization under uncertainty. He has documented his work in more than 700 papers, in the recent textbook Advanced Optimization for Process Systems Engineering, and in the textbook Systematic Methods of Chemical Process Design (co-authored with Lorenz Biegler and Arthur Westerberg). Grossmann also organized the virtual library on process systems engineering, and he has supervised 68 Ph.D. graduates.

He is a member and former director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Advanced Process Decision-making, an industrial consortium that involves 20 petroleum, chemical, engineering, and software companies. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of AIChE and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS). Among numerous honors, he is a recipient of AIChE's Founders Award. Grossmann earned his BS at the Universidad Iberoamericana, and his MS and Ph.D. at Imperial College London.

Written by Gordon Ellis. This article originally appeared in the Institute News column in the May issue of CEP magazine.

For media inquiries, please contact Lauren Smith at lsmith2@andrew.cmu.edu.