The American Institute of Chemical Engineers announced Oct. 29 that Joseph Smith, the Laufer Energy chair and professor of chemical engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology and CTO at Elevated Analytics, will become president of AIChE in 2025. Smith succeeds 2024’s president Alan Nelson, technology and new energy VP at SLB in Houston.
Anne O’Neal, process safety culture and competency manager at Chevron, will become the 2025 president-elect, and will succeed Smith as AIChE president in 2026.
Julianne Holloway, associate professor of chemical engineering at Arizona State University, will begin a three-year term as AIChE’s secretary in 2025. She succeeds MaryKathryn Lee, retired senior chemical engineer at ExxonMobil Corporate Research.
Newly elected, three-year members of AIChE’s board of directors include:
- Stephen Beaudoin, professor at Purdue University’s Davidson School of Chemical Engineering;
- Jerry Forest, process safety improvement consultant at Jerry Forest LLC;
- Raymond Rooks, principal engineer at AVN Corp.; and
- Frank van Lier, retired global senior director of process technology at Lubrizol Corp.
Smith earned a PhD in chemical engineering at Brigham Young University, where he was an American Western University fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has served on chemical engineering faculties at Tennessee Technological University, University of Michigan and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was the founding Wayne and Gayle Laufer-endowed Energy Chair at Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he led the Energy Research and Development Center and founded the Small Nuclear Modular Reactor Research and Development Consortium.
Smith has published more than 80 papers and holds 12 patents. He has published a textbook, Computational fluid dynamics for the chemical and petrochemical process industries, and has contributed chapters to the Encyclopedia of renewable energy engineering; Densification impact on raw, chemically and thermally pretreated biomass: Physical properties and biofuels production; John Zink combustion handbook; Industrial burner handbook; and Perry’s chemical engineering handbook, 9th edition.
Smith has more than 30 years’ experience working in the chemical and petrochemical industries. At Dow Chemical Co., he helped develop the LGTI coal gasifier, which is still operating in Wabash, Ind. Smith also served as corporate director of process development for Cabot Corp., director of flare technology for John Zink Co., and as group leader at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). He presently serves as an expert witness for gas flares and hydrocarbon processing, and is also a serial entrepreneur, who’s founded and led three startup companies.
