Smart Manufacturing

Masoud Soroush is a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Drexel University. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Abadan Institute of Technology, Iran, and M.S.E. degrees in chemical engineering and electrical engineering and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States. He was a visiting scientist at DuPont Marshall Lab, Philadelphia, 2002–2003 and a visiting professor at Princeton University in 2008. He was the AIChE Area 10b Program Coordinator in 2009, and the AIChE Director on the American Automatic Control Council Board of Directors from 2010–2013. His awards include the U.S. National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER Award in 1997 and the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award of American Automatic Control Council in 1999. He is an elected fellow of AIChE and a senior member of IEEE. His research interests are in process systems engineering, polymer reaction engineering, electronic-level modeling of reactions, polymer membranes, multiscale modeling, probabilistic modeling and inference, and renewable power generation and storage systems. He has authored or co-authored more than 320 publications, including over 180 refereed papers. Michael Baldea is an associate professor and the Frank A. Liddell, Jr. Centennial Fellow in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, and a core faculty member in the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas, United States. He obtained his diploma and M.Sc. in chemical engineering from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. Prior to joining the University of Texas, he held industrial research positions with Praxair Technology Center in Tonawanda, New York, United States, and GE Global Research in Niskayuna, New York, United States. He has received several research and service awards, including the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from the Computing and Systems Technology Division of AIChE, the NSF CAREER award, the Moncrief Grand Challenges Award, the ACS Doctoral New Investigator Award, the Model-Based Innovation Prize from Process Systems Enterprise, and the Best Referee Award from the Journal of Process Control. His research interests include the dynamics, optimization, and control of process and energy systems. Dr. Baldea serves on the advisory boards of several commercial and non-profit entities, and as a member of the editorial boards of several leading technical journals, including Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the Journal of Process Control, and Chemical Engineering Research and Design. He has co-authored one book, three book chapters, and over 100 peer-reviewed journal and conference articles. Thomas F. Edgar is the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Chair in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. For the past 40 years, Dr. Edgar has concentrated his academic work in process modeling, control, and optimization. He has published over 500 articles and book chapters, as well as two leading textbooks focusing on separations, chemical reactors, coal combustion and gasification, and semiconductor manufacturing. Dr. Edgar has received numerous awards from major professional organizations, including the AIChE Lewis Award and the AACC Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.