We are pleased to announce the winners of our various awards.
The FOCAPD Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation
About the Award
The Foundations of Computer Aided Chemical Engineering 2024 Conference is pleased to announce the Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation. The goal of the award is to recognize an outstanding contribution to the field by a PhD Candidate arising from PhD research. An external committee of experts reviewed about 20 applications, including theses and recommendation letters from external supporters to determine the winner.
Award recipients must have successfully published and defended their PhD between January 1, 2019 and the submission deadline.
The dissertation must be within the scope of the FOCAPD 2024 conference (chemical process and product design).
Award recipients received a certificate, a speaking slot at the FOCAPD conference, and free conference registration.
Winner: Yuhe Tian
After a difficult deliberation requiring multiple rounds, the awards committee is pleased to announce Dr. Yuhe Tian as the 2024 Recipient of the FOCAPD Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation for her thesis work at Texas A&M. Yuhe is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at West Virginia University. Her research focus on systems approaches for modular process intensification, sustainable energy systems, and explicit model predictive control. She is currently an NSF EPSCoR Research Fellow. She also serves as Young Professionals Academic Liaison for AIChE CAST Division.
Yuhe gave her Award Lecture at 4:00pm on Tuesday July 16. She and her research team also presented their more recent research work in the Monday and Wednesday poster sessions.
Honorable Mention: Vyom Thakker
The committee wanted also to recognize Vyom Thakker for his own outstanding dissertation work at The Ohio State University on multi-scale design of chemical process networks, cradle-to-cradle life-cycles and product value-chains to establish a Sustainable Circular Economy. As part of his dissertation, he has developed multiple frameworks that ultimately help users identify ‘optimal’ roadmaps for achieving a “Net-zero Circular Economy” through investments in eco-innovations that are robust to climate-change and expected to favorably evolve in readiness for adoption. Vyom is now a Senior Research Specialist in the Machine Learning, Operations and Statistics (MiLOS) group with Core R&D at The Dow Chemical Company.
He gave an award lecture at 3:00pm on Wednesday July 17.
Best Paper Award
The Best Paper Award winners were determined by votes of the members of the FOCAPD International Scientific Committee, who reviewed over 140 conference paper submissions ahead of the conference.
Winner 1: Molly McDonald and Christos T. Maravelias
Molly accepted the award for the paper "Stochastic Programming Models for Long-Term Energy Transition Planning". The work used a multi-stage stochastic programming approach to predict which green energy technologies will be adopted over time (or, which should be adopted over time). The work considered endogenous and exogenous uncertainties in various market scenarios and conditions, and noted that when you consider uncertainties, you can naturally expect a more diverse range of technologies to be developed in response. Read the full paper at https://doi.org/10.69997/sct.107593.
Winner 2: Aurora del Carmen Munguia-Lopzez, Leonardo D. González, Celeste Mills, and Victor M. Zavala
Aurora accepted the award for the paper "Sustainable Production of Fertilizers Via the Photosynthetic Recovery of Nutrients in Livestock Waste". In the work, they proposed a new method of producing fertilizer calle ReNuAl by recovering nutrients from livestock waste. The process uses a novel biotechnology approach involving cyanobacteria that simultaneously purifies biogas and captures carbon. Overall, their system should have reduced environmental impacts in the areas of climate change and nutrient runoff than traditional synthetic fertilizers. Read the full paper at https://doi.org/10.69997/sct.147417.
Winner 3: Ching-Mei Wen, Charles Foster, and Marianthi Ierapetritou
Ching-Mei accepted the award for the paper "Exploring Net-Zero Greenhouse Gas Emission Routes for Bio-Production of Triacetic Acid Lactone: An Evaluation through Techno-Economic Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment ". In the work, they proposed a new method of process to produce Triacetic acid lactone (TAL) from biomass and CO2-derived feedstocks. After designing and simulating the process in SuperPro Designer and Aspen Plus, they conducted a techno-economic analysis and a life cycle assessment. They found that their process had significatnyl reduced CO2 emissions, potentially being even "net-negative", less at than 8% price increase over traditional methods. Read the full paper at https://doi.org/10.69997/sct.182968.
Best Poster Award
The Best Poster Award winners were determined by votes of FOCAPD attendees after the poster sessions--a People's Choice award!
Winner 1: Natasha Chrisandina with Shivam Vedant, Catherine Nkoutche, Eleftherios Iakovou, Efstratios N. Pistikopoulos, Mahmoud M. El-Halwagi
Natasha presented their work entitled "Resilient-aware Design for Sustainable Energy Systems". In the work, they focus on applying qualitative risk assessment methods to vulnerable supply chains concerning sustainable energy systems. They demonstrate the benefit of using process-level strategies that increase resiliency on the overall risk to the supply chain. Read the full paper at https://doi.org/10.69997/sct.166451.
Winner 2: Yoel R. Cortés-Peña with Victor M. Zavala
Victor accepted the award on behalf of Yoel
Yoel presented their work entitled "Graph-Based Representations and Applications to Process Simulation". In the work, they developed a python library called PhenomeNode, useful for creating graphical abstractions of the underlying equations of phase equilibria. The key benefit is to decompose the governing equations into mass, energy, and equilibrium subgraphs that can sort of isolate nonlinearities in the equation set, which in turn can help numerical solver algorithms such as decomposition algorithms. Read the full paper at https://doi.org/10.69997/sct.184650.
Winner 3: Hasan Nikkhah with Dev Barochia and Burcu Beykal
Hasan presented their work entitled "Design and Optimization of a Multipurpose Zero Liquid Discharge Desalination Plant". This work proposes a new design for desalination processes that has zero liquid discharge: an advantage over traditional designs which discharge high-salinity brine back into the sewater, potentially increasing overall salinity. Their optimization methodology used the Nonlinear Optimization with the Mesh Adaptive Direct Search (NOMAD) algorithm to help them find the best designs. Their process simulations show that they should be able to produce pure drinking water and sodium chloride simultaneously with no liquid discharge. Read the full paper at https://doi.org/10.69997/sct.142929.