Former CACHE President Gintaras (Rex) Reklaitis Named AIChE's 2024 Founders Award Recipient

Dr. Gintaras Reklaitis will be presented will the AIChE's Founders Award on October 7, 2024, at the award's ceremony at the AIChE Annual Meeting in San Diego.

From the AIChE's profile (link):

Discussing his career in chemical engineering, Reklaitis said, “My focus on process systems engineering has allowed me to address relevant applications as the discipline has responded to the chemical process industries’ market and technical challenges. Accordingly, the applications I have pursued have shifted from coal conversion processes to specialty chemicals, from batch processing to pharmaceuticals, and most recently to energetic materials.” He noted that his methodologies, which are centered on mathematical modeling, numerical, statistical, and optimization methods, “have likewise evolved as computing and systems technology have exploded in power and access.”

Rex was a CACHE trustee for more than forty years (1979-2022) and served in the roles of CACHE secretary, vice president, and president in the 1980s. Starting in the mid-1980s, Rex co-developed the “Chemical Engineering Simulated Laboratory Modules” - virtual senior-lab experiments representative of industrial practice, each developed with a company. He was chair of the 1st Foundations of Computer Aided Process Operations (FOCAPO) conference in 1987, the1st US-based Process Systems Engineering Symposium (2000), the CACHE 50th Anniversary celebration (2019), and the “Future of Cyber-Assisted ChE Education” workshop (2020).

Again, from the AIChE's profile:

Alongside his leadership in Purdue’s School of Chemical Engineering and his mentoring of 60 PhD students, Reklaitis’s contributions to education include textbooks and innovative online modules for undergraduates and professionals alike. His books include Introduction to Material and Energy Balances and Engineering Optimization: Methods and Applications, the latter of which seeks to instill a conceptual understanding of algorithms and optimality criteria with applications across engineering. The book was one of the earliest to provide a software library of optimization methods. Reklaitis also co-developed a suite of virtual experiment modules designed to bring experiences more representative of industrial practice directly to students’ desk computers.

You can read more about Rex in the AIChE's Founders Award profile of Rex: Gintaras Reklaitis of Purdue Named AIChE’s 2024 Founders Award Recipient