A Message from CACHE Executive Director Prof Ed Maginn

The Executive Director of CACHE and How CACHE is Financed

CACHE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that “promotes the development and distribution of computer-related and/or technology-based educational aids for the chemical engineering profession.” It is led by up to 28 Trustees, no more than 21 of whom are current or emeritus educators of academic rank and no more than seven are current or retired employees in industry or government. CACHE has an Executive Committee consisting of a President (currently Mario Eden), a Vice President (Jeff Errington), a Secretary (Conchita Jimenez-Gonzalez), and an Executive Director (Ed Maginn), who also serves as Treasurer. All Trustees serve as volunteers.

The President, Vice President, and Secretary are elected from among the Trustees to a two-year term. The Executive Director, however, is appointed by the President every two years and normally serves for a much longer time, given the administrative overhead of managing the finances of the organization. Since its founding in 1969, CACHE has only had six Executive Directors: Larry Evans (1975-1980); J. D. Seader (1981-1983); David Himmelblau (1984-1999); Tom Edgar (2000-2017); Mike Henson (2018-2021); and Edward Maginn (2022-present). There was no formal Executive Director from 1969-1974.

What does the Executive Director do?

Aside from serving on the Executive Committee and taking part in normal Trustee duties, the Executive Director is responsible for overseeing the finances and legal aspects of CACHE. This includes basic accounting and banking duties, filing taxes, maintaining the non-profit status of CACHE, preparing budgets, and overseeing the endowment. The Executive Director is assisted in these duties by a part-time staff member, and CACHE also employs an accounting firm to ensure sound financial oversight. CACHE has endowment assets of about $700,000, which have been built up over the lifetime of CACHE and are invested to generate a stable return. CACHE has a targeted endowment spending rate of about 4%, which means CACHE can spend a little less than $30,000 per year on the activities listed below. We end up spending more than this, with the difference being made up by departmental membership dues, philanthropy, and any proceeds we make from conferences. We are grateful to the over 70 departments who are members of CACHE! https://cache.org/affiliates. If your department is not a member, consider joining.

Here are some of the activities CACHE uses its resources for:

Conferences

CACHE organizes and finances several major conferences, including:

• FOCAPO/CPC - Foundations of Computer Aided Process Operations/Chemical Process Control (every 5 years)
• FOCAPD - Foundations of Computer Aided Process Design (every 5 years)
• FOMMS - Foundations of Molecular Modeling and Simulation (every 3 years)
• FOSBE - Foundations of Systems Biology in Engineering (jointly organized by CACHE and IFAC, led by CACHE every 3 years)
• FOPAM - Foundations of Process Analytics and Machine Learning (every 3 years)

Each conference requires the up-front expenditure on the order of $100,000 to secure facilities and contracts. Registration fees are set to cover the cost of the conference. We also seek grants and corporate philanthropy to help defray the cost of the conferences. Because of this, we can frequently give discounts and travel grants to students and junior attendees, as well as give out modest student prizes. Over the past three years, CACHE has given out over $40,000 in student travel awards.

Development of educational tools

Since 2020, CACHE has sponsored a grant program, where faculty from member departments can compete for grants of up to $5,000 to develop computationally based tools and modules for chemical engineering education. A total of nine grants have been awarded; the modules are all available on the CACHE website: https://cache.org/computational-tools-development

CACHE has also been heavily involved in the development and dissemination of software used by chemical engineers. CACHE played a leading role in helping with the adoption of modern process simulation software by chemical engineering departments, and led the development of the popular modeling package PolyMath. Recently, CACHE helped sponsor the development of the popular textbook “Learn Aspen Plus in 24 Hours” (written by CACHE Trustee Tom Adams).

CACHE is a sponsor of the popular LearnChemE site https://learncheme.com/ (led by CACHE Trustee John Falconer), and curates a Teaching Resource Center on the CACHE website. The TRC contains a wealth of helpful teaching resources on just about every course offered in chemical engineering.

Publication support to the community

CACHE supports PSE Press, which helps advance free and open dissemination of process systems engineering knowledge through publication of research results. PSE Press will help not-for-profit organizations to publish conference proceedings, transactions, or white papers in an open-access format at low cost depending on the circumstances.

Awards

CACHE sponsors the ASEE Edgar CACHE Award, the AIChE Himmelblau Award, and the AIChE Evans Award.

Future

As computing continues to change and shape the chemical engineering profession, CACHE will serve as an important resource for educators and industrial practitioners. CACHE is working on new initiatives in molecular simulation, process analytics, and AI, while our educational materials and conferences are continually being refreshed to stay relevant.

Your support for CACHE, either through philanthropy, participation in our conferences, or just being in a member department, is crucial to our success.

Edward Maginn
Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Engineering,
University of Notre Dame and CACHE Executive Director