On February 3, 2011, the Board of Trustees ratified the appointments of Dr. Jim Caruthers and Dr. Venkat Venkatasubramanian as Reilly Professors of Chemical Engineering.

Dr. Caruthers joined the Purdue faculty in 1977 and has made outstanding contributions in research, teaching and service. His areas of research are polymer rheology; polymerization reaction, cure and degradation kinetics; development of cyber-infrastructure to support chemical and materials science; and electric vehicle technology with a specific focus on battery technology. He has authored 82 archival journal publications, 32 refereed conference proceedings and is the co-Editor of one book. He has graduated 32 PhD degree recipients and is currently chairing or co-chairing 6 PhD committees. In external recognition, Dr. Caruthers received ASEE’s Curtiss McGraw Research Award (1990), and serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Time Dependent Materials and Rubber Chemistry and Technology; internally, he received a CoE Team Excellence Award (2007). He has provided exceptional service to the School in a variety of ways, including serving as chair of the Forney Hall addition construction and current renovation; he previously served as the School’s Director of Graduate Studies for many years.

Dr. Venkatasubramanian joined the Purdue faculty in 1988 and has made outstanding contributions in research, teaching and service. His areas of research are process fault diagnosis and abnormal events management, pharmaceutical informatics, molecular products design and complex adaptive systems. He has published 94 archival journal publications, 97 refereed conference proceedings and 8 book chapters. He is the co-editor of two books, and has graduated 32 PhD degree recipients. In external recognition, among others, he received the Computing in Chemical Engineering Award (AIChE, 2009). Internally, he has been recognized as University Faculty Scholar (1998), the Shreve Award for Outstanding Teaching in ChE (1993, 2004, 2006) and the Teaching for Tomorrow Award (2004). He was elected Fellow of Purdue’s Teaching Academy (2007) and has been co-recipient of two CoE Team Excellence Awards (2007, 2010). He has served the profession as President of the non-profit CACHE (Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering) Corp, and is currently an Editor of Computers & Chemical Engineering journal. He is currently Chair of our School’s Graduate Committee.