Dr. Rajamani Gounder, the Larry and Virginia Faith Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, was recently elected Area 20A Programming Chair for 2020-2021 by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).

Gounder’s naming to the position was the result of voting by the AIChE Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division (CRE) Executive Board, and was announced by current Area 20 programming chair Dr. Ryan L. Hartman.

“There were many outstanding nominations from our community of gifted and motivated scholars, who continue to make the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division of AIChE among its strongest,” said Hartman as he announced the election results. Gounder’s two-year term begins January 2020 and runs through the end of 2021.

As Area 20A Programming Chair, Gounder will be responsible for administration of various duties related to assembling the technical program in Catalysis during his term. In each of the next two AIChE Annual Meetings in San Francisco (2020) and Boston (2021), Gounder will oversee organization of approximately 70 oral sessions, including about 250 talks and more than 250 posters, on topical areas of current interest to the research community. He will also select emerging and leading researchers from academia, industry, and national laboratories to serve as session chairs and co-chairs.

 “It is an honor to serve as the next Catalysis programming chair, and to serve the CRE community by cultivating a vibrant technical program for the next two AIChE annual meetings,” says Gounder. “I am excited to meet and support the new professors in academia and young professionals in industry and national laboratories, a growing sector of our community that serves as a positive indicator of the health and future of the CRE Division.”

Gounder is looking forward to continuing the strong traditions established by prior CRE programming chairs to assemble oral sessions that support tenure-track and early career researchers, potential faculty candidates, and first-time student presenters. “I plan to continue building momentum for newer programmatic initiatives to improve the quality of the poster session, and promote events to connect young researchers with potential future employers.”

Gounder has been an active member of the CRE division since 2010, as a presenter or senior author on more than 60 oral and poster presentations, as a session chair and organizer of 13 sessions, and as a Director of the Division from 2016-2019.

Learn more about Dr. Rajamani Gounder at https://engineering.purdue.edu/ChE/people/ptProfile?resource_id=85277.

Learn more about American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) at https://www.aiche.org/.