The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) announced today that Deborah L. Grubbe, Owner and President of Operations and Safety Solutions, LLC, will become President of AIChE in 2021. Grubbe succeeds 2020 President Monty M. Alger, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. Christine Grant, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Inaugural Associate Dean of Faculty Advancement at North Carolina State University’s College of Engineering, will become 2021 President-elect, and will succeed Grubbe as AIChE President in 2022.
Additionally, Wendy Young, Sales and Marketing Manager for Chemstations, will begin a three-year term as Treasurer in 2021. As Treasurer, Young succeeds Rosemarie Wesson, Associate Dean for Research at The City College of New York.
Newly elected members of the AIChE Board of Directors are: Donna Bryant, Senior Process Engineer at Johnson Matthey; Julianne Holloway, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Arizona State University; Elsa Reichmanis, Professor and Carl Robert Anderson Chair in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering of Lehigh University; and William Raiford, Senior Director of Technology, Titanium Technologies, at the Chemours Company. The directors serve three-year terms.
At Operations and Safety Solutions, Grubbe is a consultant to multinational firms in the chemical, oil and gas, and aerospace industries. She is the former Vice President of Group Safety for BP plc, which had its two safest years ever under her watch. Deborah was trained in the characteristics of safe operations during her 27 year career at DuPont, where she held corporate director positions in safety, operations and engineering.
Grubbe is a Trustee of the National Safety Council, and is a former Chair of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Visiting Committee for Advanced Technology. She has also worked with the National Academy of Sciences to support the Demilitarization of the U.S. Chemical Weapons Stockpile. A Fellow of AIChE, she is an Emeritus member of AIChE’s Center for Chemical Process Safety and chaired the organization’s Institute for Sustainability, where she has led a global effort to establish a credential in the field.
She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering from Purdue University, where she earned her BS in chemical engineering. She received a Winston Churchill Fellowship to attend Cambridge University, where she received a Certificate of Post-Graduate Study in Chemical Engineering. Deborah is a registered professional engineer in Delaware, and is a Chartered Engineer in the United Kingdom.
About AIChE: AIChE is a professional society of more than 60,000 members in more than 110 countries. Its members work in corporations, universities and government using their knowledge of chemical processes to develop safe and useful products for the benefit of society. Through its varied programs, AIChE continues to be a focal point for information exchange on the frontier of chemical engineering research in such areas as nanotechnology, sustainability, hydrogen fuels, biological and environmental engineering, and chemical plant safety and security. More information about AIChE is available at www.aiche.org.